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Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

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
Books
Lament
Book
Posterity
Would
Finds
Behave
Glad
Laments
Relation
Omissions
Consider
Omission
Writer
Authorship

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Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.
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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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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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This Day, whate'er the Fates decree Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old
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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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