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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.

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
Green
Left
Lopped
Boughs
Intemperance
Trunk
Withered
Trunks
Drunkenness

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I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
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Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.
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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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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.
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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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It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
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Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.
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I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
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