I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Ecclesiastes 9:11

In anguish we uplift A new unhallowed song: The race is to the swift, The battle to the strong. See Bible101:85.

-Davidson,John
  'War Song', stanza1.

Swift was the race, but short the time to run.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.837.

All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins
  'Pied Beauty'.

Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language: it isthe condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it. On that definition Swift ismore Irishthan Goldsmith or Sheridan, although by the usual tests they are Irish and he is pure English.

-Cruise
  Reviewing The Oxford Book of Irish Verse in the New Statesman,17  Jan (written under the pseudonym Donat O'Donnell).