Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/255

Rh always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.

I asked a poor man how he did? He said, he was like a washball, always in decay.

Hippocrates, Aph. 32. Sect. 6. observes, that stuttering people are always subject to a looseness. I wish physicians had power to remove the profusion of words in many people to the inferiour parts.

A man dreamed he was a cuckold; a friend told him it was a bad sign, because when a dream is true, Virgil says it passes through the horned gate.

Love is a flame, and therefore we say, beauty is attractive; because physicians observe that fire is a great drawer.

Civis, the most honourable name among the Romans; a citizen, a word of contempt among us.

A lady who had gallantries and several children, told her husband he was like the austere man, who reaped where he did not sow.

We read that an ass's head was sold for eighty pieces of silver; they have been lately sold ten thousand times dearer, and yet they were never more plentiful.

I must complain the cards are ill shuffled, till I have a good hand.

Very few men do properly live at present, but are providing to live another time.

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

Whoever live at a different end of the town from me, I look upon as persons out of the world, and only myself and the scene about me to be in it.

When I was young, I thought all the world, as well as myself, was wholly taken up in discoursing upon the last new play. Rh