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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

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

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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
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The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age but that of a good one will not reform it.
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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
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So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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Big-endians and small-endians.
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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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Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
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I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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