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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
Turnips
Purse
Purses
Silk
Ears
Make

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You must take the will for the deed.
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A fig for your bill of fare show me your bill of company.
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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
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Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?
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Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
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The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it. While you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you that I am not cheerful enough to write, for I believe Coffee once a week is necessary to that.
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The more careless, the more modish.
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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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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
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111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
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For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
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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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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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