Quotes
Quotes about Satire
For pointed satire I would Buckhurst choose,
The best good man with the worst-natured muse.
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
Satire's my weapon, but I 'm too discreet
To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet.
Satire should, like a polished razor keen,
Would with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks; Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks. The founder's you: the table is the place: The carvers we: the prologue is the grace. Each act, a course, each scene, a different dish, Though we're in Lent, I doubt you're still for flesh. Satire's the sauce, high-season'd, sharp and rough. Kind masks and beaux, I hope you're pepperproof? Wit is the wine; but 'tis so scarce the true Poets, like vintners, balderdash and brew. Your surly scenes, where rant and bloodshed join. Are butcher's meat, a battle's sirloin: Your scenes of love, so flowing, soft and chaste, Are water-gruel without salt or taste.
Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.
This picture, plac'd the busts between Gives Satire all its strength; Wisdom and Wit are little seen While Folly glares at length.
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
What is a miracle?--'Tis a reproach, 'Tis an implicit satire on mankind; And while it satisfies, it censures too.
By rights, satire is a lonely and introspective occupation, for nobody can describe a fool to the life without much patient self-inspection.
Praise undeserved s satire in disguise.
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain.
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
Why should we fear; and what? The laws? They all are armed in virtue's cause; And aiming at the self-same end, Satire is always virtue's friend.
Unless a love of virtue light the flame, Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame; He hides behind a magisterial air He own offences, and strips others' bare.
It is difficult not to write satire. [Lat., Difficile est satiram non scribere.]
Satire is what closes Saturday night.
Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen. Thine is an oyster knife, that hacks and hews; The rage but not the talent to abuse.
I wear my Pen as others do their Sword. To each affronting sot I meet, the word Is Satisfaction: straight to thrusts I go, And pointed satire runs him through and through.
Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
There are, to whom my satire seems too bold; Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough, And something said of Chartres much too rough.
Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To run amuck and tilt at all I meet.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
