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A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.

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
Well
Improve
Mind
Aim
Make
Foreign
Concerning
Good
Minds
Traveler
Men
Places
Deliver
Example
Wiser
Better
Chief
Wells
Chiefs

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
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It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
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But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
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Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
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Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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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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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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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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A fig for your bill of fare show me your bill of company.
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Desponding Phyllis was endu'd With ev'ry Talent of a Prude, She trembled when a Man drew near Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear: If o'er against her you were plac'd She durst not look above your Waist
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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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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
Jonathan Swift
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It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this they shall be famous to all posterity whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
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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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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
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