Quote

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

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
Rest
Example
Company
Flatter
Two
Offend
Nothing
Flattery
Great
Manners
None
Please

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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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Vision is seeing the invisible.
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What they do in heaven we are ignorant of what they do not do we are told expressly.
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Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.
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The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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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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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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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
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Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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