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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
Shine
Shining
Company
Power
Men
Agreeable
Qualified

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
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In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.
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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
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The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
Jonathan Swift
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?
Jonathan Swift
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Jonathan Swift
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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
Jonathan Swift
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Jonathan Swift
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Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.
Jonathan Swift
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Jonathan Swift