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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.

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
Ridiculous
Books
Passion
Book
Play
Love
Romances
Hath
Romance

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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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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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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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The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
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I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
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The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
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Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !
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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
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A fig for your bill of fare show me your bill of company.
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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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