Quote

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.

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
Sort
Restraint
Support
Fails
Company
Wit
Upon
Perpetual
Part
Insult
Character
Generally
Aiming
Done
Conversation
Speaker
Failing
Speakers

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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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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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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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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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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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Vision is seeing the invisible.
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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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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
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I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
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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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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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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.
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Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
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