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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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You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
Jonathan Swift
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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
Jonathan Swift
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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
Jonathan Swift
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
Jonathan Swift
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In church your grandsire cut his throat to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
Jonathan Swift
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The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
Jonathan Swift
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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
Jonathan Swift
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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
Jonathan Swift
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
Jonathan Swift
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It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
Jonathan Swift
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A footman may swear but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
Jonathan Swift
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It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
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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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.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
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
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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.
Jonathan Swift