Quote

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.

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
May
Hour
Tail
Giving
Rain
Observers
Depends
Tails
Gives
Dread
Sure
Observation
Hours
Cat
Foretell
Show
Pursue
Pensive
Shows
Careful
Pursues

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift
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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
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Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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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.
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Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.
Jonathan Swift
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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My horses understand me tolerably well I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
Jonathan Swift
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The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
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Vision is seeing the invisible.
Jonathan Swift
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
Jonathan Swift