“Conversation is but carving!
Give no more to every guest
Than he's able to digest.
Give him always of the prime,
And but little at a time.
Carve to all but just enough,
Let them neither starve nor stuff,
And that you may have your due,
Let your neighbor carve for you.”
Conversation
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Jonathan Swift 141
Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet 1667–1745Related quotes

Song lyrics, The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (2010), Long Time Gone (recorded 1962)

How I Write: John Banville on ‘Ancient Light,’ Nabokov, and Dublin (2012)
Source: I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

quote from an extract of 'Barbara Hepworth – the Sculptor carves because he must, The Studio, London, vol. 104, December 1932, p. 332
1932 - 1946

“If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.”
Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 28 (p. 256)

“Immortality is like trying to carve your initials in a block of ice in the middle of July.”

pg. xxv
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Chivalry