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

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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.
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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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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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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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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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This Day, whate'er the Fates decree Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old
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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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Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
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If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
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Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
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'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
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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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There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
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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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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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