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

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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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Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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Come, agree, the law's costly.
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Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
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Tis nothing when you are used to it.
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What they do in heaven we are ignorant of what they do not do we are told expressly.
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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right She may then grow wise for spite.
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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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In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.
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This is every cook's opinion - no savory dish without an onion, but lest your kissing should be spoiled your onions must be fully boiled.
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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
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I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
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So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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