"Fools are apt to imitate only the..." - Quote by Jonathan Swift

“If they would, for Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other Animal, they describe it by Rhombs, Circles, Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other geometrical terms.”

“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.”

“When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.”

“The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance”

“Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!”

“Knowing the future is the flower of the Way, and the beginning of folly.”

“The disappointed one speaks. I searched for great human beings; I always found only the apes of their ideals.”

“In everything, without doubt, truth has the advantage over imitation.”

“Why should I copy this owl, this sea urchin? Why should I try to imitate nature? I might just as well try to trace a perfect circle.”