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Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.

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
Law
Eleven
Points
Possession

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It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
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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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It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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Desponding Phyllis was endu'd With ev'ry Talent of a Prude, She trembled when a Man drew near Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear: If o'er against her you were plac'd She durst not look above your Waist
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For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
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It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this they shall be famous to all posterity whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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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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A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
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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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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.
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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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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
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