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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.

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
Friend
Enemy
Friends
Dire
Misfortune
Misfortunes
Match

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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.
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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
Jonathan Swift
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Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
Jonathan Swift
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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
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And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.
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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
Jonathan Swift
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
Jonathan Swift
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O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
Jonathan Swift
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right She may then grow wise for spite.
Jonathan Swift
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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
Jonathan Swift