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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.

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
Knowing
Accused
Literature
Owners
Sometimes
Soil
Men
Although
Weakness
Soils
Gold
Vein
Strength
Owner
Perhaps
Veins

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That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
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One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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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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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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Come, agree, the law's costly.
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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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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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Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?
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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
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I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
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A fig for your bill of fare show me your bill of company.
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Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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