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

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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
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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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So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
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Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.
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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
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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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Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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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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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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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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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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