"Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting."
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Quote collection
Jonathan Swift quotes (page 9 of 22)
433 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings; the which is owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole."
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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."
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"Vanity is a natural object of temptation to a woman."
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"Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary."
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"For in that universal call, Few bankers will to heaven be mounters; They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall! Conceal and cover us, ye counters! When other hands the scales shall hold, And they, in men's and angels' sight Produced with all their bills and gold, 'Weigh'd in the balance and found light!'"
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"It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now."
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"Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?"
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"Observation is an old man's memory."
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"Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem."
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"Bread is the staff of life."
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"I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there."
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"Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction."
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"The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome."
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"Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly."
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"The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms."
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"It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues."
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"Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?"
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"It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it."
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"Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation."
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