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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

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
Make
Turnips
Purse
Purses
Silk
Ears

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A college joke to cure the dumps.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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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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Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
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I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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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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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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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
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There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
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A fig for your bill of fare show me your bill of company.
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
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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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It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.
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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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