Quote

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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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
Circles
Round
Rounds
Measure
Though
Find
Employed
Never
Hundreds
World
Leisure

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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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.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
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Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.
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May you live all the days of your life.
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
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So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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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.
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