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The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

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
Words
True
Definition
Proper
Definitions
Places
Style
Literature

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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.
Jonathan Swift
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For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
Jonathan Swift
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
Jonathan Swift
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I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
Jonathan Swift
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
Jonathan Swift
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The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age but that of a good one will not reform it.
Jonathan Swift
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Jonathan Swift
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
Jonathan Swift
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If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
Jonathan Swift
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
Jonathan Swift
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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
Jonathan Swift
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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Jonathan Swift
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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
Jonathan Swift
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
Jonathan Swift
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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
Jonathan Swift
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I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
Jonathan Swift