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

More quotes by 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.
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A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
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When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.
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A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
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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.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
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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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