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.
Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?
Indeed it is possible to stand with one foot on the inevitable 'banana peel' of life with both eyes peering into the Great Beyond, and still be happy, comfortable, and serene - if we will even so much as smile.
The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.
I watch the beauty for as long as I can, then turn and face the rest of it.
My dad taught me to never be pigeonholed; to really allow yourself to reinvent characters as they reinvent you; to be bold and to be willing to play seemingly unlikeable people.
People go on postponing everything that is meaningful. Tomorrow they will laugh; today, money has to be gathered... more money, more power, more things, more gadgets. Tomorrow they will love - today there is no time. But tomorrow never comes, and one day they find themselves burdened with all kinds of gadgets, burdened with money. They have come to the top of the ladder - and there is nowhere to go except to jump in a lake.
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