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

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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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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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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
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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.
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Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !
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I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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A college joke to cure the dumps.
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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
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Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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