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What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.

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
Would
Brother
Hell
Rather
Excel
Wish
Grieve
Write
Rivals
Wells
Grieving
Well
Poet
Writing
Poetry

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That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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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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You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
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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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A college joke to cure the dumps.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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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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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
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And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?
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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
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There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
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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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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
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