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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
Keep
Men
Time
Keeps
Distance
Comfort
Makes

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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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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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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year A handsome house to lodge a friend A river at my garden's end A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.
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Come, agree, the law's costly.
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
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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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So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
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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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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
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For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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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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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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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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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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