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
"I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed."
"It is an old maxim, that a man is never happy till he dies."
"I never saw, hear, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country."
"The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it."
"When beasts could speak (the learned say They still can do so every day), It seems, they had religion then, As much as now we find in men."
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.