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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.

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
Fate
Behinds
Behind
Wind
Though
Pinions
Fear
Swifter
Like
Lend
Seize

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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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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.
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The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
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Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
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When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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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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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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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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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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It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
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In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
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Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
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The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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