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What they do in heaven we are ignorant of what they do not do we are told expressly.

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
Literature
Heaven
Expressly
Ignorant
Told

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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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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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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
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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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111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
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Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
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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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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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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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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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