Jonathan Swift — "The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity…"
The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a torrent of words.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork."
"I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without salt."
"The commonest things are the most useful; which shows the wisdom of God, who has made them common."
"Books, the children of the brain."
"It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again."
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.