"Poetic justice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... paper, already sufficiently prolonged, should draw to a close. It is a source of great mortification to me that I cannot find some very disagreeable thing to say of De Quincey, merely as a matter of poetic justice; for assuredly he was in the habit of saying all the malicious things he could about his friends. If there was anything in a man's face or shape particularly uncouth, you might trust De Quincey for noticing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was concerned, the above was poetic justice. He was the minister who, in old time, told a deputation from the Astronomical Society that the Government "did not care twopence for all the science in the country." There may be some still alive who remember this: I heard it from more than one of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... knows no fears Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears: Calm temperance, whose blessings those partake Who hunger, and who thirst for scribbling sake: Prudence, whose glass presents the approaching jail: Poetic justice, with her lifted scale, Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, And solid pudding against empty praise. Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep, Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep, Till genial Jacob,[189] or a warm third day, Call forth each mass, a poem, ...
— English Satires • Various
... treatment of such subjects, can condescend to such weapons is one of the wonders of modern journalism. For the persecution of Kepler, see Heller, Geschichte der Physik, vol. i, pp. 281 et seq; also Reuschle, Kepler und die Astronomie, Frankfurt a. M., 1871, pp. 87 et seq. There is a poetic justice in the fact that these two last-named books come from Wurtemberg professors. See also The New-Englander ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... incident of Rabelaisian quality, he threw himself back in his chair in a fit of laughter, and slipping on the polished floor, was thrown with great force on his head and killed almost instantaneously. This was indeed the violent and sudden death of the strong, licentious man; poetic justice could have devised no more fitting end ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... tangible things is the natural medium of expression. The other parallels the actual with a suggestion of an ideal rhythmically consonant with the motive underlying the fact. Justice, for example, deals in prose fashion with a crime and awards the punishment which the law allows; poetic justice suggests such recompense as would come of itself in a community perfectly organized. The prose of life is honest living, a worthy endeavor to do the best one can in the world as it is; the poetry of life is the feeling for, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... his exploit was, it lacked the fulness of poetic justice, since the chief offender escaped him. While Gourgues was sailing towards Florida, Menendez was in Spain, high in favor at court, where he told to approving ears how he had butchered the heretics. Borgia, the sainted General of the Jesuits, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... "unquestionably the noblest production of Addison's genius," but acknowledge that its success had "introduced, or confirmed among us, the use of dialogue too declamatory, of unaffecting elegance and chill philosophy." On the other hand Addison had small regard for poetic justice, which Johnson thought ought to be observed. Addison praised old English ballads, which Johnson thought mean and foolish; and he guardedly commends[23] "the fairy way of writing," a romantic ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... deliberately. "If he does, you'll admit that he will hang on the gallows that he has built himself—although intended for another. I'faith! He's not the first booby to be caught in his own springe. There is in this a measure of poetic justice. Poetry and justice! Do you know, Ruth, they are two things I have ever loved?" And he took a pinch of ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... human source: by a kind of poetic justice the great crowd of men will ignore the method. If you want to impose a taboo upon a whole community, you must do it autocratically, you must make it part of the prevailing superstitions. You must never let it reach any public analysis. For it will fail, it will receive only a shallow ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... adhered to from the proclamation of the Republic, showed him how to be disloyal and untrue. The tragedy is one which is bound to be deeply studied throughout the whole world when the facts are properly known and there is time to think about them, and if there is anything today left to poetic justice the West will know to whom to ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... medal, and her medal came down tails. Heads or tails? Heads for generations. Then tails. See the poetic justice. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... those undefinable, mechanical, prosaic, psuedo-scientific conditions which make our lives so different from those of our fathers. Everything is terribly sudden nowadays, and alarmingly quick. Lovers make love across Europe by telegraph, and poetic justice arrives in less than forty-eight hours by the Oriental Express. Divorce is our weapon of precision, and every pack of cards at the gaming table can distil a poison more destructive than that of the Borgia. The unities of time and place are preserved by wire and rail in a way which would ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford |
