Entertaining Read, why was I not aware of these kinds of things before college? Was I myopic or were my instructors?

I came across a very interesting read today. "Thoughts on Various Subjects," by Jonathan Swift an Anglo-Irish essayist in the late 16 to early 17 hundreds.
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/3366/


Here are some of my favorite thoughts from the pamphlet to hopefully engage some curiosity....

"I am apt to think that, in the day of Judgment, there will be small allowance given to the wise for their want of morals, nor to the ignorant for their want of faith, because both are without excuse. This renders the advantages equal of ignorance and knowledge. But, some scruples in the wise, and some vices in the ignorant, will perhaps be forgiven upon the strength of temptation to each."

"Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy."

"When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

"The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may he resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice. Religion is the best motive of all actions, yet religion is allowed to be the highest instance of self-love."

"Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping."

"If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!"

"Some people take more care to hide their wisdom than their folly."

"The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in, and these are always ready at the mouth. So people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door."