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

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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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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I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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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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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
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Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
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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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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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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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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Jonathan Swift
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Tis nothing when you are used to 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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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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How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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