"Satire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dialogue, should dive into these pages. Room for the exercise of the invention might, it is true, be found; but ours is a tale of sad reality, and our heroes and heroines figure under circumstances that would render wit a satire upon the understanding, and love a reflection upon the heart. Within the bounds of probability have ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... if 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 cane had ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... I ain't tech yo' globe!" cried the negress, with the anger of an illiterate person who feels, but cannot understand, the satire leveled at her. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... he remarked with a touch of satire in his voice, "I can tell you that much, if you're all mixed up. We're squattin' on the remains of our bloomin' bridge, which used to cross the river in front of Carson; yes-siree, and we seem to be takin' an unexpected ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 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 ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... to offend these banished men, it may be allowable to remark that the light-hearted, careless inconsistency of the Sarmatian character does justify in some degree the satire of the Parisians, who, by the bye, would behave in like circumstances exactly as the Poles do. The French aristocracy, so nobly succored during the Revolution by the Polish lords, certainly did not return the kindness in 1832. ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... and his hands. When in employment he is economical and lays up his wages. When out of employment and in town, his money generally goes freely. As a class, the lumbermen are intelligent. They are strong talkers, for they put in a good many of the larger sort of words; and from their pungent satire and sledge-hammer style of reasoning, are by no means very facile disputants. They are preeminently jokers. This is as they appear on their way to the woods. During the season of their active labor ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... time amid the Steppes of Bessarabia, has left us wonderful pictures of the wandering tribes and their savage life. Many Russians consider the Evgenie Oniegin of Pushkin to be his best effort. It is a powerfully written love-story, full of sketches of modern life, interspersed with satire and pathos. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... first publication of Walter Harte's An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad,[1] it has reappeared more than once: the unsold sheets of the first edition were included in A Collection of Pieces in Verse and Prose, Which Have Been Publish'd on Occasion of the Dunciad (1732), and the Essay is also found in at least ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... treatment of serious subjects gives many readers a false and distorted view of life. Humor does not depend on ridicule or satire. The fads and foibles of humanity can be good-naturedly exposed in humorous articles that have no sting. Although many topics may very properly be treated lightly, others demand a ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... devoured, Channing's works. I found a splendid copy of Voltaire in the Holkham library, and hunted through the endless volumes, till I came to the 'Dialogues Philosophiques.' The world is too busy, fortunately, to disturb its peace with such profane satire, such withering sarcasm as flashes through an 'entretien' like that between 'Frere Rigolet' and 'L'Empereur de la Chine.' Every French man of letters knows it by heart; but it would wound our English susceptibilities were I to cite it here. Then, too, the impious ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... quite perfect," she said, in her rather deep voice, gazing at the young composer with eyes in which a light satire twinkled. "Don't think I'm criticizing it. Only I'm so dreadfully un-English, and I think English musicians get rather into a groove. The Hallelujah bow-wow, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... minor pieces, but his music did not attract public attention until his return to Paris, when his three-act opera, "Clari," brought out Dec. 9, 1828, with Malibran in the principal role, made a success. "Le Dilettante d'Avignon" (a satire on Italian librettos), "Manon Lescaut" (a ballet in three acts), "La Langue Musicale," "La Tentation," and "Les Souvenirs" rapidly followed "Clari," with alternating successes and failures. In 1835 ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... delineation; but the qualities which first and most naturally attracted attention, were rather his excellent judgment of character, at once just and generous, his fine perception and command of wit and quiet humour, rarely, if ever, allowed to deviate into satire or sarcasm, and the refinement, taste, and precision with which he clothed his ideas, whether in writing or in conversation. From the boisterous or extravagant he seemed instinctively to recoil, both in society ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Wild," published 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 disclaimed in his preface any attempt on his part at authentic history ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... treason against the sovereignty of Nature, who, when making the pia mater of a future peer of England, knows very well the delicate work she has in hand, and takes pains accordingly. It is different when she manufactures a mob of skulls which, by a jumble of worldly accidents, or by the satire of Fortune in her bitterest mood, may ultimately belong to Members of the House of Commons. These she makes, as they make blocks in Portsmouth-yard, a hundred a minute. All she has to do is to fulfil her contract with the world, taking care that there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... temperamental congenials who found a unique pleasure in their Sunday evening meetings. None of them was of the acknowledged literary successes of the university: their names were not those seen every week in the undergraduate journals. And yet this obscure group, which had drawn together in a spirit of satire, had in it two or three men of real gift. Forbes himself was a man of uncommon vivacity. Small, stocky, with an unruly thatch of yellow hair and a quaintly wry and homely face, he hid his shyness and his brilliancy behind a brusque manner. ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... keen though good-natured satire. There was a flood of crimson color in her cheeks, not entirely the effect of her brisk walk in the open air. She had a spasm of coughing, which she endured as though such discomforts had become quite a matter of course, merely remarking when she had recovered ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... gentleman's bearing. It is not his fault. It is the fault of another. That gifted and satirical writer, Theodore Tilton, of the 'New York Independent,' spent some weeks recently in this city. His letters published in that paper, embraced, with many serious statements, a little jocose satire, a part of which was the statement that the mantle of the late Winter Davis had fallen upon the member from New York. The gentleman took it seriously, and it has given his strut additional pomposity. The resemblance is great. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... almost two years after "Une Vie," that is to say, about 1885. Discussed and criticised as it has been, it is in reality a satire, an indignant outburst against the corruption of society which in the story enables an ex-soldier, devoid of conscience, honor, even of the commonest regard for others, to gain wealth and rank. The purport of ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... the window and went back to my chair. I had some thoughts of working up my vision of Malcolmson and his artillery into a short article of a light kind, slightly humorous, with a vein of satire running through it. I sometimes contribute articles of this kind, under a pseudonym, to a London evening paper. Unfortunately my mind refused to return to the subject. I was worried by the impossibility ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... 1594,[21] yet he cannot have been able to give much time to it till now. Nevertheless, the 'declining and corrupt times' worked on Drayton's mind and grieved and darkened his soul, for we must remember that he was perfectly prosperous then and was not therefore incited to satire by bodily ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... last phrase, as being low. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is intended to be low: it is satire. The expression is debased, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... events, you will allow that the first of them—they call them apostles, don't they?—didn't take to preaching the gospel for the sake of a living. What a satire on the whole kit of them that word living, so constantly in all their mouths, is! It seems to me that Messrs Peter and Paul and Matthew, and all the rest of them, forsook their livings for a good chance of something ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... kindred, lines—almost, in extreme cases, to a kind of atrophy of other parts of the mind. There is the example of Darwin and his self-confessed loss of the aesthetic tastes he once possessed. Nor are scientific studies the only ones to produce such an effect. The amusing satire in The New Republic has, perhaps, lost some of its tang now that the prototype of its Professor of History is almost forgotten, but it has not lost its point. Lady Ambrose tells the tale: "He said to me in a very solemn voice, 'What a terrible defeat that was which ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... speech against the Mexican War, though unfortunate as a political event, has always been regarded as one of the most eloquent ever made in either House of Congress. His speech in reply to Crary, of Michigan, is still remembered as the best specimen of humorous satire in our language. He had served in the legislature of Ohio, as a Member of Congress for ten years, as Governor of Ohio, as a Member of the Senate, and as Secretary of the Treasury. After an absence from public life for six years, he was elected a Member of the 36th Congress. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... his own race and breeding; for Lambert, Abbot of Sheering, came of the great Norman house of Clare, which had taken Stephen's side in the Civil War, a fact which did not prevent the aristocratic abbot from talking with gentle satire and occasional bitter sarcasm about the emptiness of ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... the tribunal," he began, and then went on with a compliment to the King, a flourish to the name of the Prime Minister, a word of praise to the army, and finally a scathing satire on the subversive schemes which it was desired to set up in place of existing institutions. The most crushing denunciation of the delirious idea which had led to the unhappy insurrection was the crude explanation of its aims. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... what the queen really did that day, instead of writing these lines against her, and consequently against me, you would have written an ode in her favor. Perhaps the subject does not inspire you; but I should have liked a bad ode better than a good satire." ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... to its grossest ends in the prints of Hogarth; but our morals stand none the looser for any of them. As the spirit of the Frenchman was pure enjoyment, the strength of the Englishmen lay in wisdom and satire. The low was set forth to pull down the false pretensions of the high. And though for the most part they differ in manner and design from Dickens in this tale, desiring less to discover the soul ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... to as America's "Bernard Shaw," and as America's wittiest woman. Satire sparkles through her writings. Her observations on the foibles of men and women, the joys and sorrows of love and marriage, and the relief or the lack of it in divorce are always brilliant and entertaining, yet always "said with a smile." Helen, ...
— What's in the New York Evening Journal - America's Greatest Evening Newspaper • New York Evening Journal
... an honest compiler, save his own. Wherefore, the choice of these selections, like kissing, went by favor. As to the arrangement of them, every compiler will tell you that Classification is Vexation. And why not? When many a poem may be both Parody and Satire,—both Romance and Cynicism. Wherefore, the compiler sorted with loving care the selections here presented striving to do justice to the verses themselves, and taking a chance on the tolerant ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... diversions of Quebec. The Marquis de Tracy's ball far back in 1667 had given grievous offence to the Jesuits, and the unholy acting of plays was now declared an open profanity. Nicomede and Mithridate were condemned as immoral; but when Tartuffe, Moliere's mordant satire upon religious hypocrisy, was put upon the boards, the limits of endurance were ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... is Bixiou, he will come too," cried Blondet; "there is no fun without him. Without him champagne cloys my tongue, and I find everything insipid, even the pepper of satire." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... though of invisible beauty, is represented as delightful in every other way, as wise and witty and gracious in speech as becomes a white witch. And when her lover on one occasion thanks her for her sermon, there is no satire; ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... 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 ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Mr. Longworth was not prepossessing. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, and rarely spared the object of his satire. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more like a beggar than a millionaire. He cared nothing for dress, except, perhaps, that he preferred common clothes to fine ones. One of his acquaintances relates the following story in ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... tragedy of The Mourning Bride. But he would be wrong; and, in fact, would only be confirming the real author's contention that "Sure, of all blockheads, Scholars are the worst." For, whether connected with Congreve or not, the words are correctly given; and they occur in the Rev. James Bramston's satire, The Man of Taste, 1733, running in a ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... 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 of detestation ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... added in all cases a third, but occasionally a fourth, fifth, sixth, even a seventh course; and at the fall of the empire, barbarian taste uniting with the blase luxury of Rome, heaped viand upon viand, and course upon course, till the satire of a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... Bedford Head, which was described in 1736 as "a noted tavern for eating, drinking, and gaming, in Southampton Street, Covent Garden," was decidedly out of the ordinary. In his imitation of the second satire of Horace he makes Oldfield, the notorious glutton who exhausted a fortune of fifteen hundred pounds a year in the "simple luxury ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... world-famed songs, to amaze the learned by his descriptions of a country which he had never seen, and to fling out those poetical hand grenades, those pasquinades and squibs, whose rich humour and keenly-pointed satire had so much influence on the politics of the day. It was in this century that Sheridan, who was the first to introduce Moore to London society, distinguished himself at once as dramatist, orator, and statesman, and left in his ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... The satire against Giulio de Medicis, which we find in his works, having made it necessary for him to leave Rome, he returned to Como, where he married Abondia Rezzonica. The same Giulio de Medicis, having become pope under ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... his familiar letters. In such a book as Friendship's Garland, where it is most in evidence, it is plainly a literary weapon deliberately assumed. In fact, Arnold is almost too conscious of the value of humor in the gentle warfare in which he had enlisted. Its most frequent form is that of playful satire; it is the product of keen wit and sane mind, and it is always directed toward some serious purpose, rarely, if ever, existing as an end ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 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 ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... a fresh supply of provision, and come back, turning my back upon the world, which has turned 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 supplying myself ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... early life a prominent figure among the French romanticists, wrote some capital satire upon the baffling and contradictory definitions of the word romantisme that were current in the third and fourth decades of this century.[18] Two worthy provincials write from the little town of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre to the editor of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... by way of illustration, the enigmatical proverb, "He lets his hasty-pudding stand over night, hoping that it will learn to talk." Only the rarest penetration would discover in this seemingly absurd statement a satire upon the man who has a disagreeable confession to make or an unpleasant message to deliver, and who puts it off until to-morrow, hoping that the duty will then be easier of performance. Again: what would a West European make of such a proverb ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... of the House there are vestiges of the despotic leadership even now. A cynical politician is said to have watched the long row of county members, so fresh and respectable-looking, and muttered, "By Jove, they are the finest brute votes in Europe!" But all satire apart, the principle of Parliament is obedience to leaders. Change your leader if you will, take another if you will, but obey No. 1 while you serve No. 1, and obey No. 2 when you have gone over to No. 2. The penalty of not doing so, is the penalty of impotence. It is not ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... Saraband They danced in vanished years, But Love and Satire hand-in-hand, And laughter linked with tears, And Youth equipped his dove to win, And Age, who grudged the boon;— Sweet Columbine, bold ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... K. Chesterton: Napoleon of Notting Hill, p. 291. The whole book is a brilliant satire, intended to show that all of the heroic sentiments and virtues depend on war and ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... he mentioned the names of five Reformers who, after the Raid, had been condemned to death by President Kruger, and added that he had paid their fine of twenty-five thousand pounds each. "Yes," he continued, with a certain grim accent of satire in his voice, "I paid L25,000 for each of these gentlemen." And when one of his guests tactlessly remarked, "But surely you need not have done so, Mr. Rhodes? It was tacitly admitting that you had been a party to their enterprise!" he retorted immediately, ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... completed form is a history of the three Dutch governors of New York, whom Irving uses as a stalking-horse for purposes of satire. Everybody laughed at it except a few descendants of the old Dutch worthies with whose names and characters he had made free. As late as the year 1818, G. C. Verplanck, a personal friend of Irving's, called him to account in an address before the New York Historical Society, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... said Athos, "that will only die with ourselves. Friendship is composed, above all things, of memories and habits, and if you have just now made a little satire upon mine, because I hesitate to tell you the nature of my ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and his genuine British love of liberty. The cycling scorcher and the motoring road-hog are two abominations which he most naturally holds in the greatest contempt. Against them he is never tired of directing his most scathing satire; but while this is entirely praiseworthy it tends a little to give a false impression of his attitude towards two of the most delightful sports which modern ingenuity has invented. After all, the scorcher and the road-hog are the least representative followers of the ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... be so blind. A story of this kind is food for the bitterest cynic. He who has the most utter contempt for the race to which he belongs might find here almost a justification of his scorn. Oh what a satire upon human nature, that a whole city full of people, men, women, mothers and daughters, had come to this pass that they could not discern which was the nobler of these two—nay, thought that Barabbas was more deserving ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... they compared the conduct of M. de Machault with that of M. de Richelieu, at Metz. Madame had related to them the circumstances extremely to the honour of the Duke, and, by contrast, the severest satire on the Keeper of the Seals. "He thinks, or pretends to think," said she, "that the priests will be clamorous for my dismissal; but Quesnay and all the physicians declare that there is not the slightest danger." Madame having sent ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... accepted the hand of Mr. Thomas A. Trollope, a barrister, and the cares and duties of married life for some years diverted her energies into a different channel. The true bent of her talents—a sharp, bold, and somewhat coarse satire—she did not discover until after her visit to the United States (1829-1831). There she conceived an antipathy to American manners and customs, which seems to have awakened her powers of sarcasm, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... 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 that I have a wild young father ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... Christianity was repugnant to their materialism, and the symbolism of its art, expressed under rigid, graceless forms, offended eyes that craved beauty of line and beauty of colour. They ignored or condemned any ulterior purpose of art as a teaching medium for spiritual truths. To such men, a satire of Juvenal was more precious than an epistle of St. Paul; dogma, they demolished with epigrams, the philosophy of the schoolmen was a standing joke, and a passage from Plato or Horace outweighed the definitions of ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... me; and complimented us all round, beginning with my father and Madame Rupprecht, and ending with little Alwina. But he a little scoffed at the old-fashioned church ceremonies which my father insisted on; and I fancy Fritz must have taken some of his compliments as satire, for I saw certain signs of manner by which I knew that my future husband, for all his civil words, had irritated and annoyed my brother. But all the money arrangements were liberal in the extreme, and more than satisfied, almost surprised, my father. Even Fritz ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... whether any of them survive among the poems recognized as his. He tells us that his first literary model was Archilochus (Ep. I, xix, 24), a Greek poet of 700 B.C., believed to have been the inventor of personal satire, whose stinging pen is said to have sometimes driven its victims to suicide. For a time also he imitated a much more recent satirist, Lucilius, whom he rejected later, as disliking both the harshness of his style and the scurrilous character of his verses. ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... he finds it pervaded by intrigues and snobbery he proceeds to satirize it and point out its moral evils. In his novels he is influenced by Swift and Fielding, but he is entirely free from the bitterness of the one and the coarseness of the other, and his satire is generally softened by a noble tenderness. Taken together, the novels of Dickens and Thackeray give us a remarkable picture of all classes of English society in the middle of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... [22] This romantic spirit lingered in Castile, long after the age of chivalry had become extinct in other parts of Europe, continuing to nourish itself on those illusions of fancy, which were at length dispelled by the caustic satire ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... published some time before the Sonnets of Mr. Bowles; but I was not familiar with it till many years afterwards. The vein of satire which runs through that excellent poem, together with the sombre hue of its religious opinions, would probably, at that time, have prevented its laying any strong hold on my affections. The love of nature ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... once their own unshadowed grace. But here in our dear poet both are blended— Ripe age begun, yet golden youth not ended;— Even as his song the willowy scent of spring Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing, And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun, In strains that ever delicately run; So musical and wise, page after page, The sage a minstrel grows, the bard a sage. The dew of youth fills yet his late-sprung flowers, And day-break glory haunts his evening hours. Ah, such a life prefigures ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Elder Brother," is full of pathos and about equally full of false notes. If we turn to a far different subject, the very vigorously conceived "Natural Death of Love," we find a piece of strong and true satire, the best thing of its kind in the author, which is kept up throughout. Although, like all satire, it belongs at best but to the outer courts of poetry, it is so good that none can complain. Then the page is turned ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum novam telluris theoriam ac historiam quintae monarchi ad huc nobis incognitae exhibens e bibliotheca b. Abelini. Hafniae et Lipsiae sunt. Jac. Preuss', 1741. An admirable Danish translation of this learned but severe satire on the institutions, morals, and manners of the inhabitants of the upper Earth, appeared at Copenhagen in 1789, and was entitled 'Niels Klim's underjordiske reise ocd Ludwig Holberg, oversal after den Latinske original of Jens Baggesen'. Holberg, who studied for a ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... far away from Paris, and the banks of the Marne, young M'sieu!" said the officer, with a touch of satire in his cold voice, and a look toward a man dressed as a civilian, who, Rod noticed, was ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... of 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. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... satire on the belief in "Facts, nothing but Facts" in education, the results developed in a tale of ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... what, prince; a college of witcrackers cannout flout me out of my humour. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? No; if man will be beaten with brains, a' shall wear nothing handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Journal of Henry III., edition of 1744, p. 206, &c. The affair of Loudun took place in the reign of Louis XIII.; and Cardinal Richelieu is accused of having caused this tragedy to be enacted, in order to ruin Urban Grandier, the cure of Loudun, for having written a cutting satire against him. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do. It is the best news that America has ever heard. It has already quickened the feeble pulse of the North, and infused more and more generous blood into her veins and heart, than any number of years of what is called commercial and political ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... themselves as if holding a council. Atahualpa was next brought out. He stood, with downcast looks and hands bound, before his judges, waiting his doom. One man only pleaded his cause, the others brought forth numberless arguments for his condemnation—a good satire on those by which the real Inca was judged to be worthy of death. At length one standing up, pronounced the representative Atahualpa guilty, ordering him to immediate execution. No sooner were the words uttered, than there arose from the crowd such shrieks and cries, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... entered the army and rose to the rank of colonel. He was killed at the siege of Gibraltar, on the 27th of February 1782. His first published work was a rhymed tragedy, Don Sancho Garcia, Conde de Castilla (1771). In the following year he published his Eruditos a la Violeta, a prose satire on superficial knowledge, which was very successful. In 1773 appeared a volume of miscellaneous poems, Ocios de mi juventud, and after his death there was found among his MSS. a series of fictitious letters in the style of the Lettres Persanes; these were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... perhaps) by the trait of Falconer's devotion to St. Catharine. So also, as the fair hand of Lady Clarinda, despite some hard knocks administered to her father and brother, had beckoned Peacock away from his cut-and-dried satire of the aristocracy, so now Lord Curryfin exhibits a further stage of reconciliation. In short, all those elements of society to which very young men, not wanting either in brains or heart, often take crude and fanciful objection, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... to tell his story in the manner of some other man. I can conceive the events of this part of my narration being interpreted in the spirit of the wildest farce, of the genteelest comedy, of the most humorous satire—"Other men, Other gifts." I am a dull and pompous fellow, as Semyonov often tells me; and I hope that I never allowed him to see how deeply I felt the ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... may observe that the Beauty of this Epigram is different from that of any in the foregoing. An Irony is look'd upon as the finest Palliative of Praise; and very often conveys the noblest Panegyrick under the Appearance of Satire. Homer is here seemingly accused and treated as a Plagiary; but what is drawn up in the form of an Accusation is certainly, as my Correspondent observes, the greatest Compliment that could have been paid to that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of a higher polish.... On the whole, we may safely leave the ungrateful task of criticism to the reader. We will barely suggest, that in volumes intended, as this is, for the illustration of a provincial dialect and turns of expression, a dash of humor or satire might be thrown in with advantage.... The work is admirably got up.... This work will form an appropriate ornament to the centre table. It is beautifully printed, on paper of an ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Almanzor is well known as the original of Drawcansir, in "The Rehearsal," into whose mouth parodies of some of Dryden's most extravagant flights have been put by the duke of Buckingham. Shaftesbury also, whose family had smarted under Dryden's satire, attempts to trace the applause bestowed on the "Conquest of Granada" to what he calls "the correspondence and relation between our Royal Theatre and popular Circus, or Bear-Garden. For, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... preponderate, provoking as counterweights didactic works such as Der Krieg auf der Wartburg. The fourteenth century saw the rise of the free cities, literary guilds, and five universities. It also marks the cultivation of political satire in such works as Reinecke Fuchs, and of narrative prose chronicles like the Lueneburger, Alsatian, and Thuringian Chronicles, which are sometimes termed prose epics. The Volksbuecher also date from this time, and have preserved for us many ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... bow," he said more soberly. "You employ femininity's imperfect warrant to shoot at random and trust her gods to put something in the way of getting hit. It's a satire ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... new organist," he remarked, with ferocious satire, five minutes later, as he lit a cigar, "and a new choir—I could see ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... had led them to the slaughter methodically, one after another, with hope flaming in his breast, only to be disappointed time after time. They had merely served to increase the unhappy number which vainly swarmed about her, and to make Bernie himself the target of her satire. Popularity had not spoiled the girl, however; her attitude toward marriage was very sensible beneath the surface, and Bernie's anxious efforts at matchmaking, instead of relieving their financial distress, merely served to keep him in the antique business. Miss Warren loved ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... are evidently the expression of a devout and earnest mind. His praise of the Virgin and his references to Mary Magdalene have suggested that he was a Catholic, but his prose writings abundantly prove that he was an ardent Protestant. Breton had little gift for satire, and his best work is to be found in his pastoral poetry. His Passionate Shepheard (1604) is full of sunshine and fresh air, and of unaffected gaiety. The third pastoral in this book—"Who can live in heart ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... right side. "How fond he is of me!" she thought. "A year's waiting is quite a hardship to him." She returned to the house, secretly regretting that she had not heard more of Frank's complimentary complaints. Miss Garth's elaborate satire, addressed to her while she was in this frame of mind, was a purely gratuitous waste of Miss Garth's breath. What did Magdalen care for satire? What do Youth and Love ever care for except themselves? She never even said as much as "Pooh!" this time. She laid ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... and place in Vishnuism have been sufficiently explained. The worship of this god is referred to 'Vedic texts' (the cata-rudriyam, vii. 202. 120);[38] Vishnu is made to adore the terrible god (ib. 201. 69) who appears as a mad ascetic, a wild rover, a monster, a satire on man and gods, though he piously carries a rosary, and has other late traits in his personal appearance.[39] The strength of Civaism lay in the eumenidean (Civa is 'prospering,' 'kindly') euphemism and fear alike, which shrank in speech and mind from the object of fear. But this religion in ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... day a fair proportion of them were sound asleep. Those that were not asleep always looked as if they wanted to be. I never saw such utterly wretched, starving, sad-visaged, broken-hearted looking curs in my life. It seemed a grim satire to accuse such brutes as these of taking things by force of arms. They hardly seemed to have strength enough or ambition enough to walk across the street—I do not know that I have seen one walk that far yet. They are mangy and bruised and mutilated, and often you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... speech at the Madrid Mercantile Club, "If he (the General) thought of becoming dictator, he would fall from the heights of his glory to the Hades of nonentity." His enemies persistently insinuated that he was really returning to Spain to support the clericals actively. But perhaps the bitterest satire was levelled against him in El Pais of May 10, which, in an article headed "The Great Farce," said: "Do you know who is coming? Cyrus, King of Persia; Alexander, King of Macedonia; Caesar Augustus; Scipio the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... nature; we shall see that her yoke is easy and that when we give heed to her voice we find a joy in the answer of a good conscience. The wicked fears and flees from her; he delights to escape from himself; his anxious eyes look around him for some object of diversion; without bitter satire and rude mockery he would always be sorrowful; the scornful laugh is his one pleasure. Not so the just man, who finds his peace within himself; there is joy not malice in his laughter, a joy which springs from his own heart; he is as cheerful alone as ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Pao-ch'ai entered unannounced, and began to gibe Pao-yue, with trenchant irony: how that on the fifteenth of the first moon, he had shown ignorance of the allusion to the green wax; and the three of them then indulged in that room in mutual poignant satire, for the sake of fun. Pao-yue had been giving way to solicitude lest Tai-yue should, by being bent upon napping soon after her meal, be shortly getting an indigestion, or lest sleep should, at night, be completely dispelled, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... 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 ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... hitherto had been her pride, she now only recollected with shame and with sadness. The terror of the first interview never ceased to be present to her; she shrunk even in imagination from her wrath-darting eye, she felt stung by pointed satire, and ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... and self-possest tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with matchless richness of illustration, with apt allusion and happy anecdote and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious pathos, with stinging satire, with crackling epigram and limpid humor, like the bright ripples that play around the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship. Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with concentrated and perfumed fire. The divine energy ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... into a footnote as a kind of cowardly corroboration. Nor are our other novelists much better. Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty, and wastes upon mean motives and imperceptible "points of view" his neat literary style, his felicitous phrases, his swift and caustic satire. Mr. Hall Caine, it is true, aims at the grandiose, but then he writes at the top of his voice. He is so loud that one cannot bear what he says. Mr. James Payn is an adept in the art of concealing what is not worth finding. He hunts down the obvious with the ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... the doctor upon this subject. The good doctor heard him out and then, caressing his own chin and looking over the tops of his spectacles, with good-humored satire, he said: ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... peculiar. She sportively rated her lord in the hearing of others, for extravagance in dress, horses and other entertainments; affected to rail at the expense of "keeping a husband," and, now and then, playfully threatened to "cut off supplies" if he did not do this or that. In short, with unintentional satire, she copied to the letter the speech and tone of the average husband ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... honorable men. When Mr. Droomgoole's resolution was read to the House for its consideration, Mr. Adams yielded to it one of those sarcastic sneers which he was in the habit of giving, when provoked to satire; and said—"Mr. Speaker, if I understand the resolution of the honorable gentleman from Virginia, it charges me with being guilty of giving color to an idea!'" The whole House broke forth in one common irrepressible peal of laughter. The Droomgoole ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... conversations. As may be imagined, this scrappy way of writing soon becomes very tiresome from the difficulty the reader has in detecting the hidden meaning of these curt sentences. The book tells the love of Rollo for Wych Hazel, and indulges in gentle satire against parties, round dances, etc. The love-story is made obscure, Rollo's manners are called Spanish, and he is in many ways a peculiar young man. We seem to be dealing much more with notes for a novel than with the ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... outside of school hours. Sadie's tongue was sharp and she was accustomed to a wholesome attitude of fear among the scholars, but her first thrusts at Jake had aroused a demon of which she had little dreamed. Jake had no foolish pride and would admit his faults so guilelessly that her satire fell to the ground. He was an entirely new sort to the spiteful child. The terrible advantage the person who will admit his faults cheerfully has over the one who has pride and evades was never more manifest. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger |
