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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.

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
Mean
Rivers
Great
Spring
Like
Events
Often
Littles
Little
Firsts
First
Springs

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
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In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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Come, agree, the law's costly.
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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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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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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.
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The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it. While you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you that I am not cheerful enough to write, for I believe Coffee once a week is necessary to that.
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Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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Bread is the staff of life.
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Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
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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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Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
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I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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