"Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised."
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Quote collection
Jonathan Swift quotes (page 5 of 22)
433 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good."
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"The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages."
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"I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world."
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"It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider."
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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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"Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice."
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"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
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"I never knew any man cured of inattention."
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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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"That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own."
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"The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both."
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"Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm."
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"Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life."
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"Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride."
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"Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be."
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"And surely 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."
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"If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel."
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"There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails."
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"The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."
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