Quote

It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.

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
Care
Peculiar
Chant
Take
Mortals
Jargon
Laws
Multiply
Special
Wherein
Written
Likewise
Law
Observed
Society
Mortal
Understand
Hath

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It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
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For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
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The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
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I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.
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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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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
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So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
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The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age but that of a good one will not reform it.
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
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I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
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There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.
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Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.
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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
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In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
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Vision is seeing the invisible.
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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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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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