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It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.

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
Dying
Mankind
Impossible
Evil
Natural
Providence
Death
Designed
Anything
Universal
Ever
Necessary

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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
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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.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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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.
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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
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You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
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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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