Quote

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

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'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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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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My horses understand me tolerably well I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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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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Vision is seeing the invisible.
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Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.
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If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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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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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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