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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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A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
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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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Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
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Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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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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For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.
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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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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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I am of the level with common Astrologers who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
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In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
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In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.
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Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
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Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
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