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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

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
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If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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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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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
Jonathan Swift
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
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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A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
Jonathan Swift
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
Jonathan Swift
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
Jonathan Swift
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
Jonathan Swift
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111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
Jonathan Swift
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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
Jonathan Swift
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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
Jonathan Swift
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Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
Jonathan Swift