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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
Truth
Appears
Sign
Genius
Education
Literature
Funny
History
Confederacy
True
Dunces

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
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The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
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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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Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right She may then grow wise for spite.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
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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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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
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If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
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Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
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Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
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I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.
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