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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.

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
Like
Lying
Continual
Upon
Inventor
Father
Falsehood
Lost
Improvement
Seems
Reputation
Great
Although
Much
Devil
Inventors
Made
Lies
Improvements

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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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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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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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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
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What they do in heaven we are ignorant of what they do not do we are told expressly.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
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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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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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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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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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I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
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