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I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.

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
Evil
Expedient
Political
Bullies
Able
Bully
Find
Hath
World
Discover
Method
Law
Suffering
Rakes

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
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Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
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Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
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Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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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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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
Jonathan Swift
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All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
Jonathan Swift
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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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