Quote

A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.

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
Away
Guests
Perusal
True
Stomach
Snarl
Book
Bones
Fewest
Like
Critics
Fling
Dog
Feast
Whose
Consequently
Thoughts
Critic
Upon
Wholly

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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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Tis nothing when you are used to it.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
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That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
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Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
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If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
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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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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.
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A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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