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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.

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
Digest
Guest
Guests
Conversation
Give
Able
Giving
Every
Carving

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
Jonathan Swift
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It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
Jonathan Swift
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
Jonathan Swift
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I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
Jonathan Swift
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
Jonathan Swift
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No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
Jonathan Swift
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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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Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
Jonathan Swift
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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
Jonathan Swift
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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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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
Jonathan Swift
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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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Many a truth is told in jest.
Jonathan Swift
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Jonathan Swift
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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
Jonathan Swift
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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
Jonathan Swift