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

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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You must take the will for the deed.
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It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
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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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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Jonathan Swift
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Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
Jonathan Swift
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I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
Jonathan Swift
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
Jonathan Swift
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
Jonathan Swift
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When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
Jonathan Swift
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Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
Jonathan Swift
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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
Jonathan Swift
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Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Jonathan Swift
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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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It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
Jonathan Swift
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By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
Jonathan Swift
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
Jonathan Swift
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
Jonathan Swift
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Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
Jonathan Swift
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I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
Jonathan Swift
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
Jonathan Swift