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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

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
Hives
Noblest
Sweetness
Culture
Two
Light
Things

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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
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It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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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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Many a truth is told in jest.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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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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I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.
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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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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
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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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Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
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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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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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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.
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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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