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It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.

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
Edges
Cutting
Lost
Never
Razors
Wits
Employed
Wit
Edge

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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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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.
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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
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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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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
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An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart
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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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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
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The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
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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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A lie is an excuse guarded
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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
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