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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.

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
Among
Rather
Freedom
Would
Freemen
Freeman
Slaves
Slave

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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
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A footman may swear but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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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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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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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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It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
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Come, agree, the law's costly.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
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Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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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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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
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Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
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