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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

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
Greatest
Art
Oratory
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More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
Jonathan Swift
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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
Jonathan Swift
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Jonathan Swift
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
Jonathan Swift
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Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
Jonathan Swift
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Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.
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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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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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
Jonathan Swift
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An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart
Jonathan Swift
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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
Jonathan Swift
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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
Jonathan Swift
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In church your grandsire cut his throat to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
Jonathan Swift
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
Jonathan Swift