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

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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
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The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
Jonathan Swift
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Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
Jonathan Swift
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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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When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
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Come, agree, the law's costly.
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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
Jonathan Swift
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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
Jonathan Swift
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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Jonathan Swift
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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift