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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
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Ages
Former
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Furnish

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This Day, whate'er the Fates decree Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old
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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.
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One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
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It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
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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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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
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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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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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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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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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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
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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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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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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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It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
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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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