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It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.

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
Together
Employ
Giving
Malice
Work
Controversy
Unfair
Double
Ignorance
Writer
Gives

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
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Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.
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A lie is an excuse guarded
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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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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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There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
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When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
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There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
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Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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Hail fellow, well met.
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.
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