"Satire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... filial heart of my cousin by a fierce lampoon or stylites against her father, had Latin even figured amongst her accomplishments? Then it occurred to me that the verses might be shown to the father. But was there not something treacherous in gaining a man's approbation under a mask to a satire upon himself? Or would he have always understood me? For one person a year after took the sacrae mensae (by which I had meant the sanctities of hospitality) to mean the sacramental table. And on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... to the Ladies," beginning, "Lovely creatures"—an exordium which any woman of spirit would resent, the perfidy and disrepect of his intentions being obvious in those words alone; and he continues in the tone of flippancy which was to be expected. His arguments are weak in the extreme, and his satire is pointless. The only hit is his scheme for a female university, with Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Afra Behn in the chair of literature. His summary of woman's character and occupations was given earlier, with more brevity and wit, and no less ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... an autumn afternoon when nature seems in most reflective mood. For there was nothing impetuous or ardent in the composition of this good-humoured philosopher; and while he railed so well at the petty sins and vanities of the England in which he dwelt, the satire had naught of venom, malice, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Washington an utterly discomfited and disgraced man, having gone out to win popular support, and having earned only popular disgust. The humorists, pictorial as well as literary, pounced upon the "swinging around the circle" as a fruitful subject for caricature or satire, turning serious wrath into a bitter laugh. Andrew Johnson became the victim not only ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... Charity! Charity was the object and purpose of his heroic programme. Yet, in his poetry he always exhibited his tender-hearted gaiety. Even when he weeps, you see the ray of sunlight in his tears. Though simple as a child in ordinary life, he displayed in his writings the pathos and satire of the ancient Troubadours, with no small part of the shrewdness and wit attributed to ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... times. But Elmer was inclined to laugh at this assumption of modernity. "Steven," he said, on one occasion, "marks time and thinks he is keeping step. And every now and then he runs a little to catch up." The point of Elmer's satire lay in the fact that Steven was usually to be seen either walking very slowly, head down, lost in abstraction; or—when aroused to a sense of present necessity—going with long-strides as if intent on catching up with the times without further ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it. But, if it should happen otherwise, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... sound instinct for her art, disfigured though her later writings are by what Madame de Stael called her triste utilite. Her first story is her most artistic production. Castle Rackrent is simply a pleasant satire upon the illiterate and improvident gentry who have always been too common in her country. In this book she holds no brief; she never stops to preach; her moral is implied, not expressed. A historian might, it is true, go to Castle Rackrent for information about the conditions ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... for nearly eighteen hours. It would have been more to their credit had they left out the allusion which has drawn from Sir George a very appropriate retort. Your friend, James Cuthbert, was very warm and eloquent upon the occasion, and the demagogue party seemed sensible of the severity of his satire, when he compared the factious cabal to AEsop's fable of the ass kicking at the dying lion. Having vented their spleen, they will, I believe, prove a little more tractable: the militia bill has a prospect of being materially amended, and they will, I think, allow a proportion ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... had served her by a present of twenty or thirty thousand serfs. On the death of Lanskoi, it is recorded of her that "she gave herself up to the most poignant grief, and remained three months without going out of her palace of Czarsko Selo," thus perpetrating a very curious practical satire upon the holiest of human affections. Her grenadier lover Potemkin, according to the character given of him by the Count Segur, was little better than a gigantic and savage buffoon—licentious and superstitious, bold ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... make men wise and just;... 10 And not 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Lottie more plainly that she was beautiful, than Hemstead, and yet she disliked his compliments wofully. Her face fairly grew pale under his words. Had he learned of her plot? Had he read her thoughts, and been informed of her past life? Did quiet satire and denunciation lurk under this seeming frankness? She was for the moment perplexed and troubled. Worse still, he compelled her to see these things in a new light, and her conscience echoed ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... retaliation; forgetting that such a plea wilfully abjures the grandest justification of a satirist, viz., the deliberate assumption of the character as something corresponding to the prophet's mission amongst the Hebrews. It is no longer the facit indignatio versum. Pope's satire, where even it was most effective, was personal and vindictive, and upon that argument alone could not he philosophic. Foremost in the order of his fulminations stood, and yet stands, the bloody castigation by which, according to his own pretence, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... black cloud, you sometimes see on sultry summer days, moving sluggishly across the purely azure sky; so this remark of P—— overshadowed my mind with a misgiving feeling; and Horace's Ninth Satire, seizing my memory with prophetic tenacity, made me ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... replies: "Common-sense warrants all you say, but yet you well know that the opinion of the world is so contrary to it, that were I to marry a whore, though my own, I should be ashamed of ever showing my face again." It cannot be said that Fielding's satire is even yet out of date. Thus in Prussia, according to Adele Schreiber ("Heirathsbeschraenkungen," Die Neue Generation, Feb., 1909), it seems to be still practically impossible for a military officer to marry the mother of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... suppose it is intended for satire; but don't think anything more of it now, my dear. It is seven o'clock.' And Mrs. Swancourt rang ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Morals in Schools, or to the sowr Pulpit-Orators." Those who, by "nipping Strokes of a Side-wind Satyr, have endeavour'd to tickle Men out of their Follies," have been welcomed and caressed by the very people who were most abused. Since self-love waves the application, satire, unless bluntly direct, can ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... overhearing it demonstrated, in the pauses of a concert, that I was utterly incompetent to have written anything of the kind. I had read too much not to know the utter worthlessness of contemporary reputation, especially as regards satire, but I knew also that by giving a certain amount of influence it also had its worth, if that influence were used on the right side. I had learned, too, that the first requisite of good writing is to have an earnest and definite purpose, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... me better than I did you," said Miss Burton, smilingly, and ignoring an implied satire which Ida had not intended. "I did not give you ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... he was at his best. His manner was clear and engaging; he moved his audience to tears and smiles. There was satire and tenderness and the marvellous insight that made him absolutely personify the writers he touched ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... appreciation of nature; for knowledge of what is most subtile in human thought and feeling; for a genial humor that makes even satire amiable; and for poetry by turns witty, tender, graceful, and imaginative, these "table talks" may fairly challenge comparison in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... expression which was not dictated by the most perfect frankness was so great, that he could not endure the flattery and unmeaning civility of courtiers; and he never hesitated to mark his displeasure by bitter satire, regardless of the presence of those against whom it was directed, even if the Empress herself made one of the company. This caused him to be feared and disliked by many at court. His acquirements were considerable. He spoke eight languages—French, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... tedious, its story uninteresting, has nevertheless "doubted whether there will ever be any similar poem which gives so true a conception of the capacity and the dignity of the mind by which it was produced" (Bagehot's Literary Studies). Some who have praised it as an allegory see in it a satire on the evils both of the Church and of the State, while others regard it as alluding to the vices of the Court alone. Some have found its lyrical parts the best, while others, charmed with its "divine philosophy," have commended those deep conceits which place it alongside of the Faerie Queen, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... is sure to light upon pearls and golden sands, and scatter them about with a profusion so reckless that we feel convinced the supply is not to be exhausted. Scientist and poet, analyst and creator, full of keen satire, genial humor, and tender pathos, who may compete with him in varied gifts, or rival the charm of intellectual grace which he breathes at will into ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... attention. We could linger longer over this illustration, but must pass on—honest Burchell has been dismissed, villany has full sway. We must leave poor Olivia to her fate, and turn to the family picture "drawn by a limner;" capital—"limner" well suiting the intended satire—some say a good-natured, sly cut at Sir Joshua. We should certainly have had Mrs Primrose as Venus, and the two little ones as Cupids, and the Vicar presenting to her his books on the Whistonian controversy, and the squire as Alexander. Whoever wishes to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... of which the Celt is capable when his abysses are in revolt, Michael was silent for some seconds, and then stepped back with an ironical bow. "Not literally true, of course," he said; "only really true. An allegory, shall we say? a social satire." ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... be difficult to find anything more dainty, fanciful and humorous than these tales of magic, fairies, dwarfs and Giants. There is a vein of satire in them too which adult readers will ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with this foreign school. They were farmers, even in the more remote country districts, who had read the latest Scandinavian literature in the original, and who wrote stories containing radical social satire. Gumundur Frijnsson, for instance, had begun his career in this way. In many of these authors, however, we find rather a sort of native realism, where there is not necessarily a question of the influence of any particular literary tendency. Their ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... appreciate Louis's extraordinary ability, had idolised him throughout in spite of his constant coldness and the satire with which he treated all her higher tastes and aspirations, continually throwing her in and back upon herself, and blighting her instincts wherever they turned. She had accepted all this as his superiority to her folly, and though the thwarted and unfostered inclinations ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and really to know him was to love him. His nature was keenly sympathetic; his conversation ready and charming, quickly responsive to suggestion, illuminated by gentle humor and occasionally a flash of playful satire. He disliked controversy, with its waste of energy in profitless discussion, and jestingly averred that if there were any reformers living in his neighborhood he should ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... every honest Christian to receive my words—though sometimes barbed with scorn or satire—as coming from a heart that is made to break with sorrow and to turn seriousness into jesting at the sight now beheld at Leipzig, where there are also pious people who would venture body and soul for God's Word ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... husbandry, but as a poet, and probably did the king more service in that capacity than he would if he had raised him a troop of horse, or a regiment of foot, for he wrote songs breathing loyalty to Charles, and fraught with pungent satire against his foes, which ran like wild-fire through Wales, and had a great influence on the minds of the people. Even when the royal cause was lost in the field, he still carried on a poetical war against the successful party, but not so openly as before, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... expressing, in curiously diversified 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 worse. Doubtless it brought a degree of refinement with it, but it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... ambitious," the newcomer observed, with gentle satire. "He is, I am sure, a most persevering and intelligent member of his profession, but he ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... deserted his 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 which it expressed ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... nation resounded, and its power made itself felt, in every clime, it was not worth a consideration that a vast proportion of its people were systematically consigned, through ignorance and the irreligion and depravity inseparable from it, to a wretchedness on which that fame was the bitterest satire. It is matter for never-ending amazement, that during one generation after another, the presiding wisdom in this chief of Christian and Protestant States, should have thrown out the living strength of that state into almost every mode of agency under heaven, rather than ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... know her can alone imagine the satire contained in that remark, dryly said in a tone which meant, ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Puritanism of mechanical morality, Mark Twain enraptures that innumerable company of the sophisticated who have chafed under the omnipresent influence of a "good example" and stilled the painless pangs of an unruly conscience. With splendid satire for the base, with shrill condemnation for tyranny and oppression, with the scorpion-lash for the equivocal, the fraudulent, and the insincere, Mark Twain inspires the growing body of reformers in all countries who would remedy the ills of democratic government with the knife of publicity. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... Magazine, an opposition periodical 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... charge, which, if sustained, would have thrown her into the clutches of the Inquisition. In two days she wrote a brilliant defense completely exonerating herself and exposing the spitefulness of the attack, a masterful production by reason of its vigorous dialectics, incisive satire, and noble enthusiasm for the cause of religion. Together with some few of her sonnets, this is all that has come down to us of her writings. She opened her vindication ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... so happened at just this particular period of his artistic career and of mine that he no longer shone as a solitary star of the first magnitude in my little firmament of pictorial social satire. A new impulse had been given to the art of drawing on wood, a new school had been founded, and new methods—to draw straight from nature instead of trusting to memory and imagination—had been ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... to me to be much wit and satire in the play: but, upon my word, I was grievously disappointed as to the morality of it; nor, in some places, is—probability preserved; and there are divers speeches so very free, that I could not have expected to meet with such, from the names ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... compared him with the 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
... grew, everything was made. The practical understanding was the despotic faculty in the genius of this people. Fancy, imagination, humor, seem to have been omitted in the character of the Latin race. The only form of wit which appeared among them was satire, that is, wit used for a serious purpose, to punish crimes not amenable to other laws, to remove abuses not to be reached by the ordinary police. The gay, light-hearted Greek must have felt in Rome very much as a Frenchman feels in England. The Romans did not know how to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... touched the lyre, In satire fierce, in pleasure gay, Shall not my Thralia's smiles inspire, Shall Sam refuse the ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... an ambassador as "an honest man sent to lie abroad for the benefit of his country," though meant as a satire, brought him into disfavour with James I. when it became published; for an adversary quoted it as a principle of the king's religion. That it was not Wotton's real view of the duty of an honest man, is obvious from the lines quoted at the head of this chapter, on ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... several eminent men of the name of Bassus. With regard to the person here called Saleius Bassus, the commentators have not been able to glean much information. Some have contended that it was to him Persius addressed his sixth satire: ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... Beck, for example, the pompous medical ass with a flourishing practice among the local nabobs, can be found in every provincial town in Europe. The Dice of the Gods has no plot worthy of the name, but Mr. DE ZILWA has both satire and philosophy at his command, and a flair for atmosphere. His scenery and "props" too will be new even to the most hardened novel-reader. He paints a vivid Oriental background with which the semi-Western civilization of his characters alternately ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... youth he made Paris laugh with his comical travesties of political persons, persons in high finance, and also by his shrewd eye for the homely traits in the life of the people. His street scenes are miracles of detail, satire, and fun. The one entitled Spring is the most noted. That legacy of hate, inherited from the 1830 poets, of the bourgeois, was a merry play for Rops. He is the third of the trinity of caricature artists, Daumier and Gavarni being ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... master kind began: "Mark him, Who in his right hand bears that falchion keen, The other three preceding, as their lord. This is that Homer, of all bards supreme: Flaccus the next in satire's vein excelling; The third is Naso; Lucan is the last. Because they all that appellation own, With which the voice singly accosted me, Honouring they greet me thus, and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... lovely little wrappers, intermingled in malodorous profusion. Bottles of sauces never heard of by the present generation, and which yet bore traces of the solidified cobweb of half a century, were much in evidence. So, too, was Berwick's baking powder, as a sort of satire on the absence of such essential constituents as eggs, milk, flour, whiskey, raisins, etc. (we had plenty of suet). Reckitt's blue was there in abundance—a finger-post, as it were, to the shade of the entire ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Fra Paolo. The collections of Maxims which this bold monk drew up at the request of the Venetian Government, for the guidance of the Secret Inquisition of State, are so atrocious as to seem rather an over-charged satire upon despotism, than a system of policy, seriously inculcated, and but too readily and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... fortiter faceres," compare line 25 of the Oxford fragment of the sixth satire of Juvenal; "hic erit in lecto fortissimus," which Housman has rendered "he is a ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... sworn to cast the shadow of beauty over what she called the substance of the hideous, and to this end and intention, by dint of honeyed eloquence and stinging satire, she had persuaded John and Mary to allow her to insert stained glass in one of the windows, which formerly opened upon and afforded a view of a certain particularly brilliant flower bed. Beneath the many-colored light ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the first of these fables the child learns the basest flattery; from the second, cruelty; from the third, injustice; from the fourth, satire; from the fifth, insubordination. The last of these lessons is no more suitable for your pupils than for mine, though he has no use for it. What results do you expect to get from your teaching when it contradicts ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... justifying in principle everything that was now proposed. He treated as ridiculous the idea that the bill could be dangerous either to the crown or to the aristocracy. There was variance between the logic of the non-reformers and their sarcasms. The syllogisms were overthrown by their satire, and their arguments evaporated in their vituperation. This bill would wrench despotism from oligarchy, but it would not touch the legitimate influence of property, and birth, and station, and all the other circumstances which create a title to respect. It would take power from individuals, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... following sheets I have modelled on his plan"; and Sterne was always talking and thinking about Cervantes, and comparing himself to the great Spaniard: "I think there is more laughable humor, with an equal degree of Cervantic satire, if not more, than in the last," he writes of one of his chapters, to "my witty widow, Mrs. F." Many even of Walter Scott's romances are un-English in their elements; and the fame of Shelley, Keats, and Byron rests entirely upon their "foreign" work. Coleridge's poetry and philosophy bear no ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 gairish ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... two readings are as far apart as is heaven from hell, as far as the true from the false. It is strange that both Lockhart and Shairp should have stumbled on the explanation of Burns's righteous satire in these poems; should have been so near it, and yet have missed it. It was just because Burns could write The Cotter's Saturday Night that he could write The Holy Tulzie, Holy Willie's Prayer, The Ordination, and The Holy Fair. Had he not felt ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... by a reviewer's 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 noble and pure ones; but in general you may notice that ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... her satire, so full of scorn and so serious in her meaning, and there was such a contrast between what she said and her person; she looked so preeminently the pretty marquise, all silks and softness, the little exquisite, so essentially ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... seeking for a bit of bread, but all the while keeping his face turned just so far from the fated grog-vessel that no one suspected his design. On reaching the spot his heart began to fail him, but not his wickedness; indeed, his was the very beau ideal of that character described in the satire of Junius, which, "without courage enough to resist doing a bad action, has yet virtue enough to be ashamed of it." Whether or not these mixed motives influenced old Jacko, I cannot pretend to say; but there he sat chattering, screaming, and trembling, as if the sergeant's ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... last phrase, as being low. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is intended to be low: it is satire. The expression is debased, to ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... may tell you that in defending yourselves from German invasion you support our old political regime. These people want to see Russia defeated because of their hatred of the Czar's government. Like one of the heroes of our genius of satire, Shchedrin, they mix fatherland with its temporary bosses. But Russia belongs not to the Czar, but to the Russian working-people. In defending Russia, the working-people defend themselves, defend the road ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... its back upon me. I don't see why I should not write a little sometimes; I have pens and an ink-horn, and for a writing-desk I can place the Bible on my knee. I shouldn't wonder if I could write a capital satire on the world on the back of that Bible; but first of all I must think of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Curtis, M.P., afterwards Lord Mayor of London, was the subject of much ridicule by the Whigs and Radicals, and the hero of Peter Pindar's satire "The Fat Knight and the Petition." It was he who first gave the toast of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... career as a statesman; no honors seemed to him too high, no ambition too great. But a hard fate lay before him. He made one brilliant and successful speech in Parliament—a speech never forgotten by those who heard it, for its astonishing eloquence, its keen wit, its bitter satire. Never again did his voice rouse alike friend and foe. He was seized with a sudden and dangerous illness which brought him to the brink of the grave. After a long and desperate struggle with the "grim enemy," he slowly recovered, but all hope of public life ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... Eb's humour was as deep as it was kindly, but I have never been quite sure whether the remark was a compliment or a bit of satire. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... judgment or to accept one: and the supposed listener, if there be such, is only a confidant. The first kind of argument or discussion is carried on—apparently—as much for victory as for truth; and employs the weapons of satire, or the tactics of special-pleading, as the case demands. The second is an often pathetic and always single-minded endeavour to get at the truth. Those monologues in which the human spirit is represented as communing with itself, contain some of Mr. Browning's noblest dramatic ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the General, with a suspicion of satire in his voice, 'your cousin seems to take ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... Jena, which may be called the political portion of Schlegel's literary career, belongs the Gate of Honour for the Stage-President Von-Kotzebue, (Ehrenpforte fur den Theater Prsidenten von Kotzebue, 1800,) an ill-natured and much- censured satire in reply to Kotzebue's attack, entitled the Hyperborean Ass (Hyperboreischen Esee). At this time he also collected several of his own and brother Frederick's earlier and occasional contributions to various periodicals, and these, together ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... from 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 giving ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... him there appeared a clever, willful child, full of the childish passion for imitation and mockery. And she proceeded to "take off" the grand Miss Burroughs—enough like Josephine to give the satire point and barb. He could see Josephine resolved to be affable and equal, to make this doubtless bedazzled stray from the "lower classes" feel comfortable in those palatial surroundings. She imitated ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... NOUVEAU-RICHE, who having had occasion to oblige that excellent prelate the Bishop of Bullocksmithy, asked his Lordship, in return, to confirm his children privately in his Lordship's own chapel; which ceremony the grateful prelate accordingly performed. Can satire go farther than this? Is there even in this most amusing of prints, any more NAIVE absurdity? It is as if a man wouldn't go to heaven unless he went in a special train, or as if he thought (as some people think about vaccination) Confirmation more effectual when administered at first hand. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... satire is the Absalom and Achitophel; his best specimen of reasoning in verse is The Hind and the Panther. His best ode is his Ode to the Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew. Dryden's style is distinguished by its power, sweep, vigour, and "long majestic march." No one has handled ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... and the persistency with which they have been applied to the explanation of generally received historical facts, as well as to the familiar fairy tales of childhood, has been pushed so far as to become the subject of satire and caricature. The myths of the Dawn have been so frequently brought to public notice in the popular writings of Professor Max Mueller, that their general distribution may be taken as well known. The same may be said of the storm myths. Wilhelm von ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... received with rapture, and a remarkably strong anecdote of a lady and her footman fell flat, much to Mr. Preston's disgust. Then came the hour for personalities. As the drink takes effect our parlour customers attempt satire, and their efforts are always of ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... Shudraka's variety, we have only to recall the names of the acts of the play. Here The Shampooer who Gambled and The Hole in the Wall are shortly followed by The Storm; and The Swapping of the Bullock-carts is closely succeeded by The Strangling of Vasantasena. From farce to tragedy, from satire to pathos, runs the story, with a breadth truly Shaksperian. Here we ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... scribes and Pharisees sometimes "bind upon men heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne," even when they themselves "would not touch them with one of their fingers," Matthew 23:4; Luke 11:46. However, Noldius well observes, De Herod. No. 404, 414, that Juvenal, in his sixth satire, alludes to this remarkable penance or submission of this Bernice to Jewish discipline, and jests upon her for it; as do Tacitus, Dio, Suetonius, and Sextus Aurelius mention her as ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... accomplish in the war, is the George Bernard Shaw of Germany. He is considered the leading German editor and an expert in Germany on foreign politics. As editor and proprietor of Die Zukunft, his fiery, brooding spirit and keen insight and wit, coupled with powers of satire and caricature, made him a solitary and striking independent figure in the German press years before the other newspapers of Germany dared to criticise or attack the Government or the persons at ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 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
... native of Paros, and flourished about 714-676, B.C. His poems were chiefly Iambics of bitter satire. Horace speaks of him as the inventor of Iambics, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... jest so that it would go farther than even eloquence could carry it with the whimsical Western people; and perhaps nothing more effective was said against the infamous Black Laws which forbade the testimony of negroes in the courts than Corwin put in the form of self-satire. He was of a very dark complexion, so that he might have been taken for a light mulatto; and he used to say that it was only when a man got to be of about his color that he could be expected to ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... now see how, out of this vile piece of prose, the higher nature of Alfieri and of the Countess of Albany, and (what a satire upon poetic and platonic affection!) most of all, the monomaniac jealousy of Charles Edward, contrived to make ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... strolled back to the hotel. The act however had not recalled Uncle Ben to him by any association of ideas, for since his discovery of Johnny Filgee's caricature he had failed to detect anything to corroborate the caricaturist's satire, and had dismissed the subject from ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... Browne. He must be a man of very lively wit, and much less scurrilous than Wits often are: altogether, I very much admire the performance, and wish it all success. The 'Satirist' has taken a new tone, as you will see: we have now, I think, finished with 'C. H.'s' critics. I have in 'hand' a 'Satire' on 'Waltzing', which you must publish anonymously: it is not long, not quite 200 lines, but will make a very small boarded pamphlet. In a few days ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... appeared his "London," imitated from the Third Satire of Juvenal, for which he got ten guineas from Dodsley. The excellence of this poem was so immediately perceived, that it reached a second edition in the course of a week. Pope having made some ineffectual ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... —What a satire, by the way, is that machine on the mere mathematician! A Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to make a blunder; that turns out results like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it grind ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he next tried physical. He converted the arched cellars of his dwelling into dungeons, where he shut up those guilty of contumacy; and day by day he put them to torture. It seems like a satire on religion to say that, in his attempt to convert souls, this vehement missionary made it one of his principal studies to find out what amount of agony the bodies of those who differed from him would bear short of actual death. He put hot coals into their hands, which they were then made to clench; ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... black cat, the spilling of salt, breaking of mirrors, presenting of knives, wearing of green ties (not that I wore one—the colour doesn't suit my complexion) or opal rings, are fair fun, and I think that in future it would be as well to limit the satire to these ceremonies, to the exclusion of the funereal part of the business. For badges each wore in his button-hole a small coffin to which dangled a skeleton, and peacock's feathers. In my opinion the peacock's feathers would have been sufficient for the purpose of the Club: the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... found a strong reinforcement in the large premium which expressed Harviss's sense of his opportunity. As a satire, the book would have brought its author nothing; in fact, its cost would have come out of his own pocket, since, as Harviss assured him, no publisher would have risked taking it. But as a profession of faith, as the recantation of an eminent biologist, whose ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire and Sentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light on the strangest contrasts laughable and tearful: where you may be gentle and pathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect propriety: it is at one of those public assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised every ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there is also the man of the Annales. We do not speak of the immense exile of Patmos who, on his part also, overwhelms the real world with a protest in the name of the ideal world, who makes of his vision an enormous satire and casts on Rome-Nineveh, on Rome-Babylon, on Rome-Sodom, the flaming reflection of the Apocalypse. John on his rock is the sphinx on its pedestal; we may understand him, he is a Jew, and it is Hebrew; but the man who writes the Annales is of the Latin ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... saints, a paraphrase of Scripture, a treatise on the seven deadly sins, some Bible history, a dispute among birds concerning women, a love song or two, a vision of Purgatory, a vulgar story with a Gallic flavor, a chronicle of English kings and Norman barons, and a political satire. There are a few other works, similarly incongruous, crowded together in this typical manuscript, which now gives mute testimony to the literary ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... gossip to be gleaned from this tract is that William Thynne was a patron and supporter of John Skelton, who was an inmate of his house at Erith, whilst composing that most masterly bit of bitter truth, his "Colin Clout," asatire perhaps unsurpassed ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... for a wilderness of schoolmasters. It should be delivered from them, who, with their silly Ablauts and 'tendencies,' can themselves neither read nor write. For the proof? Having the world's quintessential store of mirth and sharp sorrow, wit, humour, comfort, farce, comedy, tragedy, satire; the glories of our birth and state, piled all at their elbows, only one man of the crowd—and he M. Jusserand, a Frenchman—has contrived to draw out of the mass one interesting well-written history ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... cynical French writer of the last century intending a satire upon the principles of vegetarianism adopted by Phillippe Hecquet, puts into the mouth of one of the characters in his book what, in the grossly voluptuous life of that country and time, the author no doubt imagined to be the greatest absurdities conceivable in reference ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... contemptible in Europe. Is it possible that any man who has contributed to the independence of Amer-ica, and to free her from the tyranny and injustice of the British government, can read without shame and indignation the note of Jay to Grenville? It is a satire upon the declaration of Independence, and an encouragement to the British government to treat America with contempt. At the time this Minister of Petitions was acting this miserable part, he had every means in his hands to enable him to have done his business as he ought. The success ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Socialism in this connection lies in the fact that it does not confine itself to sociology. It has become a complete philosophy of life, and can be seen penetrating with its subtle satire on human nature almost everything about us. We have the cash register to educate our clerks into pure and honest character, and the souls of conductors can be seen being nurtured, mile after mile, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee |
