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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

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
Talent
Spurs
Literature
Inventor
Age
Birthday
Interest
Invention
Soul
Souls
Great
Judgment
People
Glory
Youth
Spur

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Ale is meat, drink and cloth it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
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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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One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
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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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A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
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There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.
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It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.
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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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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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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
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I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year A handsome house to lodge a friend A river at my garden's end A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.
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But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
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