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

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
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The more careless, the more modish.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
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When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
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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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It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
Jonathan Swift
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Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !
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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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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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The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
Jonathan Swift