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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.

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
Qualified
Shine
Shining
Company
Power
Men
Agreeable

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.
Jonathan Swift
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A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
Jonathan Swift
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift
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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
Jonathan Swift
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
Jonathan Swift
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Jonathan Swift
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If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
Jonathan Swift
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I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
Jonathan Swift
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No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
Jonathan Swift
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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
Jonathan Swift
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift