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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.

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
Might
Sheridan
Discretion
Ruled
Conduct
Possessed
Debate
Age

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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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.
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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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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My horses understand me tolerably well I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
Jonathan Swift
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That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
Jonathan Swift
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
Jonathan Swift