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A lie is an excuse guarded

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
Guarded
Excuse
Dare
Lying

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By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
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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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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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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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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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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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I am of the level with common Astrologers who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
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So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
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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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Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
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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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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
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Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !
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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
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