Jonathan Swift

English writer

Lived from: 1667-1745

Category: Writers (Contemporary)

Quotes: Jonathan Swift

Quotes 1 till 15 of 90.

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Jonathan Swift

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A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
Jonathan Swift

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A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
Jonathan Swift

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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
Jonathan Swift

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All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.
Jonathan Swift

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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
Jonathan Swift

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Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
Jonathan Swift

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And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift

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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
Jonathan Swift

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As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift

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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Jonathan Swift

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Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Jonathan Swift

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Books, the children of the brain.
Source: A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Jonathan Swift

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But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
Jonathan Swift

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Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Jonathan Swift

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Come, agree, the law's costly.