"Satire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what satire in the word! If home is where the heart is, where's my home? Well: here's my easel; here my old piano; Here the memorials of my early days! Here let me try at least to be content. This din of rolling wheels beneath my window, Let it renew for ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... the following lines six years ago from a review in a Munich newspaper of Batornicki's Ungoettliche Comoedie. They were cited as from Tieck's suppressed (zurueckgezogen) satire, La Comoedie Divina, from which Batornicki was accused of plundering freely, thinking that, from its variety, he would ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... comates in a spirit of unexampled bitterness. He examined in review the various members of the party that had deserted him. They trembled on their seats, while they writhed beneath the keenness of his satire: but when the orator came to Mr. President Lorraine, he flourished the tomahawk on high like a wild Indian chieftain; and the attack was so awfully severe, so overpowering, so annihilating, that even this hackneyed and hardened ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... such a fashion not existing beyond College,—except as it appeared in here and there an antiquated gentleman, a venerable remnant of the olden time, in whom the boots were matched with buckles at the knee, and a powdered queue. A practical satire quickly put an end to it. Some humorists proposed to the waiters about College to furnish them with such boots on condition of their wearing them. The offer was accepted; a lot of them was ordered at a boot-and-shoe shop, and, all at once, sweepers, sawyers, and the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Instances of that public abuse are triumphantly inserted by Warburton in his Edition of Pope's works. See Appendix to the Dunciad. It is re-published there, to justify some of the personal severities of Pope's celebrated Satire. ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... culture in the Latin towns stood higher than in Rome; and this is confirmed by the literature of this period, whose most pleasing, healthiest, and most characteristic products, such as the national comedy and the Lucilian satire, are with greater justice described as Latin, than as Roman. That the Italian Hellenism of the lower orders was in reality nothing but a repulsive cosmopolitanism tainted at once with all the extravagances ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... ungrateful, technically. The reactionary put up his regular plaintive plea for melody but supposed this was too much to ask, these days. The chauvinist detected German influence in the music (he had missed the parodic satire in March's quotations), and asked Heaven to answer why an American composer should have availed himself of a decadent ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... you really believe all that pretty moonshine you talked last night? I could have listened to you for another hour; but I never heard such monstrous sentiments, I must protest—I must, as a calumniated, misrepresented man. Confess you meant it as a kind of reductio ad absurdum—a satire on Mrs. Farrinder?" He spoke in a tone of the freest pleasantry, with ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... whose famous dictum, "La propriete c'est le vol," has become the watchword of a certain school of Socialists, which even the iron despotism of Russia and Germany cannot keep down; Charles Nodier, charming litterateur, who, at the age of twenty-one, was the author of the first satire ever published against the first Napoleon, "La Napoleone," which formulated the indignation of the Republican party, and a noble roll-call of artists, authors, savants, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Injun question is a satire on true Goverment, a lie in the name of liberty and equality, ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... perfect lines; he is, above all, the faultless lyrist, the Swinburne, the master of fiery, many rhythms, the chanter of songs before sunrise, of the burden of the flesh, the sting of desire and large-moulded lays of passionate freedom. His music is, to quote Thoreau, "a proud sweet satire on the meanness of our life." He had no feeling for the epic, his genius was too concentrated, and though he could be furiously dramatic the sustained majesty of blank verse was denied him. With musical ideas he was ever gravid but their ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... 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
... the spasms of pain borne bravely and uncomplainingly, the long agony of his later years, what mark has this left on his work, how far is it responsible for a modification of his attitude,—for the change from the careless gaiety of "Tartarin of Tarascon" to the sombre satire of "Port-Tarascon"? What caused the joyous story-teller of the "Letters from my Mill" to develop into the bitter iconoclast of ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... April Green" and "The Battle of Waterloo" (the first and the last tale in the Norwegian edition), are more untinged with a moral tendency than any of the foregoing. The former is a mere jeu d'esprit, full of good-natured satire on the calf-love of very young people, and the amusing over-estimate of our importance to which we are all, ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... this to me? Useless is not the question; I cannot rest at uselessness; I must be useful or I must be noxious - one or other. I grant you the whole thing, prince and principality alike, is pure absurdity, a stroke of satire; and that a banker or the man who keeps an inn has graver duties. But now, when I have washed my hands of it three years, and left all - labour, responsibility, and honour and enjoyment too, if there be any - to Gondremark and to - ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... M. Wolowski, "is that which distinguishes man from the animals." That may be; but are we to regard this as a compliment or a satire? ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... farce, says Delta, composed at Quebec by J. Galt, and performed there before the Earl of Dalhousie (then Governor-General), was named "The Visitors, or a Trip to Quebec," and was meant as a good humoured satire on some of the particular usages of the place. An American family figured as the visitors, and the piece opened with a scene in an hotel, when a waiter brings in a tea-tray loaded with cards of callers, and the explanation of the initials having had reference to people, many of whom ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... assign to Campaspe, there can be little doubt that it was one of the first dramas in our language with an historical background. Indeed, Kynge Johan is the only play before 1580 which can claim to rival it in this respect. But Kynge Johan was written solely for the purpose of religious satire, being an attack upon the priesthood and Church abuses. It must, therefore, be classed among those political moralities, of which so many examples appeared during the early part of the 16th century. Campaspe, on the other hand, is entirely devoid of any ethical or satirical motive. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... story, though it was a hit against my countrymen; for I have always found it far better to laugh off anything said against one's self, than to put on the dignities and to look grand. Laughter and good humour are like polished shields, which make the shafts of satire glance off on either side; but sulkiness and dignity are sure to bring them ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... extract presents the main portion of General Lee's testimony, and is certainly an admirable exposition of the clear good sense and frankness of the individual. Once or twice there is obviously an under-current of dry satire, as in his replies upon the subject of the Confederate bonds. When asked whether he remembered at what time these bonds were made payable, he replied that his "general recollection was, that they were made payable six months after a declaration of peace." The ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... two years after "Une Vie," that is to say, about 1885. Discussed and criticised as it has been, it is in reality a satire, an indignant outburst against the corruption of society which in the story enables an ex-soldier, devoid of conscience, honor, even of the commonest regard for others, to gain wealth and rank. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... spiritual nature, however questioning in his intellect. That is a fair summary of Thackeray as revealed in his daily walk—in his letters, acts and thoughts. Nothing could be sweeter and more kindly than the mass of his writings in this regard, pace "The Book of Snobs"—even in such a mood the satire is for the most part unbitter. The reminiscential essays continually strike a tender note that vibrates with human feeling and such memorials as the paper he wrote on the deaths of Irving and Macaulay represent a frequent vein. Thackeray's friends are ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... literary acquirements, personally acquainted with many London celebrities of our day. I remember the delight with which he came to my hotel and said: "You must dine with me to-day; I want to introduce you to a person you will much like. His greatest fault is one you possess yourself, a turn for satire, which sometimes makes him enemies." On the same morning he had announced to his friend with beaming eyes, "My father is here;" and when the next day that same friend wished to engage him to an evening party, he replied: "You forget ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... The combating parties had referred to the Shepherd, who was led to accord his support to Mr Blackwood. He conceived the idea of the "Chaldee Manuscript," as a means of ridiculing the oppositionists. Of this famous satire, the first thirty-seven verses of chapter first, with several other sentences throughout, were his own composition, the remaining portion being the joint fabrication of his friends Wilson and Lockhart.[39] This singular ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... has often perplexed me. Ah, Harley, I am glad to see that your satire is foiled: you have ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... writings against which Plato's humour is directed. Most of the jests appear to have a serious meaning; but we have lost the clue to some of them, and cannot determine whether, as in the Cratylus, Plato has or has not mixed up purely unmeaning fun with his satire. ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... master of arts, he was, by the prevalence of the parliament, ejected from Cambridge, and sheltered himself at St. John's college, in Oxford; where, as is said by Wood, he published a satire, called the Puritan and Papist, which was only inserted in the last collection of his works[8]; and so distinguished himself by the warmth of his loyalty and the elegance of his conversation, that he gained the kindness and confidence of those who attended ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... a moral, and at the same time an exceedingly clever, satire. It is illustrative of the life, manners, and predilections and pursuits of a class of society left hereafter to enjoy the manifold attractions of fashionable watering-places, without the scourge that for so many years held its immoral and degrading sway ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Pearch's collection. After moving, for a long time, as one of the most brilliant orbs in the sphere of fashion, she suddenly retired, and like her morose brother, shut herself up from the world. While she lived in this seclusion, she became an object of the sportive satire of the late Mr Fox, who characterized ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... the awful picture drawn by Juvenal in his Sixth Satire of the fashionable Roman dame who had eight husbands in five years and who ordered her slave to immediate crucifixion. When her husband mildly ventured to suggest that there should at least be some ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... cool mien, his satire, were as giant's arms to drag Belllounds back from murder. The rifle was raised, the hammer reset, the butt lowered to the ground, while Belllounds, snarling and ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... Mrs Marcella, quite as unconscious as her friend of the covert satire in her words. "I wonder what Mrs Rhoda will be married in. I always used to say I would be married in white and silver. And really, if my wretched health had not stood in the way, I might have been, my dear, ever so many times. ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... Before his departure to London, he wrote five satires, several fables and epistles, none of which were printed, however, though they won him great reputation in cultivated society, where they circulated in manuscript copies. Satire was quite in the spirit of the age, and Kantemir devoted himself to it. He displayed much wit and keen observation. In all, he produced nine satires, four being written during his sojourn abroad. In Satire Second, entitled, "Filaret and Evgeny," or "On the Envy and Pride of Cantankerous Nobles," ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... not contemptible, and a heart—but 'tis over now. That name he is content to bear alone—to go where the persecuted syllables shall be no more heard, or excite no meaning —some spot where his native tongue has never penetrated, nor any of his countrymen have landed, to plant their unfeeling satire, their brutal wit, and national ill manners—where no Englishman—(Here Melesinda, who has been pouting during this speech, fetches a deep sigh.) Some yet undiscovered Otaheite, where witless, unapprehensive savages ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Steve's incautious satire suddenly precipitated the crisis he feared. The girl's eyes flashed a hot look of resentment. He was laughing at her. She was in no mood to be made sport of, or to have her words made sport of. She sat up with a start and leant forward in her chair ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... neighbouring "pockets" and nuggets, and seams and beds. Here you may gather the golden opinions of the ancients in close proximity to those of the moderns. Here you will find pearls of thought, sparkling gems of imagery, broad seams of satire, and silvery streams of sentiment, with wealth of wisdom and of wit. Hard iron-fisted facts also, and funny mercurial fancies are to be found here in abundance, and there are tons of tin in the form of rubbish, which is usually left at ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... fallen on him; but he within His tent retired, received them not, nor went. For well he knew the purport of their suit Was this—that he should fight beside the Ford His former fellow-pupil and his friend. Then Mave,[35] the queen, her powerful druids sent, Armed not alone with satire's scorpion stings, But with the magic power even on the face, By their malevolent taunts and biting sneers, To raise three blistering blots[36] that typified Disgrace, dishonour, and a coward's shame, Which with their mortal venom him would kill, Or on ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... to think that you should state that Wilde at the end of his story of 'Mr. W.H.' definitely says that the theory is all nonsense. It always appeared to me a semi-satire of Shakespearean commentary. I remember Wilde saying to me after it was published that his next Shakespearean book would be a discussion as to whether the commentators on Hamlet were mad or only pretending to be. I think you take Wilde's phantasy ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... physician enjoyed the greatest social and professional prestige, he received the most verbal abuse and criticism. Perhaps the most damaging and galling satire of the century flowed from the pen of the French dramatist, Moliere, who had a medical student—not completely fictitious—swear always to accept the pronouncements of his oldest physician-colleague, and always to treat by purgation, using clysters ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... delicacy in stories of real tragedy and comedy and pathos, so that it would be hard to say which is the finest in such admirably rendered effects as The Web of Circumstance, The Bouquet, and Uncle Wellington's Wives. In some others the comedy degenerates into satire, with a look in the reader's direction which the author's ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... semblance neither sorrowful nor glad. When thus my 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 well they judge." So I beheld united the bright school Of him the monarch of sublimest song, That o'er the others ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Italian (which language I learned, after a fashion, in order to read it) the other in French. The Italian letter was not only scorched badly, but so blistered—one did not need to ask how—that parts were quite illegible. The writer, a man, evidently, a young man, probably, conveyed in satire so keen, a contempt so bitter, a hatred so remorseless, that it was difficult to believe it a letter from a brother to his sister. Beneath the polished, scornful sentences—vitriol to a tender young heart—surged a tempest of primitive rage that thrust one ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... 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 one well ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... often gave signal by its coruscation, as the same sort of eye did in her friend Mr. Wilberforce, that something was forthcoming which in a less amiable and religiously disciplined mind might have been very pretty satire, but which glanced off innoxiously in the shape ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... There is no danger that English thought will ever underestimate the value and meaning of the individual soul. The greatest English literature, it might almost be said, from Shakespeare's Hamlet to Browning's The Ring and the Book, is concerned with no other subject. The age-long satire against the English is that in England every man claims the right to go to heaven his own way. English institutions, instead of subduing men to a single pattern, are devised chiefly with the object of saving the rights of the subject and the liberty of the individual. 'Every man in his humour' ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... Gilman's best and newest work; her social philosophy, her verse, satire, fiction, ethical teaching, humor, and comment. It stands for Humanness in Women, and in Men; for better methods in Child-culture; for the Home that is no Workshop; for the New Ethics, the New Economics, the New World ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... importance of 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
... publication of his intimate correspondence. It is fortunate for his temperament that, combined with an almost morbid sensitiveness, he has something of Byron's power of hitting back. His numerous volumes contain many verses scoring off adverse critics, upon whom he exercises a sword of satire not always to be found among a poet's weapons; which exercise seems to give him both relief and delight. Apart from these thrusts edged with personal bitterness, William Watson possesses a rarely used vein of ironical wit that ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... in 1743, is in many respects Fielding's most powerful piece of satire, surpassed only, perhaps, by Thackeray's "Barry Lyndon." It can hardly be called a novel, and still less a serious biography, though it is founded on the real history of a notorious highway robber and thief. The author ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... sketch like this, whose humours might be relished only by such specialists as Barristers and Attorneys, who would understand the jokes levelled at the Profession, should be so well understanded of the people. All see the point of the legal satire. It is a quite a prodigy. Boz had the art, in an extraordinary degree, of thus vividly commending trade processes, professional allusions, and methods to outsiders, and making them humourous and intelligible. Witness Jackson, ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... contrived to give vent to their suppressed indignation. The voluminous grievance which they could not trust to the voice or the pen they have carved in wood, or sculptured on stone; and have sometimes even facetiously concealed their satire among the playful ornaments designed to amuse those of whom they so fruitlessly complained! Such monuments of the suppressed feelings of the multitude are not often inspected by the historian—their minuteness escapes all eyes but those of the philosophical ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... ousted his aunt, as soon as he came in after dinner, and leaning over her with his arm on the mantelpiece, or drawing a chair beside her, would laugh and talk with endless spirit and amusement. When he talked of the people in the neighbourhood who afforded scope for satire, she would tap him with her fan and say, "Why do I not see these originals? bring them to see me," to Lucy's wonder and often dismay. "They would not amuse you at all," Sir Tom would reply, upon which the lady would turn and call Lucy to ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... with the others, he resolved to wait no longer, but 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
... in the Temple profitable, and the poets who, in the turn of their verses, could not dispense with the familiar deities: there are singers of this age who are similarly given. As philosophy was taking the place of religion, satire was fast substituting reverence; insomuch that in Latin opinion it was to every speech, even to the little diatribes of conversation, as salt to viands, and aroma to wine. The young Messala, educated ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... take the oaths to Government, and therefore never had any other military employment. "With much truth, honour, and humanity," relates Mrs. Grant, "he inherited his father's wit and self-possession, with a vein of keen satire which he indulged in bitter expressions against the enemies of his family. Some of these I have seen, and heard many songs of his composing, which showed no contemptible power of poetic genius, although rude and careless of polish." He sank into habits of dissipation and ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... ancient world's most truthful painter of social life and manners. Horace had a country seat among the Sabine hills to which he could retire from the worries and distractions of the world. His delight in his Sabine farm is shown clearly in his handling of the story. The passage is a part of Book II, Satire 6, and is in Conington's translation. Some well-known appearances of this same fable in English poetry may be found in Prior and Montagu's City Mouse and Country Mouse and in Pope's ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... rapidly spread from Italy into Germany, and their popularity was increased by the favor and sanction given to them by the great fathers of the Reformation, who frequently used them as vehicles for satire and protest against the tricks and abuses of the Romish ecclesiastics. The zealous and renowned Camerarius, who took an active part in the preparation of the Confession of Augsburgh, found time, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... kingdom, but pompously announced to the public, with many other extraordinary things, in a pamphlet which had all the appearance of a manifesto preparatory to some considerable enterprise. Throughout, it was a satire, though in terms managed and decent enough, on the politics of the former reign. It was indeed written with ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... time, that this barbarous system of rhyming in Latin, however brought to perfection by the monks and therefore generally called their own, is not really of their invention, but may be found, though quoted to be ridiculed, in the first satire of Persius, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... composed and arranged it. She replied that it was a beneficiary of the town who had a nice taste in devising things of the sort. "I will lay a wager," said Don Quixote, "that the same bachelor or beneficiary is a greater friend of Camacho's than of Basilio's, and that he is better at satire than at vespers; he has introduced the accomplishments of Basilio and the riches of Camacho very neatly into the dance." Sancho Panza, who was listening to all this, exclaimed, "The king is my cock; I stick to Camacho." "It is easy to see thou art a clown, Sancho," said Don Quixote, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... certain tolerance of one's characters even though they be, in the conventional sense, knaves, products, as the case might be, of conditions or circumstance, which after all is the thing to be criticised and not the man. But pity and tolerance are rare in satire, even in clash with it, producing in the result a deep sense of tragic humour. It is this that makes of Dead Souls a unique work, peculiarly Gogolian, peculiarly Russian, and distinct from its author's ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a delicate and subtle satire that plays gracefully with familiar facts; and instead of a compromising epigram an Italian has a glance or a smile of unutterable meaning. They think—and they are right—that to be expected to understand ideas when they only seek ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... book, entitled Hints to Some Churchwardens, with a few Illustrations Relative to the Repair and Improvement of Parish Churches, was published in 1825. The author, with much satire, depicts the "very many splendid, curious, and convenient ideas which have emanated from those churchwardens who have attained perfection as planners and architects." He apologises for not giving the names of these superior men and the dates of the improvements they have achieved, but ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... about the tower itself. Five miles to the eastward of the tower was a Revenue Station, and fifteen years or so before the time of our history commences, the command was held by an old Lieutenant Cumming, who had obtained it, he used with a touch of satire to tell his friends, as a recompense for forty years' services and numerous wounds in ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... spot where he was laid. Thus in some unknown corner he rests, like so many other illustrious persons—a man who never rested in his life, and carried down his labours to the very verge of the grave. It is a curious satire upon human justice that his name should have been kept green in Scotland by the rough jests of an imaginary Geordie Buchanan, commonly supposed to have been the King's fool, as extraordinary a travesty as it is possible to conceive. It is almost as strange a twist of ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the one deserving of satire if anybody!' she said. 'I begin to feel I was a foolish girl to run away from a father for such a trumpery reason as a little scolding because I had exceeded ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... the church and the convenience of the incumbent. The commercial schools, which were independent of the church, to which Non-conformists sent their boys, were satirised by Dickens, and they deserved the satire. The masters were generally incompetent, and the assistant teachers or ushers were the most miserable in regard to payment and status. William Ellis expended large sums of money, and almost all his leisure, in ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... Romance of the Rose. It includes the first great emotional poetry of the modern world—the sense of the greatness and tragedy of human passion has perhaps never been expressed in more moving terms than in the Tristan and Iseult of Thomas or Beroul—but it also includes the mordant satire of the Renard poetry and of Jean de Meun, and the gross realistic humour of the Fabliaux. The mediaeval drama, in whose complex development we have to trace many strands, probably represents in its oldest ...
— Progress and History • Various
... you,' brings forth to yourself. 'Lay' is here used as in 'a hen lays eggs'; such an application to this proverb is a cutting satire.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... strange, that such a Muse feels pain, When her child starts, like Pallas, from the brain, Arm'd at all points; when bold, she dares engage, With Truth's bright arms, the monsters of the age; When with just aim she points keen Satire's dart, And stabs the foul ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... feminine propriety, and a total absence of those arts which sometimes characterise those to whom the accident of birth has given importance. With unerring discrimination, she drew the exact line between vivacity and satire, true religion and its semblance. She saw through and pitied those who, pluming themselves on the faults of others, and imparting to the outward man the ascetic inflexibility of the inner one, would fain propagate on all sides their rigid creed, forbidding the more favoured ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... gratified, but fear you have under-estimated their grandeur and their real meaning. They pulsate the air, and make the heart throb with a conviction that the world of literature would have been poorer had they not been written. And now, Mr Rockfeller, let us cease further attempts at satire, and get to business. I wish to visit my parents who are very old; but before doing so I should like to have our little transaction settled and the future employment of the vessel arranged." The request was duly complied ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... there was something wrong, and buried his nose in pigeon pie. He devoured it with an excellent appetite, while every eye rested on him; Zoe's with shame and misery, Uxmoor's with open contempt, Vizard's with good humored satire. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... remain on them (the frontiers) or close to them; and thus you will proceed successively with the Indians who return, without leaving one, in order to avoid any chance of communication, which might be most prejudicial.' Surely a satire on his own abuse of the Jesuits for keeping the Indians mewed up from intercourse with the outside world. It may be that he had perceived the Indians were not fit to hold their own; indeed, it is certain he had done so, for on p. 326 he writes, 'It is not convenient to leave them (the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Contest in Rhode-Island,' we have not found leisure from pressing avocations to peruse. The paper on 'Architecture in the United States' is from the pen of one who 'knows whereof he writes;' and he has not been sparing of deserved satire upon the sad and ridiculous mistakes of those among us who are miscalled architects. High praise is awarded to our Trinity Church, now in progress of erection. 'In size, in the delicacy and propriety of its decoration, and in the beauty of its general effect, it ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... rebels against whom her husband fought. And up to the time when Stedman was ordered back to Holland, he was unable to purchase her freedom; nor could he, until the very last moment, procure the emancipation of his boy. His perfect delight at this last triumph, when obtained, elicited some satire from his white friends. "While the well-thinking few highly applauded my sensibility, many not only blamed but publicly derided me for my paternal affection, which was called a weakness, a whim." "Nearly forty ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... which such a contest must involve are frightful to think on. That it should have come about despite the zealous efforts of diplomacy, and against the wishes of almost all the nations whom it is destined to afflict, is a grim satire upon the professions of peace yet fresh upon the lips of those who have plunged the Continent into its miseries and its calamities. The blame must fall mainly upon Germany. She could have stayed the plague had she chosen to speak in Vienna as she speaks when she is in earnest. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... to Lilliput, his stay with the little people, and his adventures later among the giants of Brobdingnag, are classic. Written as a political satire, the narrative has served a gentler purpose than its original one. The littleness of the Lilliputians and the greatness of the giants appeal strongly ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... foundering for want of a pilot; and he wonders not at their destruction, but at their endurance. For they ought to have perished long ago, if they had depended on the wisdom of their rulers. The mingled pathos and satire of this remark is characteristic ...
— Statesman • Plato
... 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 was over for ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... golden age. The office of the poets is always nearly the same, and there is little variation in the features of their ideal world; but when philosophers attempt to admonish or reform mankind by devising an imaginary state, their motive is more definite and immediate, and their commonwealth is a satire as well as a model. Plato and Plotinus, More and Campanella, constructed their fanciful societies with those materials which were omitted from the fabric of the actual communities, by the defects of which they were inspired. The Republic, the Utopia, and the City ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... thought that something of the severity of his satire proceeded from the fact, that Sir Edmund was the only handsome and pleasing person in the house, and I did not feel inclined to take entirely for granted, that Henry's judgment of him ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... rockets shot up into the sky, and burst in a hundred bright and variously-coloured stars, which paled for a few seconds the lights of nature. But they vanished in a moment, and the clear stars shed abroad their undying lustre,—seeming, in their quiet unfading beauty, a gentle satire on the short-lived and garish productions ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the enemies of New Leeds were, he declared, the same. They would soon see his enemies suing for aid. He was applauded to the echo. All this and much more was in the Clarion next day, with some very pointed satire ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Portuguese. William West the bookseller and numerous followers have stated that Munchausen owed its first origin to Bruce's Travels, and was written for the purpose of burlesquing that unfairly treated work. Pierer boldly stated that it was a successful anonymous satire upon the English government of the day, while Meusel with equal temerity affirmed in his "Lexikon" that the book was a translation of the "well-known Munchausen lies" executed from a (non-existent) German original by Rudolph ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... of 27th December 1733 has an essay on Christmas Pye; but it is only a political satire, and not worth quoting here. There was once a famous Christmas pie which obtained the following notice in the Newcastle Chronicle, 6th January 1770: "Monday last, was brought from Howick to Berwick, to be shipp'd ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... classical models, and regard the English literature of the seventeenth century as a collection of all possible errors of taste. When, at the end of this period, Swift with Pope formed the project of the Scriblerus Club, its aim was to be a joint-stock satire against all 'false tastes' in learning, art, and science. That was the characteristic conception of the most brilliant men of letters ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... in the choir of S. Peter's. Giulia Bella was the mistress of Alexander VI., and a sister of the Farnese, who owed his cardinal's hat to her influence. To represent her as an allegory of Truth upon her brother's tomb might well pass for a grim satire. The Prudence opposite is said to be a portrait of the Pope's mother, Giovanna Gaetani. She resembles nothing more than a duenna of the type of Martha in Goethe's Faust. Here, again, the allegory would point a scathing ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the sphere of enmity and usefulness, Prince Bismarck forced these small States into unification with the German Empire, thereby carrying into effect the very system Napoleon was condemned for bringing under his suzerainty. What satire, what malignity of fate, that Bismarck, a positive refutation of genius in comparison with the French Emperor, should succeed in resurrecting the fabric that the latter had so proudly built up for ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... before in his life was the Englishman at that moment to grasping the secret of control of this child of many moods. Had he but learned it a few years, even a few months, sooner—But again was the satire of fate manifest, the same irony which, jealously withholding the rewards of labor, keeps the student at his desk, the laborer at his bench, until the worse than useless prizes flutter ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... vivid energy of sense, The truth of nature, which, with Attic point, And kind, well-temper'd satire, smoothly keen, Steals through the ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had lost their reason; the drinkers and the women were the experienced elite of the society that sups. Their wits were bright, their eyes glistened, but with no loss of intelligence, though the talk drifted into satire, anecdote, and gossip. Conversation, hitherto confined to the inevitable circle of racing, horses, hammerings on the Bourse, the different occupations of the lions themselves, and the scandals of the town, showed a tendency to ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the stage as in everyday life. Horace painted him in his famous passage commencing Ibam forte via Sacra, and the French satirist, Regnier, has depicted him in his eighth satire. ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... and domineering by the same natural instinct—never doubting about herself above all. Let us rise, and revolt against those people, Lankin. Let us war with them, and smite them utterly. It is to use against these, especially, that Scorn and Satire were invented." ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mazes, are a subject too extensive for an undertaking like the present."—Kames cor. "The true meaning and etymology of some of his words were lost."—Knight cor. "When the force and direction of personal satire are no longer understood."—Junius cor. "The frame and condition of man admit of no other principle."—Dr. Brown cor. "Some considerable time and care were necessary."—Id. "In consequence of this idea, much ridicule and censure have been thrown upon Milton."—Blair ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... a comic poet, and a minute observer of manners and circumstances, that Chaucer excels. In serious and moral poetry he is frequently languid and diffuse, but he springs like Antaeus from the earth when his subject changes to coarse satire or merry narrative' (Hallam, Mid. Ages: Ch. ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... was not often of a personal nature; but he knew his own power, and he sometimes exercised it. Two of his prints, "The Times," produced a memorable quarrel between himself, on one side, and Wilkes and Churchhill, on the other. The satire of the prints of "The Times," which were published in 1762, was directed, not against Wilkes himself, but his political friends, Pitt and Temple; nor is it so biting as to have required Wilkes, in defence of his party, to retaliate upon one with whom he had lived in familiar and friendly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... its fist. The queen was a frivolous woman; she had that worst of failings—a taste for satire. She despised all conventionalities, and trampled all etiquette ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... No satire was intended or taken here, but the two boys, who were practicing their duet in an anthem, laid down the music, and turned their eyes ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... table, was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster; and to hear these literary gourmands talk with such gusto of this writer's delightful style, or of that one's delicious humor, or t' other's brilliant wit and merciless satire, gave one a taste and a relish for the authors so lovingly and heartily commended. Certainly, after hearing the genial, scholarly, gentlemanly lawyer S—— sweetly discourse on the old English divines,—or bluff, burly, good-natured, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... temper," and of "his brutal bluffness." But to such abuse, unseasoned by wit, Mr. Sheridan was not at all likely to have condescended, being well aware that, "as in smooth oil the razor best is set," so satire is whetted to its most perfect keenness by courtesy. His clumsy reporters have, in this, as in almost all other ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... —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 a thousand ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... but of an insult which Spain has received from France in the face of all Rome. Yes, all Rome has witnessed this insult, and these miserable Romans have even dared to dishonor us with irony and satire, and to mock and deride Spain, while they overload you ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... appears rather quaintly in the sermonizing with which he felt called upon to temper the admiration expressed in his articles on Childe Harold, and it is implicit in many of his biographical studies. His own amiability of course influenced all his work. Satire he considered objectionable, "a woman's fault,"[22] as he once called it; though he did not feel himself "altogether disqualified for it by nature."[23] "I have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24] he said. For ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... awhile I tried a bit of satire, and when my son Noah first began to show signs of mental aberration on the subject of a probable flood that would sweep everything before it, and put the whole world out of business save those who would take shares in his International Marine and Zoo Flotation ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... prosecuted in 1657 on the charge of whipping his servant-girl, Mary Cadman, because she lay in bed late in the morning and stole sugar. This incident led to several pamphlets. In The Presbyterian, Lash or Noctroff's Maid Whipt (1661), a satire on Crofton, we read: "It is not only contrary to Gospel but good manners to take up a wench's petticoats, smock and all"; and in the doggerel ballad of "Bo-Peep," which was also written on the same subject, it is said that Crofton should ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... on the humours or follies of classes and professions, of young and old, of men and of women. It sang the lover's hopes or sorrows, or the adventures of some hero of history or romance. It might be a fable, a satire, a libel, a squib, a sacred song or paraphrase, a homily. But about all that it treated it sought to throw more or less the colour of imagination. It appealed to the reader's feelings, or sympathy, or passion. It attempted to raise its subject above the level of mere matter ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... from their easy conquests before they received this proclamation which spoke of mercy in terms that expressed it so poorly. Events which were a cruel satire on Garibaldi's words, and which he had not foreseen, caused his bands to fall into the power of the Pontifical troops, so that it was they who sued for pardon and obtained it. It can even be said that on this occasion the generosity of the soldiers of the Pope was ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... grow on the scented plains of Perigord. Out of the primitive and holy horror which adultery caused him and the investigation which he had thoughtlessly made, there was born one morning a trifling thought in which his ideas were formulated. This thought was really a satire upon marriage. It was as follows: A husband and wife found themselves in love with each other for the first time after ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... "Tender and delicately sympathetic picture"—"Generous appreciation!" She laughed feebly. The editor was pleased to be facetious. Having a fine sense of humor himself he showed his realization of the story by acknowledging it in the same vein of subtle satire. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... renowned for singing over their grievances. Of that country it has been remarked with some truth, that its whole history may be traced in its songs. When Law, by the utter failure of his best-laid plans, rendered himself obnoxious, satire of course seized hold upon him; and while caricatures of his person appeared in all the shops, the streets resounded with songs, in which neither he nor the regent was spared. Many of these songs were far from decent; and one of them in particular counselled ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... blue. Sergeant Little says, he had the night before one corn nubbin and that day a piece of pumpkin of the size of two fingers and sat on the fence eating it, while the prisoners stacked arms and thought of the 10th Satire of Juvenal and ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... which he held, or had held, were generally those to which no very arduous duties were attached. In severe debates he never took upon himself the brunt of opposition oratory. What he said in the House was generally short and pleasant,—with some slight, drolling, undercurrent of uninjurious satire running through it. But he was a walking miracle of the wisdom of common sense. He never lost his temper. He never made mistakes. He never grew either hot or cold in a cause. He was never reckless ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... PERSONAL MERIT: We shall consider every attribute of the mind, which renders a man an object either of esteem and affection, or of hatred and contempt; every habit or sentiment or faculty, which if ascribed to any person, implies either praise or blame, and may enter into any panegyric or satire of his character and manners. The quick sensibility which, on this head, is so universal among mankind, gives a philosopher sufficient assurance that he can never be considerably mistaken in framing the catalogue, or incurs any danger of misplacing ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... modern works,—it is noticeable that Rabelais, Montaigne and Sterne have trusted for the currency of their writings, in a great degree, to the use of obscene and sensual stimulants. Rabelais, besides, was full of contemporary and personal satire; and seems to have been a champion in the great cause of his time,—as was Montaigne also,—that of the right of thought in all competent minds, unrestrained by any outward authority. Montaigne, moreover, contains more pleasant and lively gossip, and more distinct good-humored ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon His name." Had he known the words they would have seemed a satire in ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... was a great cosmic artist of infinite satire, making of humanity little stereopticon slides which he slipped in front of his calcium and flashed upon the clouds for a screen. When the war was done the stereopticon was smashed. The slides remain. What shall we do ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... the winter in the house of Hal of Sida. Thangbrand proclaimed Christianity in Iceland, and on his persuasion Hal and all his house people, and many other chiefs, allowed themselves to be baptized; but there were many more who spoke against it. Thorvald Veile and Veterlide the skald composed a satire about Thangbrand; but he killed them both outright. Thangbrand was two years in Iceland, and was the death of three men before ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... It is a product of superior intelligence—not a Sketch Book, but a single canvas with an infinitude of details; not a Sentimental Journey—although Heine can outdo Sterne in sentimentality, he too persistently outdoes him also in satire—the work, fragmentary and outwardly formless, is in essence thoroughly informed by a two-fold purpose: to ridicule pedantry and philistinism, and to extol nature and the life of those uncorrupted by ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... melodious information that Musquito had pecked badly twice at Tollygunge that morning, and smiled with pathetic philosophy. "Always let 'em use their noses," said Fillimore, and there seemed to be satire in it. Fillimore certainly had a flair, and when Beryl Stace presently demanded of him, "What's the dead bird going to be on Saturday, Filly?" he put it generously at her service. Among the friends of Mr. Stanhope ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... poem, with incidental satire, which enjoyed the favor of all medieval Europe. The earliest German attempt to weave a continuous narrative out of the animal-stories that had previously been current in Latin, and to some extent in French, was that of an Alsatian poet, Heinrich der Glichezare, ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... imagining us and our arts and sciences and religions, and is narrating or picturing us as a satire ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Marshall, Sr., also wrote a history of Kentucky. Colleges were being established, and young men were being trained in classical lore and oratory. Among the prominent orators of the early day were Thomas F. Marshall and Richard M. Menefee. The genius, ready wit, satire, and forensic power of Marshall made him a favorite with all audiences at all times; but unfortunately his habit of intemperance lessened his powers and closed his career. The oratory of Menefee was so pleasing and convincing as to cause him to ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank |
