Jonathan Swift — "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the…"
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"The want of proper food in this kingdom is a topic so trite, that few people care to talk of it, for fear of being thought to have nothing new to say."
"It is a maxim that a man who has made his fortune, may do what he pleases."
"Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping."
"The reason why so few marriages are happy, is, because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages."
"What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly: that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage."
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.