Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/466

458 love, politicks, religion, learning, &c. beginning from his youth and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last?

What they do in Heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly, that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.

When a man observes the choice of ladies nowadays in the dispensing of their favours, can he forbear paying some veneration to the memory of those mares mentioned by Xenophon, who, while their manes were on, that is, while they were in their beauty, would never admit the embraces of an ass.

It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of a spider.

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants, by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet, when we want shoes.

Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.

The reason why so few marriages are happy, is, because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

Nothing more unqualifies a man to act with prudence, than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable;