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In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.

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
Nature
Bent
Ends
Points
Firsts
Ease
First
Adversity
Distresses
Private
Consult
Circumstances
Kindly
Please
Circumstance
Friends
Distress

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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Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.
Jonathan Swift
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A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
Jonathan Swift
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Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.
Jonathan Swift
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A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
Jonathan Swift
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I am of the level with common Astrologers who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.
Jonathan Swift
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
Jonathan Swift
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
Jonathan Swift
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I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.
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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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
Jonathan Swift
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Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
Jonathan Swift
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When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
Jonathan Swift
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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
Jonathan Swift
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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
Jonathan Swift
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A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
Jonathan Swift
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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
Jonathan Swift
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift
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My horses understand me tolerably well I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
Jonathan Swift
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And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift