Jonathan Swift — "When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric."
When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"The two great masters of the world are reason and passion."
"The greatest wits, and the greatest fools, are equally innocent of the world."
"I am not fond of giving advice, but when I do, I expect it to be taken."
"Argument is the worst of all instruments for the discovery of truth."
"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.