Jonathan Swift — "The commonest things are the most useful; which shows the wisdom of God, who has…"
The commonest things are the most useful; which shows the wisdom of God, who has made them common.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it."
"As for yourself, whom I have the honour to know, you are a person of distinction, and would have been an ornament to any court in Europe."
"I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth."
"I am not fond of giving advice, but when I do, I expect it to be taken."
"Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion."
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.