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

What this quote means

This quote emphasizes how our perception shifts from positive anticipation to negative evaluation once we achieve our desires.

Jonathan Swift highlights a common psychological phenomenon where the anticipation of a desire is filled with hope and positivity, but once that desire is fulfilled, we become critical and focus on the potential downsides. This reflects a human tendency to overlook the challenges of obtaining what we want while fixating on the imperfections once it is achieved.

Themes

DesirePerceptionPsychologySatisfactionAnticipation

In practice

Example use cases

In a motivational speech about managing expectations in life.

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How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.
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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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