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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.

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
Measure
Though
Find
Employed
Never
Hundreds
World
Leisure
Circles
Round
Rounds

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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Come, agree, the law's costly.
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It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this they shall be famous to all posterity whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
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Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
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An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart
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Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
Jonathan Swift
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
Jonathan Swift
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And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift
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Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.
Jonathan Swift