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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.

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
Eating
Hands
Made
Forks
Knives
Fingers

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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
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The more careless, the more modish.
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
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That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
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Desponding Phyllis was endu'd With ev'ry Talent of a Prude, She trembled when a Man drew near Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear: If o'er against her you were plac'd She durst not look above your Waist
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.
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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 tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
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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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I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
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It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
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Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
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