How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.
Jonathan SwiftRead
May you live all the days of your life.
Interpretation
This quote encourages fully experiencing and appreciating every moment of life.
Jonathan Swift's quote urges individuals to engage deeply with the present and to cherish every single day they are alive. It serves as a reminder that life is fleeting, and one should strive to make the most of their time, embracing both the joys and challenges that come with it.
In practice
During a graduation speech to inspire graduates to embrace their futures.
How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.
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.
This is every cook's opinion - _x000D_ no savory dish without an onion, _x000D_ but lest your kissing should be spoiled _x000D_ your onions must be fully boiled.
The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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.
I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
Sometimes it takes a wake-up call, doesn't it, to alert us to the fact that we're hurrying through our lives instead of actually living them; that we're living the fast life instead of the good life. And I think, for many people, that wake-up call takes the form of an illness.
He who starts behind in the great race of life must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front.
I never read one hateful thing said about me by some 12-year-old. So I got to live an actual life. And I've kept that mentality. Just because there's a hurricane going on around you doesn't mean you have to open the window and look at it.
The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow.
Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.
Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
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