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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.

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
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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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Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
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Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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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.
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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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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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But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
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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.
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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.
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In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
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