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

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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.
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
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Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
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And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
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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.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
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For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door
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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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