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It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.

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
Talent
Truth
Mistook
Ever
Uncontrolled
Made
Talents
Good
Ill
Men
Figure
Figures
Understood

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
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I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
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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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Ale is meat, drink and cloth it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
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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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And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?
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For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
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Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
Jonathan Swift
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This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
Jonathan Swift
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Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
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Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
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Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
Jonathan Swift