Jonathan Swift coined the famous phrase ‘sweetness and light’

An English idiom is known as "sweetness and brightness" can be used in everyday speech to express one's own happiness and consciousness, while native speakers can find this to be a bit over the top or to give a literal account of another person. Some people might use the term with a hint of irony, depending on their sense of humor.

For instance, the two had been at odds for a month, yet when they were among other people, everything was well. The expression was frequently used by renowned humorist P. G. Wodehouse, sometimes with a subtle gesture to its contradictory nature. However, "sweetness and brightness" originally had a unique meaning in literary and cultural criticism, i.e., "pleasing and instructional," which was thought to be the purpose and justification of poetry in classical thinking.

The phrase was first used by Jonathan Swift in his mock-heroic prose satire "The Battle of the Books" (1704), which was written as a prolegomenon to his A Tale of a Tub and was a defense of classical education, an interesting fact about Jonathan Swift. When English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold used it as the first section title of his 1869 book Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism—where "sweetness and light" stand for beauty and intelligence, the two essential elements of a superior culture—it became well-known during the Victorian era.