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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.

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
Men
Superiors
Suits
Several
Object
Breeding
Degrees
Equals
Objects
Behaviour
Three
Suit
Good
Principal

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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
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111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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Books, the children of the brain.
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One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
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Come, agree, the law's costly.
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'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
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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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The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
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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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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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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
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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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I row after health like a waterman.
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And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
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