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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.

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
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Front
Owner
Quality
Neighbour
Within
Possessed
Serviceable
Known
Owners
Dial
House
Qualities
Neighbours
Others
Useless
Inform
Good
Fronts
Passengers
Men
Sun
Usefulness

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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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A college joke to cure the dumps.
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Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
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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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Desponding Phyllis was endu'd With ev'ry Talent of a Prude, She trembled when a Man drew near Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear: If o'er against her you were plac'd She durst not look above your Waist
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
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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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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
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So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
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Ale is meat, drink and cloth it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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My horses understand me tolerably well I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
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It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
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