"Satirical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chairs appealed to the romanticism that lies beneath Breffny's satirical exterior; and when Max called our attention to the fact that the mugs of beer came through apertures from caves beneath the street, ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... have been a good figure for a lampoon, had the edge of it consisted of the most satirical parts of the work; but as it is in the original, I take it to have been nothing else but the poesy of an axe which was consecrated to Minerva, and was thought to be the same that Epeus made use of in the building of the Trojan horse; which ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... to diffuse morality and sound literature throughout the nation, and to pocket a liberal salary in return for my services. I daresay I printed my own sonnets, my own tragedy, my own verses.... I daresay I wrote satirical articles.... I daresay I made a gaby of myself to the world. Pray, my good friend, hast thou never done likewise? If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man." Thackeray was quite aware of his early weaknesses, and in the maturity of life knew well that he ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... friends who indulge a little in phraseology which they have imbibed from their brothers, or male cousins, who have, perhaps for their amusement, encouraged them in its use. The answer, then, might be something like this; and without meaning to be severe or satirical upon our young lady friends, I may truly say that, though I never heard from one young lady all these fast terms, I have heard the most of them separately ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... commenced by Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, after contributing 4070 verses, and completed, in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, by Jean de Meun, who added some 18,000 verses. It is a satirical allegory, in which the vices of courts, the corruptions of the clergy, the disorders and inequalities of society in general, are unsparingly attacked, and the most revolutionary doctrines are advanced; and though, in making his translation, Chaucer softened or eliminated ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... same weight of courage, half the quantity of honesty, and a very little justice, but not a scrap of any other virtue.' The worst thing about it is duelling; but there are more suicides than duels, so that at any rate men do not hate others more than themselves. After a half-satirical apology for duelling, he concludes with one insurmountable objection; duelling is wholly repugnant to religion, adding with the muffled scepticism characteristic of the 18th century, 'how to reconcile them must be left to wiser ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... in you of your old satirical tendencies.' ('Relics!' thought Arkady—'if Bazarov had heard that?') 'Wait a little; ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... disputed. No Irish Unionist claims that Great Britain should govern Ireland on the ground that the British electorate, or even British statesmen, understand Irish questions. On the contrary, in Ireland, at any rate, their ignorance is a matter for satirical comment with all parties. What he complains of is, that the British electorate is beginning to carry its ignorance to the point of believing that the Irish electorate is competent to decide Irish questions, and in educating the British electorate he has hitherto devoted ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... come back to "The Fortune of the Rougons." It has, as I have said, its satirical and humorous side; but it also contains a strong element of pathos. The idyll of Miette and Silvere is a very touching one, and quite in accord with the conditions of life prevailing in Provence at the period M. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... if she might, in another instant, cap the suggestion by a satirical climax, and Ellen Bayliss rested her sewing hand on her knee and glanced thoughtfully about as if to ask, in her still, earnest way, what her own part could be in such an enterprise. But a step came hurrying down the stairs, the step of a heavy body lightly ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... You've got me in a corner, but knowing half the truth, you mustn't guess the whole. She is even more ignorant of my love for her than you were ten minutes ago! [MISS GODESBY smiles and makes a little satirical exclamation.] You don't believe that, but I'll make you. I'm going to tell you something I've never even told myself. I'm going to put you to a big test, because I've got to. Apparently, I can't help ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... women sat politely bored, expectant, trifling with their napkins, yawning, muttering nothings about the weather or their neighbours. The frozen commonplaceness of the scene was made for me still more oppressive by Signora dell' Acqua. She was evidently satirical, and could not be happy unless continually laughing at or with somebody. 'What a stick the woman will think me!' I kept saying to myself. 'How shall I ever invent jokes in this strange land? I cannot even flirt with her ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... John. I noticed, however, what I should call a palpebral spasm, affecting the eyelid and muscles of one side, which, if it were intended for the facial gesture called a wink, might lead me to suspect a disposition to be satirical on his part. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... letter was written for the New York Herald after the arrival, and was altogether unlike those that preceded it. Gaily satirical and personal—inclusively so—it might better have been left unwritten, for it would seem to have given needless offense to a number of goodly people, whose chief sin was the sedateness of years. However, it is all past now, and those who were old then, and perhaps queer and pious and stingy, do ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... humor, has so cultivated that faculty that it presents an abnormal development, and if petrification ever does overtake him, posterity may hope it will not operate upon his intellectual faculties. Dick, on the other hand, is gloomily satirical, and by the aid of that useful faculty utterly annihilates his opponents without saying anything. But last, Harry takes up the theme and treats it in a spirit becoming ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... which the beggars sometimes display in asking for alms is often humoristic and satirical. Many a woman on the cold side of thirty is wheedled out of a baiocco by being addressed as Signorina. Many a half-suppressed exclamation of admiration, or a prefix of Bella, softens the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... world, inexhaustible in its capacity and relish for abuse, full of rude laughter and drastic humour—prompt, for all its superstition, to make a jest of the priest, and, for all its chivalry, to catalogue the foibles of women—had the satirical animus in abundance, and satirical songs, visions, fables, fabliaux, ballads, epics, in legion, but no definite and recognised school of satire. It is sufficient to name, as examples of the extraordinary range of the mediaeval satiric genius, the farce of Pathelin, ...
— English Satires • Various
... that Duerer here refers to an edition of the satirical tale edited by Thomas Murner, and ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the habitual languor of that long illness. That satirical mumble is the only trouble he will take to lift up his testimony, except when a thing is most decidedly his duty, and then he does ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The answer came prompt and decisive: "Dickens," "Why?" "He loved the poor, he shows a greater belief in humanity than Thackeray." "How do you prove that?" "Well, take Thackeray's VANITY FAIR, it is clever and satirical, but there is only one good character, and he was a fool; but in Dickens you come across character after character that ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... left Bluebell's cheek, and she sat for some minutes in a relaxed, drooping attitude, oblivious of all around, till becoming sensible of Cecil's gaze rivetted on her. It was a cold satirical expression, at the same time inquiring. Bluebell was very unhappy; but this roused her, and, raising her head, she looked her enemy steadily in the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... well known that Beranger's song, from which we have extracted the preceding four verses, as translated by Anderson, was a friendly, though rather satirical remonstrance with Napoleon—of course we mean the Napoleon—touching his ambitious and bellicose policy. But it is not so well known, that there really was a kingdom of Yvetot, and that its several dynasties reigned peacefully for upwards of eleven centuries. Anderson, in a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... enough real concern in her voice to save the question from sounding satirical, but her mother's manner was still a little apologetic when ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... other hand, in spite of all my precautions, the same misfortune which overtook Erewhon has also come upon The Fair Haven. It has been suspected of a satirical purpose. The author of a pamphlet entitled Jesus versus ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... fatal habit, which could not fail, if persevered in, to destroy all power of steady application in the future. That neither the comic nor the pathetic element in the situation was lost upon Southey is evident from his half-sad, half-satirical, wholly winning reply. "Your plan," he writes, "is too good, too gigantic, quite beyond my powers. If you had my tolerable state of health and that love of steady and productive employment which is now grown into a necessary habit with me, if you were to execute and would execute it, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... the historical page; but a chapter of that gentleman's memoirs, as they are recorded in that exemplary recueil—the "Newgate Calendar;" nay, a canto of the great comic epic (involving many fables, and containing much exaggeration, but still having the seeds of truth) which the satirical poet of those days wrote in celebration of him—we mean Fielding's "History of Jonathan Wild the Great"—does seem to us to give a more curious picture of the manners of those times than any recognized history of them. At the close ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... especially strong in announcing the loss of reticules, usually the property of elderly maiden ladies. The unction with which he detailed the several contents, when fully confided to him, would have seemed satirical in another person, but on his part was pure conscientiousness. He would not let so much as a thimble, or a piece of wax, or a portable tooth, or any amiable vanity in the way of tonsorial device, escape him. I have heard Mr. Newman ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... draughts, and a small arquebus, in case he should be attacked by the twins. The final blow he received occurred on the 19th of September. He had gone downstairs to the great entrance-hall feeling sure that there, at any rate, he would be quite unmolested, and was amusing himself by making satirical remarks on the large Saroni photographs of the United States Minister and his wife, which had now taken the place of the Canterville family pictures. He was simply but neatly clad in a long shroud, spotted ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... turned his pen against the duke of Grafton, the earl of Bute, and the princess of Wales. He had just despatched one of his political diatribes to the Middlesex Journal, when he sat down on Easter Eve, I7th April 1770, and penned his "Last Will and Testament," a strange satirical compound of jest and earnest, in which he intimated his intention of putting an end to his life the following evening. Among his satirical bequests, such as his "humility" to the Rev. Mr Camplin, his "religion" to Dean Barton, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... them himself no less in his criticism of human nature than in his practical life, he admitted the involution of reason—that unintelligible instinct—in all the observations and maxims vouchsafed to an empiricist or to a man. He veiled his doctrine, however, in a somewhat unfair and satirical nomenclature, and he has paid the price of that indulgence in personal humour by incurring the immortal hatred of sentimentalists who are too much scandalised by his tone ever to understand ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... boxes, shelving, and an indescribable variety of loose matter; altogether an astonishing mass of tent furniture, considering that these canvas houses, some five feet by six in dimensions, accommodated—if so satirical a remark be allowed in sober history—four to six persons besides, according to luck and court favor. Next followed the order to strike tents. In a twinkling the white walls collapsed, and the sun glared ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... were, 1st. The Choregia, or duty of furnishing the chorus for the plays—tragic, comic, and satirical—of remunerating the leader of the singers and musicians—of maintaining the latter while trained—of supplying the dresses, the golden crowns and masks, and, indeed, the general decorations and equipments of the theatre. He on whom this burdensome honour fell was called Choregus; his name, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... adjective; to which the word lanx (in English a "charger" or "large platter") is understood: so that the Greek poem made according to the manners of a Satyr, and expressing his qualities, must properly be called satirical, and not satire. And thus far it is allowed that the Grecians had such poems, but that they were wholly different in species from that to which the Romans gave the ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... the lieutenant politely, and with a satirical laugh; "but you'd hardly believe it, my dear sir, when I tell you that dozens of skippers and passengers in boats have said the very same thing to me, and whenever that has been the case we have generally made a pretty good haul ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... Miss Garth, when Magdalen came her way next. "Well?" she went on, taking the girl's chin familiarly in her hand, with a half-satirical, half-fond attention which betrayed that the youngest daughter, with all her faults, was the governess's favorite—"Well? and what has the concert done for you? What form of suffering has dissipation inflicted on your ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... roused the ire of the Puritans. In Mr. Alfred Maskell's incomparable book on Ivories, he translates a satirical verse by Guy de Coquille, concerning these objectionable pastoral staves (which were often made of finely ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... ten years in their ages and nearly twenty "files" in rank, Blake being one of the senior and Lanier one of the junior lieutenants of the regiment. Blake was no pet of the post commander. Blake had a way of saying satirical things of seniors whom he did not fancy, and Button was one of these. Blake should have returned to his proper station the day after the dance, but, like everybody else, so far as heard from, he had been held by the storm, and ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... governor; that the senior auditor was to assume the government immediately; that he was to imprison me and lock me up in a fort. In confirmation of what they were saying throughout the city, they brought a friar from Cavite, named Fray Francisco Pinelo, whom, being bold, eloquent, and satirical in the pulpit (as is well known in this community), they caused to preach the second Sunday in Advent. He read a bull in the pulpit, which was said to be by Pius Fifth, and which was in Romance. Therein the pontiff orders that he who should prevent ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... eye caught this line in the correspondence, per "Dalziel," from Chicago, in the Times for Sept. 23:—"Great Britain has chosen a sight for her buildings at the World's Fair." If "taken" had been substituted for "chosen," the mistake might have borne a satirical meaning. No doubt Great Britain has not made any error as to the site she has selected, from any ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... of our other papers. The expiration of 'Bickerstaff's Lucubrations' was attended with much the same consequences as the death of Meliboeus's 'Ox' in Virgil: as the latter engendered swarms of bees, the former immediately produced whole swarms of little satirical scribblers. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... amongst the ewes. Another paints a shrine with nymphs around dancing. Another draws the drunken Bacchus, surrounded by wild women, with old Silenus, half falling from an ass, who would have fallen were he not held up by a satyr who carries a leathern bottle. Even the satirical poet paints the picture of the labyrinth. Now what do the lyric poets do, or the wits of Martial, or the tragic or comic ones? What do they do but paint reasonably? And what I say I do not invent, for each one of them himself confesses that he paints: they ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... centuries have built about the throne and its occupants. But his dearest hopes are frustrated by the forces of malice, and dull conservatism, and invincible stupidity; the burden proves too heavy for him, the fight too unequal, and he takes his own life in a moment of despair. The terrible satirical power of certain scenes in this play would be difficult to match were our choice to range through the whole literature of Revolt. Its production brought upon the author a storm of furious denunciation. He had outraged both throne and altar, and his sacrilegious ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Extravagantly satirical as he was at times, John had always an indefinable drollery about him that made him agreeable company to his friends, at least; and such an admiring friend he had constantly at hand in the person of Bert Haines. Both were Bohemians in natural tendency, and, though John was far in ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Pheres.]—Pheres is in tradition the "eponymous hero" of Pherae, i.e. the mythical person who is supposed to have given his name to the town. It is only in this play that he has any particular character. The scene gives the reader a shock, but is a brilliant piece of satirical comedy, with a good deal of pathos in it, too. The line (691) [Greek: chaireis horon phos, patera d' ou chairein dokeis]; ("Thou lovest the light, thinkest thou thy father loves it not?") seems to me one of ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... a curious wooden gallery or cloister, said to have been built as a shelter for parishioners from a distance, who would eat their nuncheon there. The church, which has distinct Saxon remains, once had for rector the satirical James Bramston, author of "The Art of Politics" and "The Man of Taste," two admirable poems in the manner of Pope. This is his unimpeachable ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... of it he was becoming well known. The articles, in the Speaker especially, were attracting attention and Greybeards at Play had a considerable success. This, the first of Gilbert's books to be published, is a curiosity. It is made up of three incredibly witty satirical poems—"The Oneness of the Philosopher with Nature," "The Dangers Attending Altruism on the High Seas" and "The Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in All Classes." The illustrations drawn by himself are as witty as the verses. By the beginning of 1901 his work was being sought for ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... choice of Jenny Coppock, of Coppock's Farm, for a wife!" exclaimed Mrs. Millar, still rebellious, even satirical and disdainful. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... novelist, Christo Boteff (1847-1876), lyric poet, whose ode on the death of his friend Haji Dimitr, an insurgent leader, is one of the best in the language, and Petko Slaveikoff (died 1895), whose poems, patriotic, satirical and erotic, moulded the modern poetical language and exercised a great influence over the people. Gavril Krstovitch, formerly governor-general of eastern Rumelia, and Marin Drinoff, a Slavist of high repute, have written historical works. Stamboloff, the statesman, was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... impeachment versifies his Epicurism to Memmius, and had the honour to be set forth the second time by Cicero, so great a father of the Commonwealth; although himself disputes against that opinion in his own writings. Nor was the satirical sharpness or naked plainness of Lucilius, or Catullus, or Flaccus, by any order prohibited. And for matters of state, the story of Titus Livius, though it extolled that part which Pompey held, was not therefore suppressed by Octavius Caesar of the other faction. ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... boasting of the protection which he had procured for Jean Jacques in Paris.[364] (5) Hume resorted to various small artifices for preventing Rousseau from making friends, for procuring opportunities of opening Rousseau's letters, and the like.[365] (6) A violent satirical letter against Rousseau appeared in the English newspapers, with allusions which could only have been supplied by Hume. (7) On the first night after their departure from Paris, Rousseau, who occupied the same room with Hume, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... method in that; she is a medal without a reverse or inscription, for indifference has both sides alike. Yet, while she does not seem to hate me, I will pursue her, and know her if it be possible, in spite of the opinion of my satirical ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... characterization, and no English writer, save Shakespeare, has drawn so many and so varied characters. It would be as absurd to interpret all of these as caricatures as to deny Dickens his great and varied powers of creation. Dickens exaggerated many of his comic and satirical characters, as was his right, for caricature and satire are very closely related, while exaggeration is the very essence of comedy. But there remains a host of characters marked by humour and pathos. Yet the pictorial presentation of Dickens's characters has ever tended toward the grotesque. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Paul Veronese would have worked in wood, had he taken to it. His vignettes, though too coarse in execution, and vulgar in types of form, to be good copies, show, nevertheless, intellectual power of the highest order; and there are pieces of sentiment in them, either pathetic or satirical, which have never since been equaled in illustrations of this simple kind; the bitter intensity of the feeling being just like that which characterizes some of the leading Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... medical friend's admiration of my satirical sketches led him into talking about them in public with too little reserve; or whether the servants at home found private means of watching me in my moments of Art-study, I know not: but that some one betrayed ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... up to Hortense. He was a young man, very smartly dressed, with a narrow and rather pale face, whose eyes held by turns the gentlest and the harshest, the most friendly and the most satirical expression. He bowed to her, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... under a cloud, come under the ferule, bring a hornet's nest about one's ears. take blame, stand corrected; have to answer for. Adj. disapproving &c v.; scandalized. disparaging, condemnatory, damnatory^, denunciatory, reproachful, abusive, objurgatory^, clamorous, vituperative; defamatory &c 934. satirical, sarcastic, sardonic, cynical, dry, sharp, cutting, biting, severe, withering, trenchant, hard upon; censorious, critical, captious, carping, hypercritical; fastidious &c 868; sparing of praise, grudging praise. disapproved, chid &c v.; in bad odor, blown upon, unapproved; unblest^; at a discount, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... went over walls, under rails, across brooks, along the furrows of more than one ploughed field, and in among the rustling corn, that turned its broad leaves to the sun, always in advance of her companion, who followed with exemplary submission, but also with a satirical smile, that spurred her on as no other demonstration could have done. Six o'clock sounded from the church behind the hill; still the wood seemed to recede as she pursued, still close behind her came the steady footfalls, with no sound of weariness in them, and still ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... fondness for merry authors, Nash can discern true poetry, and he adores it. If by chance, in the midst of an angry satirical disquisition, the word poetry comes to his pen, he is suddenly transformed, he smiles, he melts; nothing is left in him but human sympathies. "Nor is poetry an art where of there is no use in a man's ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... have shown above, were printed circa 1526, were not published at Lyons until 1538; and why Holbein's name was withheld in the Preface to the book of that year, are still unexplained. The generally accepted supposition is that motives of timidity, arising from the satirical and fearlessly unsparing character of the designs, may be answerable both for delay in the publication and mystification in the "Preface." And if intentional mystification be admitted, the doors of enquiry, ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... than Tieck, who was its professional representative. On the contrary, it has less of the romantic spirit, but more of the mediaeval fact. It is a literal, realistic handling of the witch superstition, as Balzac's "Succube," in the "Contes Drolatiques" is a satirical version of similar material. But Tieck's "Maerchen" are the shadows thrown by mediaeval beliefs across a sensitive, modern imagination, and are in result, therefore, romantic. Scott's dealing with subjects of the kind is midway between Meinhold and Tieck. He does not blink the ugly, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... said Violet. 'He always has his things sent to me. I am glad you observed the difference. I thought it so much kinder and less satirical than his writings used ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pace. He has therefore arranged an acting version which will occupy about an hour, with laughs. By eliminating the word "sentiment" alone, which is tediously harped upon, several minutes are saved. Some of Sir Peter and Lady Teazle's repetition of the word "Never" also goes. The satirical conversation in Act I. is much abbreviated as being out of date, and the whole piece is redressed in the present manner. Mr. ASCHE also is re-dressing it, or rather un-dressing it. In his opinion what the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... the impression of a thin, satirical face, its unusual pallor picked out by the black brows and hair, of a bitter-looking mouth that hardly troubled itself to smile in salutation, and, above all, of a pair of queer green eyes, which, as the heavy, opaque white lids above them lifted, ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... murdering villains, to thus slander an honest female who has only her vartue to protect her." Then raising her voice as though to attract the attention of some one within the house, she shouted, in satirical language, "It's little me husband cares about me, or he'd niver stand by and see me treated thus, and I niver making the least complaint in the world. It's mighty fine husbands there is in the world now, and it's little use they are ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... U.S. Senator) was at this time (1842) living at Springfield, holding the office of State Auditor. He is described as "a gallant, hot-headed bachelor, from Tyrone County, Ireland." He was something of a beau in society, and was the subject of some satirical articles which, in a spirit of fun, Miss Mary Todd (afterwards Mrs. Lincoln) had written and published in a local journal. Shields was furious, and, demanding the name of the writer, Lincoln sent him word that he would assume full responsibility in the matter. A challenge to a duel followed, which ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the 'chorus of frogs' in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a political-satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus—and "Swellfoot" was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... drove away, noted her skilful handling of the fiery Kentuckian and her straight seat in the flying cutter, and the smile which a day or two earlier might have been mildly satirical was ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... condemns, as well as humor which pardons. The one blames the unexpected and unconventional, the other sympathizes with it. Comedy is either biting or kindly. The one is moralistic and reformatory in its aim, the other is aesthetic and contemplative. Because of its failure in sympathy, satirical comedy is incomplete as art. It provides insight and pleasure in the object, but no union with it. It does not attain to beauty, which is free and reconciling. Kindly comedy or humor, on the other hand, is full beauty, combining sympathy with judgment, abandon ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... had been expecting the Commodore, and was waiting to pay him a dozen satirical compliments on the issue of the engagement. Triumph shone in his eyes. It went out like a candle-flame before a ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sunlight fell on the snuff-box in his left hand; his right thumb and fore-finger hung arrested, grasping the pinch. For fully half a minute nothing happened; hunters and hunted eyed each other and waited. Then carrying the snuff to his nose, and doffing his hat, with a satirical sweep of the hand and a low bow, he turned again and tripped off the ledge into the jaws of ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... invention, than the soft engaging qualifications of the frail fair, which fascinate the eye and lead the heart captive with delight: her conversational powers were admirable; but her temper was outrageous, with a natural inclination to the satirical:—to sum up her merits at once, she was what a connoisseur would have called a bold fine woman, rather than an engaging handsome one—more of the English Bellona than the Venus de Medici. Crony's account ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... him when he read these reviews. Over the cleverness of the satirical attack in the Weekly Herald he laughed heartily, though the laugh was against himself; and as to the critic who wrote in the Stroller it was apparent to all who knew 'Lynwood' that he had not read much ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... cigarettes, and a couple of Toby jugs and a beautifully coloured hunting scene framed and glazed, showing the most elegant and beautiful people taking Piper's Cherry Brandy, and cards such as the law requires about the dilution of spirits and the illegality of bringing children into bars, and satirical verses about swearing and asking for credit, and three very bright red-cheeked wax apples ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... unquestionably the most powerful political writer of the present day, but one of the best writers in the language. He speaks and thinks plain, broad, downright English. He might be said to have the clearness of Swift, the naturalness of Defoe, and the picturesque satirical description of Mandeville; if all such comparisons were not impertinent. A really great and original write sense, Sterne was not a wit, nor Shakespear a poet. It is easy to describe second-rate talents, because they fall into a class and enlist under a standard; but first-rate powers ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... friend. He would ask the Squire if he had such-and-such a book. The Squire would say that he had, and appeal to his catalogue in proof of it. Then would follow a search for the volume. If, as sometimes happened, no book corresponding to the entry could be found, the Bibliotaph would be satirical and remark:— ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... alarming punishment to the easy-going Lowlander; but to a Shetland peasant, being keepit off, as it is technically called, is a terrible and humiliating penalty. A crofter came to the manse to complain about his wife's unruly and satirical tongue. "But what can I do to her?" said the minister, "she's your wife, and you must assert your authority." "I've tried everything," said the man, "but she still continues to be a troubler in Israel." The minister professed his inability ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... "Satirical as ever, I see. You say Balbus was content with very modest fare. You seem to insinuate that when grandees are so moderate, much more ought a poor ex-consul like myself so to be. You don't know that I fished it all out of your visitor ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... a very retentive memory, which enabled him to quote correctly nearly everything of importance with which he had ever been familiar. His ability in this direction, coupled with a keen sense of the ridiculous and satirical, rendered him an opponent with whom few debaters were able to successfully contend. But it was as a companion, a friend and a poet that he was best known among the people of his neighborhood, to which his genial character and kind and ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... With which satirical reflection on his times and his order drifting through his mind, Strathmore's thoughts floated onward to a piece of statecraft then numbered among the delicate diplomacies and intricate embroglie of Europe, whose moves absorbed him as the finesses of a problem ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... cows, overturned bowls, broke dishes and played all kinds of antics and made all sorts of trouble if they were mischievous or unfriendly. Beside the great myths, like wild flowers in the shade of great trees, there sprang up among the people of almost all countries a host of poetic, satirical, humorous or homely stories of fairies, genii, trolls, giants, dwarfs, imps, and queer creatures of all kinds; so that to the children of two hundred years ago the woods, the fields, the solitary and quiet places everywhere, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... engraver of moral and satirical subjects. His two most famous series of paintings are "The Rake's Progress" and "Marriage a la Mode." Lamb in his "Essay on the Genius and Character of Hogarth" observes: "Other pictures we look at,—his prints we read." Hazlitt, sharing this view, includes an account of Hogarth in the seventh ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... commanded away all his soldiers, except sixteen hundred, whom he thought likely to be unserviceable to himself, being disorderly and mutinous, and whom he knew to be hostile to Lucullus; and to these acts he added satirical speeches, detracting openly from the glory of his actions, and giving out, that the battles of Lucullus had been but with the mere stage-shows and idle pictures of royal pomp, whereas the real war against a genuine army, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... with a satirical smile, to his companion, "there comes the young janitor in his dress suit. Just look at his coat-sleeves and the legs of his trousers. They are at least two inches too short. Any other boy would be ashamed to come to a ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... house. Frequently there was part-singing or choruses, and after the music was over the evening ended with a dance. We frequently saw Rossini some years later, when we resided at Florence. He was clever and amusing in conversation, but satirical. He was very bitter against the modern style of opera-singing, and considered the singers of the present day, with some exceptions, as wanting in study and finish. He objected to much of the modern music, as dwelling too ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... cipher of the joint authors stood entwined upon the title-page. These libels in their turn produced a second reaction; and, by stimulating Pope to effectual anger, eventually drew forth, for the everlasting admiration of posterity, the very greatest of Pope's works; a monument of satirical power the greatest which man has produced, not excepting the MacFleckno of ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... indeed—about as quick as they make 'em. He may be a trifle coarse at times, but that's the spirit of the age, me dear sir. Me friend Tuffleton, of the Blues, says that delicacy went out of fashion with hair powder and beauty patches. he's a demned satirical fellow is ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bleak mountain. The room was fitted up with the frugality demanded by philosophic indifference to luxury, and the abundance necessitated by a wide range of study. The walls were hung with a number of pictures, in whose subjects an observer might detect a remarkable similarity. A satirical pencil had been engaged in depicting some of the most striking instances of successful manly resistance to female tyranny, of manly contempt for feminine weakness, of manly endurance of woman-inflicted injury. The unfortunate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... was brief. As a result of reading a satirical poem at a public banquet, he was cashiered and banished to the town of Cullar in Old Castile. There he wrote his "Sancho Saldaa o el Castellano de Cullar," a historical novel in the manner of Walter Scott, describing the quarrels of Sancho el Bravo with his father Alfonso ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... Rowsley threw a daisy at a cockchafer and missed it. "You and I are sons of a parsonage. We shouldn't run off with a married lady because it would be against our principles." His thin brown features were twisted into a faint grimace. Rowsley, like Val, possessed a satirical sense of humour, and gave it freer play than Val did. "It's so difficult to shake off early prejudices. When Fowler and I were at the club the other day, we met a horrid little sweep who waxed confidential. I said I ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the narrative attentively to the last line (under which appeared Allan's signature), the doctor looked across the breakfast-table at Midwinter, and tapped his fingers on the manuscript with a satirical smile. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... was initiated for the purpose of assisting small tradesmen. But a scheme that in itself would have been excellent in a prosperous society, could only end in failure in such a community as peopled Ireland. Swift felt this and opposed the plan in his satirical tract, "The Swearer's Bank." The tract sufficed, for no more was heard of the National Bank after the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... and which the gorgeously dressed officials readily unbent to gather. Among the fair hands which rewarded this perfunctory apostrophe to the tender passion none was more lavish in offerings than those matrons and maids in the vicinity of the king. A satirical smile again marred Caillette's face, but he kept his reflections to himself, reverting to the business of ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... grasping a situation of which he had heard something, chiefly satirical. "Of course. And is your father—is Judge Kenton ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... first wilful, had its rise in the sixteenth century, in the furious attacks of a monk of Fontevrault, Gabriel de Puy-Herbault, who seems to have drawn his conclusions concerning the author from the book, and, more especially, in the regrettable satirical epitaph of Ronsard, piqued, it is said, that the Guises had given him only a little pavillon in the Forest of Meudon, whereas the presbytery was close to the chateau. From that time legend has fastened on Rabelais, has completely travestied him, till, bit by bit, it has made of him a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... mesmerism, and revengeful cruelty; tales of weird beauty; allegories of conscience; narratives of pseudo-science; stories of analytical reasoning; descriptions of beautiful landscapes; and what are usually termed "prose poems." He also wrote tales grotesque, humorous, and satirical, most of which are failures. The earlier tales are predominantly imaginative and emotional; most of the later ones are predominantly intellectual. None of the tales touches ordinary, healthy life; there is scarcely a suggestion of local color; ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... and novelties, great and small, are treated with ridicule at first by the mass of mankind, so it is not a matter of wonder that the crowds which flocked to the wharf to see the Clermont start on her first trip were somewhat satirical and jocose in their remarks. But when the steam was turned on, and they heard the first of that series of snorts that was destined ere long to shake the trembling air of land and sea, and saw the great, uncouth paddle-wheels revolve ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... Henriade, also by Voltaire, a half bombastic, half satirical account of Henry IV's wars to gain the crown of France. This poem also contains some very fine and justly famous passages, but is too long and too artificial, as a whole, to ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... robes of a Bishop, for which he looked much too young, there strolled up a keen-faced man with satirical eyes, whom Madame de Montausieur presented as 'Monseigneur le Coadjuteur.' This was the Archbishop of Corinth, Paul de Gondi, Coadjutor to his uncle, the Archbishop of Paris. I think he was the most amusing talker I ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical, provoking man could have won and retained the love of Xanthippe, especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to provide for the wants of the household. I do not wonder that she scolded him, or became very violent ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... arrangement to entrap the Greeks, who were thought to be meditating flight, the patriotic enthusiasm of the latter, the naval battle which followed, and the disastrous defeat of the Persians, the poem closing with the following satirical address to Xerxes: ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... satirical or insolent, as the case might demand, in three degrees, of which the snuff-box was the comparative, and the spy-glass the superlative. He had learned this on the stage; in annihilating Quin he had just used the snuff weapon, and now he drew his ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... citizens! Next came the reorganization of the judicial administration, by which a similar beneficent change was effected. In the old times the civil and criminal tribunals had been hotbeds of bribery and corruption to such an extent that a satirical author had once ventured to write a comedy with the significant title, "An Unheard-of Wonder; or, The Honest Clerk of Court!" Now they were thoroughly cleansed, and during some half a dozen years, when I traveled about the country in search of information, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Gil Blas, and the other works of Le Sage (or rather their Spanish originals); further, The Vicar of Wakefield, and, to some extent Sir Walter Scott's novels. Don Quixote may be regarded as a satirical exhibition of the error to which I ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... household word in Washington, and very soon were the subject of animated conversation in practically every corner of the nation. The Press cartoonists, by their friendly and satirical comments, helped a great deal in popularizing the campaign. In spite of the bitter editorial comment of most of the press, the humor of the situation ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... however of any one of these poems he must already have attained considerable note as a dramatic writer, since Robert Green, in a satirical piece printed in 1592, speaking of theatrical concerns, stigmatizes this "player" as "an absolute Joannes Factotum," and one who was "in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... better manner. Add to this, that many of our author's expressions are coarse, vulgar, and unpoetical; such as parrying, pushing by, spitting abhorrence, &c. The greatest part of Mr. Cowper's didactics is in the same strain. He attempts indeed sometimes to be lively, facetious, and satirical; but is seldom more successful in this, than in the serious and pathetic. In his poem on Conversation there are two or three faint attempts at humour; in one of them ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... and one is astonished at the scanty gleaning of battle-poetry, camp-songs, and rhymes that have been scattered in the wake of great campaigns, and many of the above-mentioned are more historical or mythological than descriptive of war. The quantity of political songs and ballads, serious and satirical, which were suggested by the great critical moments of modern history, is immense. Every country has, or might have, its own peculiar collections. In France the troubles of the League gave an impulse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... its author sometimes gives vent to a rather emphatic pessimism about this world; he has a keen sense for the manifold absurdities of existence. But the sense for absurdities is not without its delights, and Mr. Russell's satirical wit is more constant and better grounded than his despair. I should be inclined to say of his philosophy what he himself has said of that of Leibnitz, that it is at its best in those subjects which are most remote from ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... expressed her high disdain. This consisted of a hopeless endeavor to make a lame dog dance. The animal in question was no other than 'Becca Rudd's Dash, a piece of nomenclature which can only be described as the wildest and most satirical misnomer. Liza had not been too severe on Dash's physical infirmities when she described him as lame on one of his hind legs, for both those members were so effectually out of joint as to render locomotion of the simplest kind a difficulty ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine |
