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One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.

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
Literature
Friends
Good
Ten
Military
Hurt
Enemy

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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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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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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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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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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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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
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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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Desponding Phyllis was endu'd With ev'ry Talent of a Prude, She trembled when a Man drew near Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear: If o'er against her you were plac'd She durst not look above your Waist
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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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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.
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