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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.

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
Level
Astrology
Levels
Pot
Common
Cant
Long
Hook
World
Suffered
Astrologers
Vulgar
Paltry
Abuse
Hooks
Planets
Amuse

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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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Vision is seeing the invisible.
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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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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
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Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
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Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
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I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.
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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.
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Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
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In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.
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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
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The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
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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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How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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