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It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.

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
Firsts
First
Oratory
Must
Persuade
Would
Accomplished
Men
Appear
Life
Rule
Force
Others

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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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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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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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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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
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Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.
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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.
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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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Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
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What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
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So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?
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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
Jonathan Swift