"Satire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... merged into Don Quixote as if he had no separate existence. He accomplished more for the improvement of Spanish literature with his well-timed satire than all the laws or sermons could effect. His remarkable mind seems to have escaped the influence of the times, unless we make an exception of his drama "Numancia," which, while it excites the imagination, fills us with horror at its details, and fails to touch our hearts, but is full of ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of an original Patrician cantata on the daughter of the famous Appius, set for the Tibiae sinistrae. In a manuscript marginal note, it is said to have been composed by Tigellius the famous musician, whose death and character Horace takes occasion to entertain and instruct us with, in the second satire of his first Book. You see, therefore, that Lady J——'s taste for Italian music, cannot be called in question; and indeed, I think her liking Appie Mac-nab, is a very strong proof of it, as she certainly could not know its ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... such a bouncing Juno of a girl. Large, athletic women with hearty voices are difficult for one to deal with. I am a match for my aunt, whom I can obfuscate with words. But Dora doesn't understand my satire; she gives a great, healthy laugh, and says, "Oh, rot!" which ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Lutheran freedom about abuses in the Church, and had extolled the life of simple Christianity. This was a book to appeal at once to the Brethren. Another of his works which may have had its effect in attracting them was the Julius Exclusus. This exquisitely witty satire dealt freely with the Pope and his office, the Pope whom the Brethren accounted no more than a simple priest; and though its licence was too bold for Erasmus ever to admit its authorship—indeed, as we have seen, he consistently denied it—, it was attributed to him on all ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... imposingly, calling up his bitterest powers of satire to do justice to the occasion: 'So that's all, is it?' he said; 'ah, and quite enough, too, I should think; so it was the bells on your cap that were jingling ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... replaced it. He was robbed, utterly and cruelly. He could no longer believe in a God, or how could such things be? Manhood was denied him. The last torture was not denied him—namely, that he saw the full satire of his position, saw that it was his own love that had destroyed them both. Out of his complete ruin he arose joyless, hopeless, but great in a tenderness so vast and selfless that it almost took the place of ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... Greenwood asks "what was the poetic output?" in Burns's case. {100a} It was what we know, and THAT was what suited his age and his circumstances. It was lyric, idyll, song, and satire; it was not drama, for to the Stage he had no access, he who passed but one winter in Edinburgh, where the theatre was not the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... "buffoonery," it is odd that he palliates the "strong propensity" of Knox "to indulge his vein of humour," when describing, with ghoul-like mirth, the festive circumstances of the murder and burial of Cardinal Beaton. The odious part of his satire, Scott says, is confined to "the fierce and unreasonable set of extra-Presbyterians," Wodrow's High Flyers. "We have no delight to dwell either upon the atrocities or absurdities of a people whose ignorance and fanaticism were rendered frantic by persecution." ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... press, made it an engine far more mighty—an influence far more potent—than ever it had been before. There may have been some loss in style, though many of them wrote gracefully, and many showed on occasion a wonderful command of wit, sarcasm and satire. But because the papers were always truthful the writers always knew what they wanted, and so their work had the ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... a flame, bright only in its own innocence, that kindles nothing but a generous thought: which though it may warm the blood, the fire at highest is but Platonic; and the commotion, within these limits, excludes danger. For the satire, it was of purpose borrowed to feather some slower hours; and what you see here is but the interest: it is one of his whose Roman pen had as much true passion for the infirmities of that state, as we should ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... a satire in prurient lust vppon his gotishe feet, his mouth and his nose ioyning together like a gote with a beard growinge on either sides of his chin, with two peakes and shorte in the middeste like Goates hayre, and in like manner about his flankes and ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... proper function Fitzjames was roused to indignation. The 'little Nell' sentimentalism and the long gallery of melodramatic deathbeds disgusted him, while the assaults upon the governing classes generally stirred his wrath. The satire upon individuals may be all very well in its place, but a man, he said, has no business to set up as the 'regenerator of society' because he is its most 'distinguished buffoon.' He was not picking his words, and 'buffoon' is certainly an injudicious phrase; but the sentiment ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that Dr. Darwin attributed almost all the diseases of the upper classes to the too great use of fermented liquors. "This opinion he supported in his writings with the force of his eloquence and reason; and still more in conversation by all those powers of wit, satire, and peculiar humour, which never appeared fully to the public in his works, but which gained him strong ascendancy in private society.... When he heard that my father was bilious, he suspected that this must be the consequence of his having, since his residence in Ireland, and in compliance ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... of which might be made the starting-point of the fast either by the choice of the votary or by the cast of the die. A third method is instanced in the "Popish Kingdom" of Barnabe Googe (1570), actually an English metrical version of a truculent German satire by one Thomas Kirchmeyer, who was scholar enough to Latinize, or Graecize, his homely patronymic into the more imposing correlative "Naogeorgus." The passage is ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... quotes lines 426-437 of the Satire. Then follows a long review of 'Childe Harold', in which the critic condemns Harold, the hero, as "an uncouth incumbrance of this flighty Lord;" the want of "plot ... action and fable, interest, order, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... only a fortune, but also more eagerness, nay, more of the inherited instinct, to preserve it, than poor girls do. If anyone doubts the truth of this, and thinks that it is just the opposite, he will find authority for his view in Ariosto's first Satire; but, on the other hand, Dr. Johnson agrees with my opinion. A woman of fortune, he says, being used to the handling of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... established by Mr Constable. The combating parties had referred to the Shepherd, who was led to accord his support to Mr Blackwood. He conceived the idea of the "Chaldee Manuscript," as a means of ridiculing the oppositionists. Of this famous satire, the first thirty-seven verses of chapter first, with several other sentences throughout, were his own composition, the remaining portion being the joint fabrication of his friends Wilson and Lockhart.[39] This singular production produced ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... he was not entitled to a seat among high and honorable men. When Mr. Droomgoole's resolution was read to the House for its consideration, Mr. Adams yielded to it one of those sarcastic sneers which he was in the habit of giving, when provoked to satire; and said—"Mr. Speaker, if I understand the resolution of the honorable gentleman from Virginia, it charges me with being guilty of giving color to an idea!'" The whole House broke forth in one common irrepressible peal ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... thy griefs and cares; In all of thee sure thy Esopus shares. As thou at all mankind the flag unfurls, Who on my fair one Satire's vengeance hurls— Who calls thee, pert, affected, vain coquette, A wit in folly, and a fool in wit! Who says that fool alone is not thy due, And quotes thy ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and coarse analogies, so his passion for irony was occasionally too intense. Hence, there are occasions where his pungency is embittered into acrimony, strength degenerates into vulgarism, and the vehemence of satire is infuriated ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... and interested woman. Now he had wit enough to perceive that her interest in him never dipped to the level of ordinary social relationships. He felt a sense of remoteness, and did not even blush, though knowing certainly that satire, although it was not in her mind, was sneering at him from ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... errors are of no consequence when you are in the vein of satire," said Vernon. "Be satisfied with knowing a nation in the person of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... melodious information that the Gadfly had pecked badly twice at Tollygunge that morning, and smiled with pathetic philosophy. "Always let 'em use their noses," said Fillimore, and there seemed to be satire in it. Fillimore certainly had a flair, and when Beryl Stace presently demanded of him, "What's the dead bird going to be on Saturday, Filly?" he put it generously at her service. Among the friends of Mr. Stanhope and ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... in what we may call the literature of New York, of a growing sophistication that sneers at sentiment and the sentimental alike. "Magazines of cleverness" have this for their keynote, although as yet the satire is not always well aimed. There are abundant signs that the generation just coming forward will rejoice in such a pose. It is observable now in the colleges, where the young literati turn up their noses at everything American,—magazines, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... listeners, and among them the Candidate, had laughed loudly at Emelie's descriptions; but the Judge had not once moved his lips, and replied, when she had done, with an earnestness that confounded even her satire. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... satire is now and then visited upon the 'Troubadour Songs,' which have become so afflictingly common of late years. Some of these we have already given; and we find them on the increase in England. We have before us, from the London press of TILT AND BOGUE, 'Sir WHYSTLETON MUGGES, a Metrical Romaunte, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... keep the satire and cynicism for all the world, if you will, but keep the inner side of your nature for me," said she, and in the sweet, pleading ring in her voice there was no lack of feeling now. "You have had about ten times more than your share of all the dark and bitter side of life. You will not ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... positives, on the other hand, declared the gifted young author to have found a manner of treatment of social life entirely new. Other critics still insisted it was social ridicule: but if this were so, the satire was too ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... one, and so sayes many more." This absurd notion of vicarious atonement, spun purely from Morton's imagination, appealed to Samuel Butler as worthy of further elaboration. Morton's "New English Canaan" appeared in 1632. About thirty years later the second part of the famous English satire "Hudibras" appeared, embodying Morton's idea in altered but recognizable form, in what was the most popular English book of the day. This satire, appearing when the reaction against Puritanism was at its height, was accepted and ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... is a moral, and at the same time an exceedingly clever, satire. It is illustrative of the life, manners, and predilections and pursuits of a class of society left hereafter to enjoy the manifold attractions of fashionable watering-places, without the scourge that for so many years held its immoral and degrading ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... was soon appropriated by the children, who have ever since continued to regard it as one of the most delightful of their story books. They cannot comprehend the occasion which provoked the book nor appreciate the satire which underlies the narrative, but they delight in the wonderful adventures, and wander full of open-eyed astonishment into the new worlds through which the vivid and logically accurate imagination of the author so personally conducts them. And there is a meaning and a moral in the stories of the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... youth he composed verses. In 1835, he published, in numbers, a volume of poems and songs, with the title, "Original Scottish Rhymes." His style is flowing and graceful, and many of his pieces are marked by keen satire and happy humour. The songs inserted in the present work are favourable specimens of his manner. He died on the 22d January 1837, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was going on a crowd of girls and women collected on the edge of the cliff and kept shouting down a confused babble of satire ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... condemned to be burnt by the executioner Morisot's Ahitophili Veritatis Lacrymae (July 4th, 1625), but though this work was a violent satire upon the Jesuits, Morisot survived his book thirty-six years, the Jesuits revenging themselves with nothing worse than an epitaph, containing a bad pun, to the effect that their enemy, after a life not spent in wisdom, preferred to die as a ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... the shells had burst. Our little Philadelphia medico had gone, a week before, to join the American forces. His successor was broad-built, choleric, but kind of heart, and came from Ohio. I suspected the new doctor of a sense of humour, as well as of an understanding of current smart-set satire. "They kept me at your base two months," he told me, "but I wanted to see the war. I also heard an English doctor say he would be glad of a move, as the base was full of ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... time-table on that road is simply a satire!" said Peter. Yet it is the best managed road in the country, and this particular train was ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... of these selections, like kissing, went by favor. As to the arrangement of them, every compiler will tell you that Classification is Vexation. And why not? When many a poem may be both Parody and Satire,—both Romance and Cynicism. Wherefore, the compiler sorted with loving care the selections here presented striving to do justice to the verses themselves, and taking a chance on the tolerant good nature ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... against his own father, and the House of Commons fined him L10,000 for turning Roman Catholic. The money had to be found, and the manor was sold to Sir Robert Clayton, Whig, Lord Mayor, plutocrat, and, according to Dryden, extortioner. But Dryden's political satire was not always fair. Ishban, in Absalom ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... suppose the Senator from Pennsylvania introduced this amendment rather as a satire upon the bill itself, or if he had any serious intention it was only a mischievous one to injure the bill; but it will not probably have that effect, for I suppose nobody will vote for it except the Senator himself, who can hardly avoid it, and I, who shall vote for it because it accords ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... undoubtedly its proper and blameless charm. There is something pretty and arch in the notion of the Duchess's falling in love with the impregnably faithful and innocent Fritz; and the extravagance of the whole, with the satire upon the typical little German court, is delightful. But "La Belle Helene" is a wittier play than "La Grande Duchesse," and it is the vividest expression of the spirit of opera bouffe. It is full of such lively mockeries ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... though it was a hit against my countrymen; for I have always found it far better to laugh off anything said against one's self, than to put on the dignities and to look grand. Laughter and good humour are like polished shields, which make the shafts of satire glance off on either side; but sulkiness and dignity are sure to bring them thick ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... Greek and Hebrew, sacred to scholars as the works on which all authority for the Scriptures rests. Tyndale's New Testament, the first ever printed on English ground, dated London, 1536, is here, and that rare copy of the King James version known as the "Wicked Bible." In this copy the printer, as a satire on the age, omitted the word "not" from the seventh commandment, and for this piece of waggery was heavily fined, the money going, it is said, to establish the first Greek press ever erected at Oxford. Among its "first editions" the library has that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... in a tone of cold satire. But her look fell with infinite tenderness and pity upon the drooping little figure opposite. "Yet there's nothing of the snob about Jim," ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... principle of which is audacity. He knows very well that the weak spot in the armor of nearly all politicians of the old school is their assumption of superiority, a sort of mask of benignant political venerability. They dread satire. They shrink from ridicule. A well-directed critical outburst freezes them. Such has been the Harvey method of approach. Having reduced his subjects to a state of terror, he flatters them, cajoles them, and finally makes terms with them; but he always remains a more or less ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... to those who saw it, and led to many conjectures as to its meaning. The three friends agreed, in sport, that they would each one day commit to writing his peculiar interpretation of its design. Wieland promised a satire; Von Kleist threw off a comedy; and the author of the following tale ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... farces, known as Atellan Fabula, were introduced into Rome after the contact with the Campanians, from one of whose towns, Atella, they received their name. Though they were at a later time divided into acts, they seem to have been at first simply improvised raillery and satire without dramatic connection. The Atellan plays were later than the imitations of Etruscan ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... portion of a clever satire on man and society, than a sincere discussion of political evils and remedies; and not intended, we trust, for Mr Carlyle's own sake, to express his real belief in the true causes of the evils of society. If we could suppose that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Bessarabia, has left us wonderful pictures of the wandering tribes and their savage life. Many Russians consider the Evgenie Oniegin of Pushkin to be his best effort. It is a powerfully written love-story, full of sketches of modern life, interspersed with satire and pathos. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... most interesting of these freemen labourers of whom we know is that Ofellus whom Horace (Satire II, 2) tells us was working with cheerful philosophy as a hired hand upon his own ancestral property from which he had been turned out in the confiscations following the battle of Philippi. This might have been the fate of ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... the play of that name, disheartened by his calamities, responds to all the encouraging words of his lords and followers with a bitter satire on the wretchedness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the exploits of the men, their employments, their intended movements, the news of the coast, and the character of their employers. It is usual, in these extemporary strains, for the Kroomen attached to a man-of-war to taunt, with good-humored satire, their friends who are more laboriously employed in merchant vessels, and not so well ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... several kinds of drama." Pope saw the play and wrote about it to Congreve, March 19th, 1715: "The farce of 'The What D'ye Call It' has occasioned many different speculations in the town, some looking upon it as a mere jest upon the tragic poets, others as a satire upon the late war. Mr. Cromwell, hearing none of the words, and seeing the action to be tragical, was much astonished to find the audience laugh, and says the Prince and Princess [of Wales] must doubtless ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... committed to them, than the representatives of science and literature in the city, which has sometimes been called the Northern Athens, remonstrated, with their gravest arguments and their most brilliant satire, against the direction and shape which the reform was taking. Nothing would content them, but that the University should be set to rights on the basis of the philosophy of Utility; a philosophy, as ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Blotton maintained was nothing more than BIL STUMPS HIS MARK. Local tradition suggests that Dickens intended the episode for a skit upon archaeological theories about the dolmens known as Kit's Coty House, and that a Strood antiquary keenly resented the satire. However that may be, Kit's Coty House is not at Cobham, but some miles away, near Aylesford. In Cobham church there is perhaps the finest and most complete series of monumental brasses in this country, most of them commemorating the Lords ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... Lady Carey said with suave and deadly satire, "what improvement is possible? You have all that you could desire. It is much less fortunate persons, such as myself, to whom Utopia must seem ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the lower ones. Part of the brooding expression of these great houses comes, even when they have not fallen into decay, from their look of having outlived their original use. Their extraordinary largeness and massiveness are a satire on their present fate. They weren't built with such a thickness of wall and depth of embrasure, such a solidity of staircase and superfluity of stone, simply to afford an economical winter residence to English and American ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... flight of magnificent rockets shot up into the sky, and burst in a hundred bright and variously-coloured stars, which paled for a few seconds the lights of nature. But they vanished in a moment, and the clear stars shed abroad their undying lustre,—seeming, in their quiet unfading beauty, a gentle satire on the short-lived and garish ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... brow that might have worn a crown with dignity. As an orator he had no equal in Congress or, for that matter, out of it. He was a burning mountain of eloquence, a veritable human Vesuvius from whom, at will, flowed rhetoric or invective, satire or sentiment, as lava might flow from a living volcano. His mind spawned sonorous phrases as a roe shad spawns eggs. He was in all outward regards a shape of a man to catch the eye, with a voice to cajole the senses as with music of bugles, and an oratory to inspire. Moreover, the destiny ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... as perfect a lack of perspective, as the most superior son could desire for a topic of affectionate irony. Her preoccupation with petty things of no importance whatever was worthy of the finest traditions of fond motherhood. However, Cyril's careless satire had no effect on her, save that once she got angry, thereby startling him; he quite correctly and sagely laid this unprecedented outburst to the account of her wrought nerves, and forgave it. Happily for the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... in his armorial bearings, similarly employed. The extreme slimness of his figure was accentuated by a coat which he made as famous as Lord Petersham did the garment called after his name; and Byron added to the fame of the beau by mentioning him in the satire "English Bards and ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... likeness had disappeared, and familiarising us with distant objects, which had been lost to us in the haze and mists of time. For this, not only a new mode of travelling, but a new road was to be opened; the secret history, the fugitive pamphlet, the obsolete satire, the ancient comedy—such were the many curious volumes whose dust was to be cleared away, to cast a new radiance on the fading colours of a moveable picture of manners; the wittiest ever exhibited ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... holiness turned out only to be a FIT, of not much longer duration than a morning headache, and that the "Christian Hero" remains not as a model to which its author's conduct was ever conformed, but as a severe, self-written satire on his whole career. And so with Denham. For some time he forsook the gambling-table, and applied his attention partly to law, and partly to poetry, translating, in 1636, the "Second Book of the Aeneid;" but when his father ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... admiration, or, on the other hand, with dislike, but in either case without sympathy. They do not contribute much to the special character of the autobiography, except in humour. The interviews with Sir Richard Phillips, in particular, give an example of Borrow's obviously personal satire, poisonous and yet without rancour. He is a type. He is the charlatan, holy and massive and not perfectly self-convincing. When Borrow's money was running low and he asked the publisher to pay for some contributions to ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... we want!' He struck the table; and finally with a leap he was at the goal which Miss Anna—sitting before him, arms folded, her strong old face touched with satire—had long foreseen. 'By George, I'd show them!—if ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... speech at Saint Stephen's—he useth his strength at the beginning, only, and the end. He gallopeth at the commencement; in the middle he lingers; at the close, again, he rouses the House, which has fallen asleep; he cracketh the whip of his satire; he shouts the shout of his patriotism; and, urging his eloquence to its roughest canter, awakens the sleepers, and inspires the weary, until men say, What a wondrous orator! What a capital coach! We will ride henceforth in it, and in ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... our literature 'Nothing to Wear' has the interest and value of satire in which our society life came to its full consciousness for the first time. To be sure there had been the studies of New York called 'The Potiphar Papers,' in which Curtis had painted the foolish and unlovely face of our fashionable life, but with always an ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... forfeiture of all ecclesiastical promotion." Parker regarded it as his duty to remonstrate with her in person against so popish a prohibition; on which, after declaring to him that she repented of having made any married bishops, she went on to treat the institution of matrimony itself with a satire and contempt ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... devoured, Channing's works. I found a splendid copy of Voltaire in the Holkham library, and hunted through the endless volumes, till I came to the 'Dialogues Philosophiques.' The world is too busy, fortunately, to disturb its peace with such profane satire, such withering sarcasm as flashes through an 'entretien' like that between 'Frere Rigolet' and 'L'Empereur de la Chine.' Every French man of letters knows it by heart; but it would wound our English susceptibilities were I to cite it here. Then, too, the impious paraphrase of the Athanasian ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Roman Church; and the Anglicans, as a panther, are represented as persecuting the faithful. Numerous other sects—Calvinists, Anabaptists, Quakers—were represented by the wolf, boar, hare, and other animals, which gave the poet an excellent chance for exercising his satire. Dryden's enemies made the accusation, often since repeated, of hypocrisy in thus changing his church; but that he was sincere in the matter can now hardly be questioned, for he knew how to "suffer for the faith" ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... hauled in, as many as 400 of the large cod sometimes result from the catch. There are various other appliances used for fish capture in different parts of the world, such as the purse-seine net, the trammel net, the otter-trawl net, &c.; and, as I have already pointed out, the most scathing satire on our fisheries is to find all these necessary means for catching fish regarded as curiosities. When they are no longer considered so, it will be ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... but during the hot weather he succumbed beneath the weight of his own flesh. Hamlin County knew him as "Big Tom D'Willerby," and, indeed, rather prided itself upon him as a creditable possession. It noted any increase in his weight, repeated his jokes, and bore itself patiently under his satire. His indolence it regarded with leniency not entirely untinged ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... supposed to make a scientific excursion into a place at some time occupied by men. It is the most pretentious feature of the book, and in its way about as good as any. Like Gulliver's Travels, its object was satire, but its result ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... is undoubtedly connected with Pasquillo (a satire), or with Pasquino, a Roman cobbler of the fifteenth century, whose shop stood near the Braschi Palace, near the Piazza Navona. He lashed the follies of his day, particularly the vices of the clergy, with caustic satire, scathing wit, and bitter stinging irony. ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the sophisms of revenge and fear, Bloodier than is revenge... Then send the priests to every hearth and home To preach the burning wrath which is to come, In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw 15 The frozen tears... If Satire's scourge could wake the slumbering hounds Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds, The leprous scars of callous Infamy; If it could make the present not to be, 20 Or charm the dark past never to have been, Or turn regret to hope; who that has seen What Southey is and was, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... What was it called? I know, A Man of Influence. You should have seen Drake's face. Lord, he couldn't make head or tail of it. How should he? I asked him what he thought of it, and imagine what he answered! You can't, though. It's the funniest thing I ever heard. He said it was a very clever satire. Satire! Good Lord, I almost rolled off the seat. It is ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... buffoon. The old jester was under certain privileges: you could not resent the jokes of a fool, just as you cannot resent the sermons of a curate. Now, what the present Government of England wants is neither serious praise nor serious denunciation; what it wants is satire. What it wants, in other words, is realism given with gusto. When King Louis the Eleventh unexpectedly visited his enemy, the Duke of Burgundy, with a small escort, the Duke's jester said he would give the King his fool's cap, for he was the fool now. And when the Duke replied with dignity, ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... satirizes the proceedings in the Athenian law-courts, by showing how the great citizen-juries, numbering sometimes five or six hundred, were befooled by the demagogues. But Aristophanes was something more than a master of mere mirth-provoking satire and ridicule: many of the choruses of his pieces are inexpressibly tender ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... testimony of other men's admiration as well as by his own senses. Now, when the distance between them was in some respects diminishing, she seemed even further away from him. In her presence he felt himself a plain, unpolished man, and knew he would never shine in the light play of wit and satire which characterized the society for which she was fitted. He decided, also, that she had probably remained unmarried because she could find no one who came up to her standard, and feared that he himself would come very far beneath it. It appeared doubtful that he could ever acquire the ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... ambition has smouldered into blackness, we ought to make the eternal star of religion our guide. To take spiritual treasures away without replacing them by better ones is robbery. The cynical authors who deal chiefly in ridicule and satire, or in what they call solid facts, the alternate levity and bitterness of whose writings tend to destroy all ingenuous faith and glowing affection, all magnanimous sympathies and hopes, seem to me to be engaged in as miserable ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... used slang as one kind of bait and he used to say: "It beats all how it draws." I saw this verified at Ottawa, Kansas, Chautauqua. Giving a Saturday evening lecture he baited the platform with slang, satire and humor. Sunday afternoon an hour before time for his lecture the people were hurrying to the auditorium. When presented to the great audience he said: "Record! Record! Record!" I remember the sermon as one of the sweetest and most powerful ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... when he called for them he called for his fiddlers three and their very fine fiddles. According to Robert of Gloucester, the real King Cole, a popular monarch of Britain in the third century, was the father of St. Helena, the zealous friend of church music. The nursery satire of doubtful antiquity is our sole evidence of his devotion to ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... ignorant. All these simple things, so well known and customary, astonished him at first, and once—in a brief moment of forgetting that he was done with writing—he thought that if he had known them and written of them, how like a satire the plainest relation of them must have seemed! Strangest of all to him was the vehement and sincere patriotism. On every side he heard it—it was a permeation; the newest school-child caught it, though just from Hungary and learning to stammer a few words of the local ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... assumed the FASCIS of satire, without deep conviction that its rods were imperatively called into action: but most gladly shall I reverse them, after the manner of the ancient LICTORS, over the obsequies of an administration, which must be now in its death-pangs. May succeeding cabinets be WARNED, ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... One other point calls for comment. Wesley's scheme for Christian machinery in the epic, as described in the "Essay on Heroic Poetry," is remarkably similar to Dryden's. Dryden's had appeared in the essay on satire prefaced to his translation of Juvenal, published late in October, 1692; Wesley's scheme ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... a delicate and subtle satire that plays gracefully with familiar facts; and instead of a compromising epigram an Italian has a glance or a smile of unutterable meaning. They think—and they are right—that to be expected to understand ideas when they only seek ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... the last phrase, as being low. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is intended to be low: it is satire. The expression is debased, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... fishing village. The author shows us diamonds in the rough, and with a most happy talent, suddenly reveals to us the gleaming beauties beneath their rude exterior. "Rod's Salvation" is an inspiring story, the pathos of which is accentuated by the delicate satire, exquisite humor, and touches of kindly human nature which lead one up to the ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... extensive professional connexions brought him acquainted; and he did not fail to observe and note down many curious circumstances and traits of character, in themselves highly amusing, but, for obvious reasons, unfit subjects for publication. Not one taint of satire or ill-nature, however, ever sullied the wit which flowed spontaneously from a mind sportive sometimes even to exuberance." His artistic critiques will be found in the following works: The Bee: or, a Critique on the Exhibition of Paintings at Somerset House, 1788, 8vo. Variety: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... origin of this nickname is traced to a satire written in the reign of Queen Anne, by Dr. Arbuthnot, to throw ridicule on the politics ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... that good wine retains its flavor in spite of rude bottles and cracked cups. The success of M. Rostand’s brilliant drama, Cyrano de Bergerac, in its English dress proves once more the truth of this adage. The fun and pathos, the wit and satire, of the original pierce through the halting, feeble translation like light through a ragged curtain, dazzling the spectators ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... from their easy conquests before they received this proclamation which spoke of mercy in terms that expressed it so poorly. Events which were a cruel satire on Garibaldi's words, and which he had not foreseen, caused his bands to fall into the power of the Pontifical troops, so that it was they who sued for pardon and obtained it. It can even be said that on ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... Elizabethan minor epics, but in so doing, she has hastened the recognition that the minor epic, or "epyllion" as it has often been called in modern times,[1] is a distinctive literary genre as deserving of study as the sonnet, the pastoral, or the verse satire. ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... away. The paper was the trench paper of the Bois-le-Pretre, named the "Mouchoir" (the handkerchief) from a famous position thus called in the Bois. The jokes in it were like the jokes in a local minstrel show, puns on local names, jests about the Boches, and good-humored satire. The spirit of the "Mouchoir" was whole-heartedly amateur. Thus the issue which followed a heavy snowfall contained this ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... especially if she gave nice suppers and had daughters to be admired. Nor was it an uncommon thing, even at that day, for a pretentious woman who had just set up in society, and taken to the business of reception-giving, to find herself made the target of a little innocent satire by the nice young gentlemen she had ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... foretold, the boys' sport was quite sufficiently punished by being made into earnest. Master Sniggius was far from merciful as to length, and his satire was so extremely remote that Queen Elizabeth herself could hardly have found out that Zenobia's fine moral lecture on the vanities of too aspiring ruffs was founded on the box on the ear which rewarded ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a satire "On the Abuse of Satire." The verses were polished and pointed; a happy echo of that style of Mr. Pope which still lingered in the spell-bound ear of the public. Peculiarly they offered a contrast to the irregular effusions of the popular assailant whom ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... some of their names have been preserved and good deeds chronicled by Dibdin, of bibliographical renown; so that a chapter is not necessary here to extol them. We may judge how fashionable the avocation became by the keen satire of Alexander Barkley, in his translation of Brandt's Navis Stultifera or Shyp of Folys,[471] who gives a curious illustration of a bibliomaniac; and thus speaks of those collectors who amassed their book treasures without possessing much esteem ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... all this I have not hesitated to reprint even certain 'epitaphs' which, once of the living, are now of the dead, as all the others must eventually be. The objection inheres in all forms of applied satire—my understanding of whose laws and liberties is at least derived from reverent study of the masters. That in respect of matters herein mentioned I have but followed their practice can be shown by abundant instance ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... said to have translated from Menander, there now remain only six. Excepting a few inconsiderable fragments, the writings of all the other authors have perished. The early period of Roman literature was distinguished for the introduction of satire by Lucilius, an author celebrated for writing with remarkable ease, but whose compositions, in the opinion of Horace, though Quintilian thinks otherwise, were debased with a mixture of feculency. Whatever may have been their merit, they also have perished, with the works of a number ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the father of R. Judah, must be the "Greek Locust" against whom Ibn Ezra directed his satire when visiting Salerno some twenty years before R. Benjamin. See Graetz, ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... how did he regard his young guest? Well, Jonathan, great as he was, and greater as he was destined to be, did not possess the gift of prophecy, and could not of course foresee the scathing satire of "American Notes" and "Martin Chuzzlewit." But still, amid all his enthusiasm, I think there must have been a feeling of uneasiness and disappointment. Part, as there is no doubt, of the fervour with which he greeted Dickens, was due to his regarding Dickens as the representative ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... was completely amazed at the vigor and fluency of Douglas' speech. Such applause arose that Wyatt was visibly embarrassed as he stood up for his rejoinder. He saw that Douglas had carried the day. He made a feeble attempt at reply. He tried satire; but it fell on unreceptive ears. He dropped denunciation. He dared not attempt that. He took up logical analysis. It left the audience cold. He pecked timidly at the doctrine of state sovereignty. Then voices began to question him. He shifted to Jackson. But the audience would not listen. After ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... I ever heard of that gave me any pleasure, and that one never came off. A few years ago a Kentuckian wrote a political satire on an Irishman in Illinois—wrote it as a widow. The Irishman wished to fight. The widow offered to marry the Irishman, if such a sacrifice would be accepted as satisfactory damages. The Irishman sent a challenge, and the Kentuckian chose cavalry broadswords ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... eloquent, dissected the philosophy of mirth in the same style and with the same effect that the boy in the story dissected his grandmamma's bellows to see how the wind was raised. I agree with Spout that wit and humor are glorious; that satire, pricking the balloons of conceit, vain glory, and hypocrisy, is invaluable; that a good laugh can come only from a warm heart; that the man in motley is often wiser than the judge in ermine or the priest in lawn. These qualities are ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... it would not have been French. Of course, French insurrections, like French despotisms, have always been tempered by epigrams; of course, the people went out to the conflicts in ribbons and feathers; of course, over every battle there pelted down a shower of satire, like the rain at the Eglinton tournament. More than two hundred pamphlets rattled on the head of Conde alone, and the collection of Mazarinades, preserved by the Cardinal himself, fills sixty-nine volumes in quarto. From every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... forms, its most ordinary feelings. But he did much more. Literature was going astray in its tone, while growing in importance; the Commedia checked it. The Provencal and Italian poetry was, with the exception of some pieces of political satire, almost exclusively amatory, in the most fantastic and affected fashion. In expression, it had not even the merit of being natural; in purpose, it was trifling; in the spirit which it encouraged, it was something ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... ridicule he had provoked; for notwithstanding the general mildness of his character, his solitary habits had engendered a testy impatience of contradiction, and a keener sense of pain arising from the satire of others, than was natural to his unassuming disposition. As for his parishioners, they enjoyed, as may reasonably be supposed, many a hearty laugh at their pastor's expense, and were sometimes, as Mrs. Dods hinted, more astonished than edified ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Parliament he possessed boundless influence. His employments towards the close of 1642 have been described by Denham in some lines which, though intended to be sarcastic, convey in truth the highest eulogy. Hampden is described in this satire as perpetually passing and repassing between the military station at Windsor and the House of Commons at Westminster, as overawing the general, and as giving law to that Parliament which knew no other law. It was at this ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ceases for a moment to tell the serious story of the Pilgrimage, at the same time, it sometimes becomes so merry as almost to pass over into absolute comedy. "There is one passage," says Cheever, "which for exquisite humour, quiet satire, and naturalness in the development of character is scarcely surpassed in the language. It is the account of the courtship between Mr. Brisk and Mercy which took place ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... such another jury! The Judgment-day will be a picnic to 't. Their satire was more dreadful than their fury, And worst of all was just a kind of brute Disgust, and ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... if they sympathized with the prejudices, they inspired and crowned the virtues, of their countrymen. The indissoluble union of generosity and valor was the darling theme of their song; and when they pointed their keenest satire against a despicable race, they affirmed, in the bitterness of reproach, that the men knew not how to give, nor the women to deny. [42] The same hospitality, which was practised by Abraham, and celebrated by Homer, is still renewed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... observed a number of quiet-eyed maidens who seemed only to remind him afresh that the magic of beauty had gone out of the world with Madame de Cintre: to say nothing of other damsels, whose eyes were not quiet, and who struck him still more as a satire on possible consolation. He had been walking for some time, when, directly in front of him, borne back by the summer breeze, he heard a few words uttered in that bright Parisian idiom from which his ears had begun to alienate themselves. The ...
— The American • Henry James
... on the stage as in everyday life. Horace painted him in his famous passage commencing Ibam forte via Sacra, and the French satirist, Regnier, has depicted him in his eighth satire. ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... admirably played off by Gothard. The wits of the town declared that he had white-washed the affair and splashed his own cause, and had made the accused as white as the plaster itself. France is the domain of satire, which reigns supreme in our land; Frenchmen jest on a scaffold, at the Beresina, at the barricades, and some will doubtless appear with a quirk upon their lips at the grand assizes ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... pleasure of conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who had all their wit and nature, heightened with humour more exquisite and delightful than any other man ever possessed.' And again in the same Preface, Steele dwelt upon 'that smiling mirth, that delicate satire and genteel raillery, which appeared in Mr. Addison when he was free from that remarkable bashfulness which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit; and his abilities were covered only by modesty, which doubles the beauties which are seen, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... was a great cosmic artist of infinite satire, making of humanity little stereopticon slides which he slipped in front of his calcium and flashed upon the clouds for a screen. When the war was done the stereopticon was smashed. The slides remain. What shall we do ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Gogol was above all else the artist. He was not a radical, nor even a liberal. He was strictly conservative. While hating the bureaucracy, yet he never found fault with the system itself or with the autocracy. Like most born artists, he was strongly individualistic in temperament, and his satire and ridicule were aimed not at causes, but at effects. Let but the individuals act morally, and the system, which Gogol never questioned, would work beautifully. This conception caused Gogol to concentrate his best efforts upon delineation ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... him; but he within His tent retired, received them not, nor went. For well he knew the purport of their suit Was this—that he should fight beside the Ford His former fellow-pupil and his friend. Then Mave,[35] the queen, her powerful druids sent, Armed not alone with satire's scorpion stings, But with the magic power even on the face, By their malevolent taunts and biting sneers, To raise three blistering blots[36] that typified Disgrace, dishonour, and a coward's shame, Which with their mortal venom him would kill, Or on the hour, or ere nine days had sped, If he ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... eloquence had promoted to the rank of senator and praefect of Constantinople. According to the vicissitudes of courage or servitude, of favor or disgrace, Procopius [12] successively composed the history, the panegyric, and the satire of his own times. The eight books of the Persian, Vandalic, and Gothic wars, [13] which are continued in the five books of Agathias, deserve our esteem as a laborious and successful imitation of the Attic, or at least of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... that a man's character and fate are determined by the stars under which he is born. And the nature of these stars is deduced from their names, so that the bear should have been found in the horoscope of Dr. Johnson. When Giordano Bruno wrote his satire against religion, the famous 'Spaccio della bestia trionfante,' he proposed to banish not only the gods but the beasts from heaven. He would call the stars, not the Bear, or the Swan, or the Pleiads, but Truth, Mercy, Justice, and so forth, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... respectfully about both. But, in 1746 (in "Advice"), he had assailed the "proud lord, who smiles a gracious lie," and "the varnished ruffians of the State." Because Tobias's play was unacted, people who tried to aid him were liars and ruffians, and a great deal worse, for in his satire, as in his first novel, Smollett charges men of high rank with the worst of unnamable crimes. Pollio and Lord Strutwell, whoever they may have been, were probably recognisable then, and were undeniably libelled, though they did not appeal to a jury. It is improbable ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... up in popularity. Though in a few passages it is not parlor reading, "Don Quixote" is one of the cleanest of all the world's great books. It is not merely technically clean, but clean-minded. It has the form of a satire on chivalry, but its meaning goes much deeper. It is really a satire on a more persistent weakness of the Spanish character, visionary unrealism. We have this quality held up to ridicule in the learned man and the ignorant man, for Sancho Panza is as much of an unrealist as his ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... Mr. Ayrton's satire," said Ella. "It never misses the point in the harness. The barb of the dart is, I believe, Mr. Ayrton's, the feather at the other ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... if I had not the double sight of the angekok," replied the other, with a touch of sarcasm, for Eskimos, although by no means addicted to quarrelling, are very fond of satire. They are also prone to go straight to the point in conversation, and although fond of similes and figurative language, they seldom ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... early days expressed itself in what were called pipes—a ditty either taught by repetition or circulated on scraps of paper: the offences of official men were thus hitched into rhyme. These pipes were a substitute for the newspaper, and the fear of satire checked the haughtiness ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... it is is my first entire composition of any length (except the Satire, and be damned to it), for The Giaour is but a string of passages, and Childe Harold is, and I rather think always will be, unconcluded" (Letter to Murray, November 29, 1813). It (the Bride) "was published ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... censui jucundius. I could not abide marriage, but as a rambler, erraticus ac volaticus amator (to use his own words) per multiplices amores discurrebam, I took a snatch where I could get it; nay more, I railed at marriage downright, and in a public auditory, when I did interpret that sixth Satire of Juvenal, out of Plutarch and Seneca, I did heap up all the dicteries I could against women; but now recant with Stesichorus, palinodiam cano, nec poenitet censeri in ordine maritorum, I approve of marriage, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... wounded many ardent Republicans, but not until the appointment and retention of Thomas Murphy did criticism scorn the veil of hint and innuendo. This act created a corps of journalistic critics whose unflagging satire and unswerving severity entertained the President's opponents and amazed his friends. They spoke for the popular side at the moment of a great crisis. Almost daily during the eighteen months of Murphy's administration the press of the whole country, under the lead ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... say of the Napoleon of Mr. Turner? called (with frightful satire) "The Exile and the Rock Limpet." He stands in the midst of a scarlet tornado looking at least forty feet high. "Ah!" says the mysterious poet from whom Mr. Turner ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... commercialism, bellowed out between glasses of strong liquor. Now comes Mayakin, speaking softly and without satire: ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... bookseller and numerous followers have stated that Munchausen owed its first origin to Bruce's Travels, and was written for the purpose of burlesquing that unfairly treated work. Pierer boldly stated that it was a successful anonymous satire upon the English government of the day, while Meusel with equal temerity affirmed in his "Lexikon" that the book was a translation of the "well-known Munchausen lies" executed from a (non-existent) German original by Rudolph Erich Raspe. A writer in the Gentleman's ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... ride nicely," said Dayton. "Now I suppose we may call ourselves quits?" and he glanced quizzically at the boy who had clearly missed the amiable satire of the suggestion. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... most renowned for singing over their grievances. Of that country it has been remarked with some truth, that its whole history may be traced in its songs. When Law, by the utter failure of his best-laid plans, rendered himself obnoxious, satire of course seized hold upon him, and, while caricatures of his person appeared in all the shops, the streets resounded with songs, in which neither he nor the Regent was spared. Many of these songs were far from decent; and one of them in particular counselled the application of all his notes to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... anvils, and he determined to be one of the hammers. He began his career by ridiculing a poetical country, Greece, whose guest he had been, and whose sovereign and ministers had received him with confidence,—repaying three years of hospitality by a satire of three hundred pages. "Greece and the Greeks" was translated into several languages. This edifying publication, which put the laughers on his side, was followed by a different sort of work, which came near producing on this budding reputation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... her—he made an irreconcilable enemy of her friend, the Duchess of Somerset, by his lampoon entitled "The Windsor Prophecy." But Swift seldom allowed prudence to restrain his wit and humour, and admits of himself that he "had too much satire in his vein"; and that "a genius in the reverend gown must ever keep its ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... we know not. We trace him, in 1576, by some verses prefixed to Gascoigne's satire, the 'Steele Glass,' solid, stately, epigrammatic, 'by Walter Rawley of the Middle Temple.' The style is his; spelling of names matters nought in days in which a man would spell his own name three ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... petulant and foiled visitor a specimen of my Spanish vocabulary, which would not have rested pleasantly in the memory of either party. But as he warmed I cooled. His rage, in fact, was a fragment of my practical satire, and I took special delight in beholding the contortions ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... cause of Judaism—prepared to vindicate the Jews at all times from the aspersions of interested and prejudiced writers, enabling all of us to understand the wants of our community—capable by the force of its reasoning or the keenness of its satire, of improving the manners, tastes, habits, and pursuits of all—placing us before the eyes of our Christian fellow-countrymen in our own just characters, to correct the false impressions they may have received—with a power such as this pressing upon the general consideration, a large and ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... till the day when Rabelais gibbeted dialectics by his merciless satire, as Cervantes demolished chivalry ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... whom no slight can chill nor, even insult, cause to abate the least of his intrusive familiarity—a familiarity which he covets, too, only for the sake of disputation and satire. To me, however, he is never other than a source of amusement. He is a variety of the species I love occasionally ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... summa folks," Clementina explained, innocent of satire. "They have got a Union Chapel the'a, now, and Mr. Gregory has been preaching all summa." There seemed nothing more that Miss Milray could prompt her to say, but it was not quite with surprise that she heard Clementina continue, as if it were part of the explanation, and followed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... almost two years after "Une Vie," that is to say, about 1885. Discussed and criticised as it has been, it is in reality a satire, an indignant outburst against the corruption of society which in the story enables an ex-soldier, devoid of conscience, honor, even of the commonest regard for others, to gain wealth and rank. The purport of the story ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... books must be dismissed with a few words in order that our remaining space may be given to the four or five that are of the greatest power and significance. "The Editor," the first of the modern plays, offers a fierce satire upon modern journalism, its dishonesty, its corrupt and malicious power, its personal and partisan prejudice. The character of the editor in this play was unmistakeably drawn, in its leading characteristics, from ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... amusingly illustrated, M.E., p. 390. A translation into Japanese of Goethe's Reynard the Fox is among the popular works of the day. "Strange to say, however, the Japanese lose much of the exquisite humor of this satire in their sympathy with the woes of the maltreated wolf."—The Japan Mail. This sympathy with animals grows directly out of the doctrine of metempsychosis. The relationship between man and ape is founded upon the pantheistic identity of being. "We mention sin," ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... fertile in literary resource or so catholic in their choice of subject that the reader is never sure, when he picks up their latest masterpiece, whether he is to have a comedy of manners, a proletarian tragedy, a tale of Court intrigue or a satire on the follies of the age. To the steady-going devotee of fiction—the reader on the Clapham omnibus—this versatility is a source of annoyance rather than of attraction, and I accordingly take pleasure in stating that by those who like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... help. Avoid especially that class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is full of admiration and awe; it may contain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and it always leads you to reverence or love something with your whole heart. It is not always easy to distinguish the satire of the venomous race of books from the satire of the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... revered Oehlenschlaeger. A satirical poem, "The Masquerade Ball of Denmark," inspired by the frivolous indifference with which many people had reacted to the English bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, showed his power of burning scorn and biting satire. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... be wrong; and, in fact, would only be confirming the real author's contention that "Sure, of all blockheads, Scholars are the worst." For, whether connected with Congreve or not, the words are correctly given; and they occur in the Rev. James Bramston's satire, The Man of Taste, 1733, running in ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... Collier. Then, what are we to say to the subsequent lines, attributed to Prior, which advert to the cudgelling Dryden received in Rose Street for his attack upon Rochester. Prior calls his own production A Satire on the Modern Translators, where he thus speaks of Dryden under his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... represented by an occasional statue brought from England. Architecture in its higher form is an unknown quantity. Painting is beginning to struggle towards the light, chiefly in the form of water-colour drawings. Political satire finds expression in cartoons, for the most part of that crude sort which depicts public men as horrific ogres and malformed monsters of appalling disproportions. Music, reading, and flower gardening are the three chief ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... now happy for the first time of his life. He had it in his power to ruin a person of virtue and merit. Filled with this fiendlike joy, he found means to convey to the king the satire written by the hand of Zadig, who, together with the lady and his two friends, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... better to communicate with me. She likes to talk of the flowers—gardening is a passion with her, too—and all the while, in face of the honesty of those big eyes of hers and of her gentle old mother's confidence, I am living a lie! Oh, the satire of it! And I have not been used to lying. That is my only virtue; at any rate, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Englishman in the Pall Mall Gazette who pays me the vast compliment of gravely rebuking some imaginary ass who has set me up in the neighborhood of Rabelais; 3. A remark of the Tribune's about the Montreal dinner, touched with an almost invisible satire; 4. A remark of the Tribune's about refusal of Canadian copyright, not complimentary, but not necessarily malicious—and of course adverse criticism which is not malicious is a thing which none ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... things are wild and free. There is something in a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human voice,—take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance,—which by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Translations from Homer, Virgil, Horace, Boccace, and Chaucer. Instances of that public abuse are triumphantly inserted by Warburton in his Edition of Pope's works. See Appendix to the Dunciad. It is re-published there, to justify some of the personal severities of Pope's celebrated Satire. ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... shrill with her despair of expressing the satire she would have put into it—"because, she said he was a ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... as twelfth-century as the law, and he meant as satire the claim that he had been first to explain the legal meaning of Sac and Soc, although any German professor would have scorned it as a shameless and presumptuous bid for immortality; but the whole point of view had vanished in 1900. Not he, but Sir Henry Maine and Rudolph Sohm, were the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... and far more inhuman than mere foolishness. Thus those who in the third phase of which I speak have not attained the wisdom which I here recognize will often sink into a passion of avarice, accumulating wealth which they cannot conceivably enjoy; a stupidity so manifest that every age of satire has found it the most facile of commonplaces. Or, again, those who fail to find wisdom in that last phase will constantly pretend an unreal world, making plans for a future that cannot be there. So did a man eleven ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... first displayed his transcendent powers, and 'gave the world assurance of the MAN,' was his London, a Poem, in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal: which came out in May this year, and burst forth with a splendour, the rays of which will for ever encircle his name. Boileau had imitated the same satire with great success, applying it to Paris; but an attentive ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... once for all that it was she who first gave vogue to the greeting, "Doodledo," an abbreviated form of "How d'you do," though others have been given the credit for that sparkling pleasantry. In the art of "setting down" she is unapproachable, combining gentle courtesy with fine satire and mordant epigram, as on the occasion when a certain pushing and impossible outside person claimed her acquaintance in public with a loud "How are you?" With her own look and smile she turned and gave him his coup ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... possibilities for humorous treatment, and no one has appreciated the fact more keenly than the authors of "Wisdom While you Wait." In this their latest work the prospectus of the Napolio Syndicate forms a bowstring whence fly shafts of satire that hit the mark ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... classes. Grandier had been her confessor, and she attended his church, and as she was lively and clever he enjoyed talking to her, so that at length an intimacy sprang up between them. It so happened at a time when he and the other ministers were in momentary disgrace, that a satire full of biting wit and raillery appeared, directed especially against the cardinal, and this satire had been attributed to Hammon, who was known to share, as was natural, her mistress's hatred of Richelieu. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... most serious subjects with the gayety of a harlequin, plucking jests from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings—that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always interested himself, therefore interesting others, handling thoughts, questions, subjects, as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the air with perfect ease, dressing old words ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... here follows might have had a purely serious intention in Chaucer's time, when books were rare, and moralities not such commonplaces as they are now; yet it is difficult to believe that the poet did not intend something of a covert satire upon at least the sermoniser's own pretensions, especially as the latter had declared himself against text-spinning. The Host, it is to be observed, had already charged him with forgetting his own faults, while preaching against those of others. The refashioner ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley |
