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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
Talent
Without
Men
Punning
Pun
Affects
Despise

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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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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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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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Books, the children of the brain.
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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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Ale is meat, drink and cloth it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
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Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
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Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
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What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
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There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
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O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
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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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