Quote

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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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
Company
Memory
Unavoidable
Story
Subject
Frequent
Values
Telling
Defects
Two
Gift
Repetition
Stories
Soon
Shift
Need
Subjects
Exhausted
Needs
Ought
Frequently
Good
Memories
Whoever

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The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
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I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
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By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
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It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.
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Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
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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.
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Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
Jonathan Swift
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And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?
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