Jonathan Swift — "It is a maxim very generally received, that a man of great wit has a very short …"
It is a maxim very generally received, that a man of great wit has a very short memory.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid."
"Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired."
"Few are qualified to shine in company; but it is in most men's power to be agreeable."
"It is as impossible to please all men as to make a coat for the moon."
"For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation as well as our dangerous enemies..."
About Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Anglo-Irish satirist and Dean of Dublin's St Patrick's Cathedral whose Gulliver's Travels (1726) and A Modest Proposal (1729) are the canonical English-language satires. Closely associated with Alexander Pope (Scriblerus Club poet and collaborator) and John Gay (Beggar's Opera author and satirical contemporary). For an intellectual contrast, see Daniel Defoe, English Whig journalist and Robinson Crusoe author (1660-1731) — Defoe's Crusoe (1719) celebrates Enlightenment self-reliance and the colonial-mercantile project; Swift's Gulliver (1726) systematically dismantles every form of human pretension Defoe celebrated. The cleanest Augustan Whig-vs-Tory literary pairing — optimistic-empirical vs misanthropic-satirical.