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

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I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
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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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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
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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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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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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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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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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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I row after health like a waterman.
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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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There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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Bread is the staff of life.
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111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
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