Jonathan Swift — "The commonest things are the most useful."
The commonest things are the most useful.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric."
"The greatest wits, and the greatest fools, are equally innocent of the world."
"Eloquence, as well as the other fine arts, must be cultivated with care."
"The only difference between a wise man and a fool is, that the wise man knows himself to be a fool, and the fool knows himself to be wise."
"I have always been a great admirer of the proverb, 'Necessity is the mother of invention'."
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.