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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.

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
World
Six
Genius
Stand
Five
Age
United
Never
Men
Appear

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When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
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For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
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I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
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I am of the level with common Astrologers who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.
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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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You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
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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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I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
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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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What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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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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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
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