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Ale is meat, drink and cloth it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.

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
Dumb
Meat
Cat
Drink
Wise
Speak
Make
Ale
Men
Cloth

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Many a truth is told in jest.
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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.
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One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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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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Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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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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The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
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My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.
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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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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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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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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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