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Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.

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
Accidents
Advantage
Please
State
States
Many
Advantages
Men
Disorder
Life
Possess

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For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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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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In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.
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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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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.
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For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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A fig for your bill of fare show me your bill of company.
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Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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