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Many a truth is told in jest.

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
Truth
Many
Jest
Told
Wisdom

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
Jonathan Swift
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Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right She may then grow wise for spite.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
Jonathan Swift
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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
Jonathan Swift
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A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.
Jonathan Swift
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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
Jonathan Swift
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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
Jonathan Swift
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Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
Jonathan Swift
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
Jonathan Swift
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
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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Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.
Jonathan Swift
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I am of the level with common Astrologers who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.
Jonathan Swift
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An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart
Jonathan Swift
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift