Quote

So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns

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
Maps
Africa
Geographers
Fill
Uninhabitable
Pictures
Downs
Towns
Savage
Place
Elephants
Savages
Gaps

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In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
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Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
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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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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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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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A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
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Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
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Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
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When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
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Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.
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There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
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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 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.
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