Jonathan Swift — "The stoical scheme of supplying our wants, by lopping off our desires, is like c…"
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants, by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"Gold defiles with frequent touch; There's nothing fouls the hand so much."
"Fine words! I wonder where you stole them."
"Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole."
"The three grand enemies of human happiness are public envy, civil discord, and religious faction."
"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.