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

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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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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.
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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.
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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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Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
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That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
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This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
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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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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
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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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Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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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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