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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.

Jonathan Swift

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Jonathan Swift
Age: 77 †
Born: 1667
Born: November 30
Died: 1745
Died: October 19
Essayist
Human Rights Activist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pamphleteer
Philosopher
Poet
Priest
Prosaist
Public Figure
Dublin city
Isaac Bickerstaff
M. B. Drapier
Lemuel Gulliver
Simon Wagstaff
Funny
History
Confederacy
True
Dunces
Truth
Appears
Sign
Genius
Education
Literature

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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A lie is an excuse guarded
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Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.
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Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
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I am of the level with common Astrologers who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.
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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
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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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A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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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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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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