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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

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
Beard
Events
Age
Reverenced
Reason
Pretences
Long
Foretell
Men
Beards
Comets
Pretence

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it. While you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you that I am not cheerful enough to write, for I believe Coffee once a week is necessary to that.
Jonathan Swift
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Ale is meat, drink and cloth it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
Jonathan Swift
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
Jonathan Swift
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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Jonathan Swift
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I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.
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Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
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I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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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.
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Come, agree, the law's costly.
Jonathan Swift
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Bread is the staff of life.
Jonathan Swift
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
Jonathan Swift
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Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
Jonathan Swift
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
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
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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
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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All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
Jonathan Swift