Jonathan Swift — "The only difference between a wise man and a fool is, that the wise man knows hi…"
The only difference between a wise man and a fool is, that the wise man knows himself to be a fool, and the fool knows himself to be wise.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature."
"Dogs have at least the advantage over men, that they discover their friends, and bark at their enemies."
"But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholl…"
"The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a torrent of words."
"I am convinced that if all who are of the same opinion were to meet, the place of meeting would not be large enough to contain them."
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.