My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
Meaning of the quote
The quote suggests that when your nose itches, it can mean two different things - either you should have a glass of wine, or you should kiss someone who is acting silly or foolish. The writer is using this idea as a metaphor or symbolic comparison to make a broader point, but the exact meaning is not entirely clear from the quote alone.
More quotes from Jonathan Swift
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
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May you live all the days of your life.
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
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Books, the children of the brain.
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying… that he is wiser today than yesterday.
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It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
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Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
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Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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Observation is an old man’s memory.
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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
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Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
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It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
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The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
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Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
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Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
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Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
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Where there are large powers with little ambition… nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
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I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
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When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
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Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
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Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
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There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
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It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
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The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
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Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
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A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
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Every dog must have his day.
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
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As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
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Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
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Don’t set your wit against a child.
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Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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No wise man ever wished to be younger.
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