Quote

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.

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
Firsts
Fish
First
Fishes
Mind
Boat
Claret
Good
Rivers
Thrice
Sea
Butter
Food
Lakes
Lasts
Fishing
Last
Swim

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Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.
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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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She 's no chicken she 's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
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It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
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By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.
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Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.
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When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
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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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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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The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
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Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
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