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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
United
Never
Men
Appear
World
Six
Genius
Stand
Five
Age

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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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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.
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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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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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Bread is the staff of life.
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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
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An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart
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Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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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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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
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Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
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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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A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
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Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
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