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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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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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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
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A fig for your bill of fare show me your bill of company.
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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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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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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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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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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
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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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The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
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A footman may swear but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
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