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That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

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
Philosophy
Treatise
Belief
Fortuitous
Universe
Accidental
Fall
Alphabet
Science
Ingenious
Believe
Atoms
Would
Formed
Evolution
Concourse

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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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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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
Jonathan Swift
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I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
Jonathan Swift
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
Jonathan Swift
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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
Jonathan Swift
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
Jonathan Swift
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I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
Jonathan Swift
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Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
Jonathan Swift
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
Jonathan Swift
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What they do in heaven we are ignorant of what they do not do we are told expressly.
Jonathan Swift
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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
Jonathan Swift
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Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !
Jonathan Swift
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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
Jonathan Swift
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
Jonathan Swift
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Jonathan Swift
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Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.
Jonathan Swift
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
Jonathan Swift