"In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire."
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Quote collection
Jonathan Swift quotes (page 17 of 22)
433 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances."
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"Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail."
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"Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted."
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"This Day, whate'er the Fates decree; Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old"
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"Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters."
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"Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death."
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"My hunger serves me instead of a clock."
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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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"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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"Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world."
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"I have now lost my barrier between me and death; God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it, as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice and charity, she is there."
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"For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know; 'Tis only infinite below."
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"Real vision is the ability to see the invisible."
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"When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not."
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"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."
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"Neither is it safe to count upon the weakness of any man's understanding, who is thoroughly possessed of the spirit of revenge to sharpen his invention."
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"No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before."
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"That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken."
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"Common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter."
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