Jonathan Swift — "He was a bold man that first ate an oyster."
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"The three grand enemies of human happiness are public envy, civil discord, and religious faction."
"'Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit. Will condescend to take a bit."
"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."
"If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would app…"
"The greatest wits, and the greatest fools, are equally innocent of the world."
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.