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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.

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
Passions
Passion
Reason
Prevail
Intended
Hath

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Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
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Big-endians and small-endians.
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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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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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Bread is the staff of life.
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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
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Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
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Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.
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I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
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In church your grandsire cut his throat to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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