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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

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
Works
Genius
Detractors
Age
Complain
Next
Wit
Ever
Resolve
Never
Complaining
Would
Critics
Men
Criticism

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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
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I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
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111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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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.
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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.
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Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.
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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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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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Books, the children of the brain.
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The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
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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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She 's no chicken she 's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.
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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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Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
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