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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

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
Makes
Vanity
Much
Vices
Nicety
Manage
Niceties
Requires
Contemptible
Management
Vice
Figure
Skill
Skills
Folly
Figures
Ill

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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.
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Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
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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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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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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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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
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Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
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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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May you live all the days of your life.
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A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
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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.
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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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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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