Jonathan Swift — "Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets br…"
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"Although avarice is the most sordid of all vices, yet it is the least scandalous."
"We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are of the same kind."
"One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid."
"A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle."
"No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel."
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.