Jonathan Swift — "It is a miserable thing to be a man of sense in a country where the generality o…"
It is a miserable thing to be a man of sense in a country where the generality of the people are fools.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without salt."
"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."
"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."
"The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit."
"I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed."
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.