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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.

Jonathan Swift

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Jonathan Swift
Age: 77 †
Born: 1667
Born: November 30
Died: 1745
Died: October 19
Essayist
Human Rights Activist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pamphleteer
Philosopher
Poet
Priest
Prosaist
Public Figure
Dublin city
Isaac Bickerstaff
M. B. Drapier
Lemuel Gulliver
Simon Wagstaff
Would
World
Gulliver
Travels
Biographies
Dozen
Burn
Science

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
Jonathan Swift
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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
Jonathan Swift
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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Jonathan Swift
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
Jonathan Swift
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
Jonathan Swift
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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
Jonathan Swift
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
Jonathan Swift
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Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
Jonathan Swift
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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
Jonathan Swift
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hoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Jonathan Swift
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Vision is seeing the invisible.
Jonathan Swift
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O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
Jonathan Swift
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In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
Jonathan Swift
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There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
Jonathan Swift
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A footman may swear but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
Jonathan Swift
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Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
Jonathan Swift
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
Jonathan Swift
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Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !
Jonathan Swift
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
Jonathan Swift
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'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
Jonathan Swift