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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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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
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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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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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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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For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door
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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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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
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It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this they shall be famous to all posterity whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
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Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.
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Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.
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The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
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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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111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
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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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