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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.

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
Book
Men
Like
World
Authors
Return
Thousand
Books

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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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When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
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How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
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Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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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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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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You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
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Vision is seeing the invisible.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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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 wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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