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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.

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
Former
Succeed
Furnish
Sort
Succeeding
Imagine
Provision
Age
Expense
Cannot
Expenses
Made
Wit
Ages

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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
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The more careless, the more modish.
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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
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She 's no chicken she 's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.
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Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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Books, the children of the brain.
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I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
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Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
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An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart
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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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