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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

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
Seem
Sense
Seems
May
Make
Blushing
Men
Modesty
Virtuous
Fool

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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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I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
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If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
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When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
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The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
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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.
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
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Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
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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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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
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'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
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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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What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
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