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Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?

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
Affront
Lows
Letters
Stand
Rebukes
Alive
Betters
Quality
Brunt
Easy
Dunces
Men
Rebuke

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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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For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
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Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
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The more careless, the more modish.
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That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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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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This is every cook's opinion - no savory dish without an onion, but lest your kissing should be spoiled your onions must be fully boiled.
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It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
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Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
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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.
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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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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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Vision is seeing the invisible.
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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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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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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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