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

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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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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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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.
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Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.
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A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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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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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
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A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
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Ale is meat, drink and cloth it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
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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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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
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You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
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It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
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