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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
Dire
Misfortune
Misfortunes
Match
Friend
Enemy
Friends

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Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
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I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.
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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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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
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I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
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One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
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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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Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.
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Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
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This Day, whate'er the Fates decree Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old
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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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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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