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The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.

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
Well
Helps
Divines
Men
Divine
Inclined
Virtue
Vicious
Courses
Preaching
Course
Preserve
Helping
Preserves
Ever
Seldom
Wells
Vanity

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year A handsome house to lodge a friend A river at my garden's end A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.
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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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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
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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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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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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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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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A college joke to cure the dumps.
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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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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
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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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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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Many a truth is told in jest.
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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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