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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.

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
Hell
Check
Wonderful
Checks
Taken
Twenty
Word
Twenties
Heaven
Seriously
Religion
Supposed
Sacraments
Atheism
Humour
Circumstances
Wit

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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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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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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For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door
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Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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Tis nothing when you are used to it.
Jonathan Swift
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The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
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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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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
Jonathan Swift
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
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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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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.
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