Jonathan Swift — "When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric."
When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
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More from Jonathan Swift
"The Bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking."
"Although avarice is the most sordid of all vices, yet it is the least scandalous."
"I have been for some years past, working upon a great work, which I intend to publish, and it is a complete refutation of all that hath ever been written upon the subject of government."
"What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly: that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage."
"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it."
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.