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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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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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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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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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I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
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Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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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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Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
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Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.
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Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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A fig for your bill of fare show me your bill of company.
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I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
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