Jonathan Swift — "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the…"
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."
"The virtue of a woman is often a greater torment to her husband than her vice."
"There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense."
"For what the world calls virtue, is but a compound of vices."
"Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping."
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.