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
"When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric."
"I am not for imposing any thing on the clergy, but for leaving them to their own discretion."
"For we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that health is the most valuable of all possessions; and that it is to be acquired by eating, and by drinking, and by sleeping, and by e…"
"Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect."
"Promises and pie-crusts are made to be broken."
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.