Date: 1704

"For, some think that the spirit is apt to feed on the flesh, like hungry wines upon raw beef."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Others rather believe there is a perpetual game at leap-frog between both, and sometimes the flesh is uppermost, and sometimes the spirit; adding that the former, while it is in the state of a rider, wears huge Rippon spurs, and when it comes to the turn of be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Remark your commonest pretender to a light within, how dark, and dirty, and gloomy he is without; as lanterns which, the more light they bear in their bodies, cast out so much the more soot and smoke and fuliginous matter to adhere to the sides."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Upon these and the like reasons, certain objectors pretend to put it beyond all doubt that there must be a sort of preternatural spirit, possessing the heads of the modern saints; and some will have it to be the heat of zeal working upon the dregs of ignorance, as othe...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Some again think that when our earthly tabernacles are disordered and desolate, shaken and out of repair, the spirit delights to dwell within them, as houses are said to be haunted, when they are forsaken and gone to decay."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"There is a Brain that will endure but one Scumming; Let the Owner gather it with Discretion and manage his little Stock with Husbandry; but of all things, let him beware of bringing it under the Lash of his Betters; because, That will make it all bubble up into Impertinence, and he will find no ...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"You boast, indeed, of being obliged to no other Creature, but of drawing, and spinning out all from your self; That is to say, if we may judge of the Liquor in the Vessel by what issues out, You possess a good plentiful Store of Dirt and Poison in your Breast; And, tho' I would by no means, less...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"He that can with Epicurus content his ideas with the films and images that fly off upon his senses from the superficies of things, such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Thrice have I forced my imagination to take the tour of my invention, and thrice it has returned empty, the latter having been wholly drained by the following treatise."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"The deepest account, and the most fairly digested of any I have yet met with is this, that air being a heavy body, and therefore, according to the system of Epicurus, continually descending, must needs be more so when laden and pressed down by words, which are also bodies of much weight and grav...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)