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Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.

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
Business
Unfortunate
Great
Management
Men
Parts
Road
Imagination
Public
Common
Quickness
Often
Commerce

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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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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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It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this they shall be famous to all posterity whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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Tis nothing when you are used to it.
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A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
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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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Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
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Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
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Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
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You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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