Quote

That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

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
Agree
Passage
Opinion
Observed
Read
Passages
Mistaken
Excellently
Author
Agrees
Criticism
Pronounce
Mines
Disagreement
Mine
Differ

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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
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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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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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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.
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.
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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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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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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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That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
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Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
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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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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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You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.
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It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
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