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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.

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
Never
Greatness
Men
Court
Politics
Word
Keep
Two
Great
Countenance
Always
Maxims

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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
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Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
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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.
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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
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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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Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
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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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When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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