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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
Cat
Drink
Wise
Speak
Make
Ale
Men
Cloth
Dumb
Meat

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If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
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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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I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
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When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
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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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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
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The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
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Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
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If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
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It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
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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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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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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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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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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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