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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.

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
Showing
Esteem
Worst
Way
Flattery

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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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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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
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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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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
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Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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Books, the children of the brain.
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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
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My horses understand me tolerably well I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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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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