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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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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
Cutting
Wealth
Stoical
Wants
Supplying
Feet
Scheme
Desire
Schemes
Money
Boots
Like
Desires
Shoes

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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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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.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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Bread is the staff of life.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
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Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
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The more careless, the more modish.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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