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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.
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
Hours
Cat
Foretell
Show
Pursue
Pensive
Shows
Careful
Pursues
May
Hour
Tail
Giving
Rain
Observers
Depends
Tails
Gives
Dread
Sure
Observation
More quotes by Jonathan Swift
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift
Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
Jonathan Swift
Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
Jonathan Swift
Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.
Jonathan Swift
What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
Jonathan Swift
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift
Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
Jonathan Swift
Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
Jonathan Swift
Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
Jonathan Swift
Ale is meat, drink and cloth it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
Jonathan Swift
It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
Jonathan Swift
If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
Jonathan Swift
With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
Jonathan Swift
It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
Jonathan Swift
It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
Jonathan Swift
A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
Jonathan Swift
The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it. While you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you that I am not cheerful enough to write, for I believe Coffee once a week is necessary to that.
Jonathan Swift
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
Desponding Phyllis was endu'd With ev'ry Talent of a Prude, She trembled when a Man drew near Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear: If o'er against her you were plac'd She durst not look above your Waist
Jonathan Swift
Books, the children of the brain.
Jonathan Swift