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No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

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
Turns
Preacher
Thought
Heads
Giving
Vain
Time
Eternity
People
Train
Tried
Elder
Gives
Elders
Turn
Listened

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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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Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
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Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
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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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My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.
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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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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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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
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Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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A lie is an excuse guarded
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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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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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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A footman may swear but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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