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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.

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
Son
Small
Five
Father
Estate
Book
Estates
Sons
Third
Thirds

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
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All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
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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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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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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
Jonathan Swift
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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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You must take the will for the deed.
Jonathan Swift
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
Jonathan Swift
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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Jonathan Swift
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I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year A handsome house to lodge a friend A river at my garden's end A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.
Jonathan Swift
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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
Jonathan Swift
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Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
Jonathan Swift
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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Jonathan Swift
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
Jonathan Swift
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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Jonathan Swift