Jonathan Swift — "The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity…"
The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a torrent of words.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"Although avarice is the most sordid of all vices, yet it is the least scandalous."
"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."
"Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired."
"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."
"But the greatest part of the world are such as would be glad to have their consciences eased, and to live in a state of nature."
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.