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

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My horses understand me tolerably well I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
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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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If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.
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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
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Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right She may then grow wise for spite.
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A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
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This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
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Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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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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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
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