Quote

Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.

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
Company
Memory
Unavoidable
Story
Subject
Frequent
Values
Telling
Defects
Two
Gift
Repetition
Stories
Soon
Shift
Need
Subjects
Exhausted
Needs
Ought
Frequently
Good
Memories
Whoever

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Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.
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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
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Bread is the staff of life.
Jonathan Swift
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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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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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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What they do in heaven we are ignorant of what they do not do we are told expressly.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
Jonathan Swift
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If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
Jonathan Swift
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And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?
Jonathan Swift
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
Jonathan Swift
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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