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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
Would
Freemen
Freeman
Slaves
Slave
Among
Rather
Freedom

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By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
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Come, agree, the law's costly.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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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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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
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A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
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Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
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Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
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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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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
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