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'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.

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
Bits
Maxim
Food
Maxims
School
Flattery
Take
Fools
Men
Wit
Schools
Cooking
Fool
Condescend

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it. While you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you that I am not cheerful enough to write, for I believe Coffee once a week is necessary to that.
Jonathan Swift
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
Jonathan Swift
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And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?
Jonathan Swift
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Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
Jonathan Swift
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
Jonathan Swift
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
Jonathan Swift
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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
Jonathan Swift
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Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
Jonathan Swift
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It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this they shall be famous to all posterity whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
Jonathan Swift
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Jonathan Swift
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The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
Jonathan Swift
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That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
Jonathan Swift
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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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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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.
Jonathan Swift
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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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This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
Jonathan Swift
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Praise is the daughter of present power.
Jonathan Swift
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
Jonathan Swift