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

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The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
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It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
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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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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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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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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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A lie is an excuse guarded
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Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.
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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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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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