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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

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
Friendship
Wisdom
Literature
Family
Others
Nothing
Abound
Hard
Conceive
Riches

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Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
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This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
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Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
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A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
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Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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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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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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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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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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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
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Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.
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