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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
Please
State
States
Many
Advantages
Men
Disorder
Life
Possess
Accidents
Advantage

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
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For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.
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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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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
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Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
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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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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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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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Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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Ale is meat, drink and cloth it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
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There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
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