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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
Book
Generally
Argument
Conversation
Usually
Worst
Sort
Books
Reading
Managed

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I row after health like a waterman.
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
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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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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
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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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Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.
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Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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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.
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Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
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Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
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I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
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It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.
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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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