Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/462

454 but the smallest accident intervening (and in the course of affairs it is impossible to foresee all) does often produce such turns and changes, that at last he is just as much in doubt of events, as the most ignorant and unexperienced person.

Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because he that would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude, will convince others the more, as he appears convinced himself.

How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they will not so much as take warning?

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.

No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought, that elder people have tried in vain to put into our heads before.

When we desire or solicit any thing, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.

In a glasshouse the workmen often fling in a small quantity of fresh coals, which seems to disturb the fire, but very much enlivens it. This setms to allude to a gentle stirring of the passions, that the mind may not languish.

Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; it is like spending this year, part of the next year's revenue. The