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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

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
Corruptions
Commonly
Corruption
Understood
Politics
Word
Political
Nothing

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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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My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.
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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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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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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
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If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
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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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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
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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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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.
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It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
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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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