In Book One of Gulliver's travels (1726), a satire by Jonathan Swift, the narrator, Lemeul Gulliver, a surgeon on a British merchant vessel, is shipwrekced on the island of Lilliput. There he discovers that all the inhabitants are only 6 inches tall and everything else in in proportion to their diminuitive size. He soon observes that the Lilliputians' frenetic parliamentary and religious squabbles, their wars over silly differences---as, for example, whether an egg should be broken at the little end or big end---as well as their sense of self-importance, are all ridiculous in the light of their puny size. By analogy, so do our own institutions, attitudes and wars seem absurd.
Thus "Lilliputian" refers to any small,insignificant, preposterously posturing person or endeavor.
In turn, a "Gulliver" is a voyager to strange lands who returns home with a changed insight into his own country and people. His observations have made him a pessimist and a misanthrope.
~Facts on File Dictionary of Cultural and Historical Allusions.
