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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.

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
Arbitrary
Step
Steps
Natural
Power
Despotism
Firsts
Savage
First
Savages
Life
Anarchy

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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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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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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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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.
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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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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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