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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
Guest
Guests
Conversation
Give
Able
Giving
Every
Carving
Digest

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.
Jonathan Swift
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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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A lie is an excuse guarded
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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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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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
Jonathan Swift
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You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
Jonathan Swift
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
Jonathan Swift
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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Jonathan Swift
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I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
Jonathan Swift
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
Jonathan Swift
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
Jonathan Swift
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This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
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.
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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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
Jonathan Swift
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The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
Jonathan Swift
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And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?
Jonathan Swift
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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
Jonathan Swift
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A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
Jonathan Swift