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

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I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.
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The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
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Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
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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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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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Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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Big-endians and small-endians.
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Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it. While you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you that I am not cheerful enough to write, for I believe Coffee once a week is necessary to that.
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
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