Jonathan Swift — "The greatest inventions were at first but the rudiments of experiments."
The greatest inventions were at first but the rudiments of experiments.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"The difference between a madman and a sane man is that the madman is in a minority."
"She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork."
"Gold defiles with frequent touch; There's nothing fouls the hand so much."
"The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a torrent of words."
"The more years increase, the more does my hatred of human nature increase."
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.