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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.

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
Despise
Talent
Without
Men
Punning
Pun
Affects

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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
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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.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
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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.
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
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I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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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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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
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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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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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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.
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
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