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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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I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
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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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If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.
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Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?
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All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
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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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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
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Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
Jonathan Swift