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A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.

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
False
Injure
Intention
Indirect
Position
Consist
Lying
Deceive
Words
Hype
Desire
Neighbour
Doe
Deceiving
Speaking

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
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And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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A college joke to cure the dumps.
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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
Jonathan Swift
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
Jonathan Swift
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For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Jonathan Swift
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
Jonathan Swift