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A footman may swear but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?

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
May
Swear
Like
Humorous
Judgment
Equal
Footman
Lord
Profanity
Funny
Swearing
Often
Propriety
Cannot
Delicacy

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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.
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How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
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Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.
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Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.
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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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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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'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.
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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Tis nothing when you are used to it.
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When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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