1742 in Poetry - Events

Events

  • Jonathan Swift suffers what appears to have been a stroke, losing the ability to speak and realizing his worst fears of becoming mentally disabled. ("I shall be like that tree," he once said, "I shall die at the top.") To protect him from unscrupulous hangers on, who had begun to prey on him, Swift's closest companions had him declared of "unsound mind and memory."

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Famous quotes containing the word events:

    Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!
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    By many a legendary tale of violence and wrong, as well as by events which have passed before their eyes, these people have been taught to look upon white men with abhorrence.... I can sympathize with the spirit which prompts the Typee warrior to guard all the passes to his valley with the point of his levelled spear, and, standing upon the beach, with his back turned upon his green home, to hold at bay the intruding European.
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    Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.
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