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

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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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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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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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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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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 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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Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.
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This Day, whate'er the Fates decree Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old
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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
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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.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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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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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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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.
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