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If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

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
Makes
Keep
Men
Time
Keeps
Distance
Comfort

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hoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
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You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
Jonathan Swift
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
Jonathan Swift
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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
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How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
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What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
Jonathan Swift
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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
Jonathan Swift
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
Jonathan Swift
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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
Jonathan Swift
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I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
Jonathan Swift
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For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door
Jonathan Swift
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
Jonathan Swift
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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Jonathan Swift
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Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.
Jonathan Swift
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
Jonathan Swift
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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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