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

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
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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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What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
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You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
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A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
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I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
Jonathan Swift
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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
Jonathan Swift
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Jonathan Swift
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What they do in heaven we are ignorant of what they do not do we are told expressly.
Jonathan Swift
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Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.
Jonathan Swift
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
Jonathan Swift