“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.”
The Battle of the Books, preface (1704)
Quotes from book
The Battle of the Books
"The Battle of the Books" is the name of a short satire written by Jonathan Swift and published as part of the prolegomena to his A Tale of a Tub in 1704. It depicts a literal battle between books in the King's Library , as ideas and authors struggle for supremacy. Because of the satire, "The Battle of the Books" has become a term for the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. It is one of his earliest well-known works.
