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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.

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
Government
Legislature
May
Placed
Many
Administration
Pass
State
Hands
Cannot
Maxim
States
Maxims

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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
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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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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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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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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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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
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111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
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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.
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This is every cook's opinion - no savory dish without an onion, but lest your kissing should be spoiled your onions must be fully boiled.
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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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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
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It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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