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Jonathan Swift Quotations

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We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another.
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love on another.
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.
One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.
Jonathan Swift - Miscellanies
Irish essayist, novelist, & satirist
1667 - 1745
It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
Faith he must make his stories shorter Or change his comrades once a quarter.
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
How is it possible to expect mankind to take advice when they will not so much as take warning
May you live all the days of your life.
May you live every day of your life.
Argument is the worst sort of conversation.
Some people take more care to hide their wisdom than their folly.
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
We have enough religion to hate each other, but not enough to love each other.
I row after health like a waterman...
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
There is nothing in this world constant, but inconsistancy.
Jonathan Swift - A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1709)
Irish essayist, novelist, & satirist
1667 - 1745
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.
Jonathan Swift - "A Modest Proposal"
Irish essayist, novelist, & satirist
1667 - 1745

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