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There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.

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
Cannot
Occasions
Contrary
Serve
Quality
Interest
Upon
Occasion
Order
Deceit
Nature
Affect

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
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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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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
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That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
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That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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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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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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I am of the level with common Astrologers who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
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Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.
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In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
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