Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/250

242 Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of criticks and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

After all the maxims and systems of trade and commerce, a stander by would think the affairs of the world were most ridiculously contrived.

There are few countries, which, if well cultivated, would not support double the number of their inhabitants, and yet fewer where one third part of the people are not extremely stinted even in the necessaries of life. I send out twenty barrels of corn, which would maintain a family in bread for a year, and I bring back in return a vessel of wine, which half a dozen good fellows would drink in less than a month, at the expense of their health and reason.

A motto for the Jesuits:

Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?

A man would have but few spectators, if he offered to show for threepence how he could thrust a redhot iron into a barrel of gunpowder, and it should not take fire.

Query, Whether churches are not dormitories of the living as well as of the dead?

Harry Killegrew said to lord Wharton, "You would not swear at that rate, if you thought you were doing God honour."

A copy of verses kept in the cabinet, and only shown to a few friends, is like a virgin much sought after and admired; but when printed and published, is like a common whore, whom any body may purchase for half a crown. Lewis