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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

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
Men
Nasty
Nice
Ideas

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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age but that of a good one will not reform it.
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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
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Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
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What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
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It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
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The more careless, the more modish.
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So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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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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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
Jonathan Swift