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

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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Big-endians and small-endians.
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A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
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The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age but that of a good one will not reform it.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.
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But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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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For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
Jonathan Swift
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
Jonathan Swift
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
Jonathan Swift
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In church your grandsire cut his throat to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
Jonathan Swift
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
Jonathan Swift
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All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
Jonathan Swift
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
Jonathan Swift
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
Jonathan Swift