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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.

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
Find
Men
Physiognomy
Rogues
Wise
Faces

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Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
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Big-endians and small-endians.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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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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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
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Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !
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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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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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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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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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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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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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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
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Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
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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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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
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A lie is an excuse guarded
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