Quote

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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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
Way
Uneasy
Make
Trifles
Men
Sufficient
Block
Ones
Causes
Straw
Small
Stumble
Great
Straws

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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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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.
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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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Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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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.
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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
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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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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
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By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
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The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age but that of a good one will not reform it.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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