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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
Books
Reading
Managed
Book
Generally
Argument
Conversation
Usually
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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hoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
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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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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
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A lie is an excuse guarded
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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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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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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
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If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
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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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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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A college joke to cure the dumps.
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
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