Satire Quotes - Page 2

• Lampoons, like squibs, may make a present blaze; but time and thunder pay respect to bays.

  Edmund Waller

  May, Pay, Thunder

  Edmund Waller (1806). “The Poetical Works of Edmund Waller ...”, p.105

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• The feathered arrow of satire has oft been wet with the heart's blood of its victims.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Heart, Blood, Arrows

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• Satire is not a social dynamite. But it is a social indicator: it shows that new men are knocking at the door.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Men, Doors, Social

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.

  James Thurber

  Witty, Stupid, Trying

  Letter to Malcolm Cowley on March 11, 1954. "Collecting Himself". Book by James Thurber, 1989.

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• Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain.

  Paul Klee

  God, Sarcasm, Men

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.122, Univ of California Press

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• Though folly, robed in purple, shines, Though vice exhausts Peruvian mines, Yet shall they tremble and turn pale When satire wields her mighty flail.

  Charles Churchill

  Purple, Shining, Vices

  Charles Churchill (1822). “The Poems of Charles Churchill ...”, p.77

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• Satirists do expose their own ill nature.

  Isaac Watts

  Ill, Satirist

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• I like the George Romero films, which were really great, social satire movies; really twisted.

  John Cusack

  Film, Twisted, Social

  "John Cusack for “Identity”". Interview with Paul Fischer, www.darkhorizons.com. April 14, 2003.

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• It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.

  Jonathan Swift

  Sarcasm, Men, Vices

  Jonathan Swift (1861). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Cop'ous Notes and Additions”, p.612

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• For a young and presumptuous poet a disposition to write satires is one of the most dangerous he can encourage. It tempts him to personalities, which are not always forgiven after he has repented and become ashamed of them.

  Robert Southey

  Writing, Personality, Poet

  William Cowper, Robert Southey (1853). “The Works of William Cowper: Comprising His Poems, Correspondence, and Translations”, p.226

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• Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, I think, author of the oldest satire that is now extant, and, as some say, of the first that was ever written.

  Joseph Addison

  Thinking, Generations, Firsts

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.178

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• Satire is tragedy plus time.

  Lenny Bruce

  Tragedy, Human Nature, Plus

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• A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and should make a due discrimination between those that are and those that are not the proper objects of it.

  Joseph Addison

  Discrimination, Should, Objects

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• It seems like there's a lot of people who just do not understand satire. They think it's weird. There's people who just don't understand you portray something or just explore a character, it means you're condoning it, saying this is the way to live.

  Mike Judge

  Character, Mean, Thinking

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• Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.

  Joseph Addison

  Dresses, May, Manners

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• If you're going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can't be politically correct when you do that.

  John Cusack

  Criticism, Social, Absurdity

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• Most satirists are indeed a public scourge; Their mildest physic is a farrier's purge; Their acrid temper turns, as soon as stirr'd, The milk of their good purpose all to curd. Their zeal begotten, as their works rehearse, By lean despair upon an empty purse.

  William Cowper

  Despair, Milk, Purpose

  William Cowper (1853). “The Poetical Works of William Cowper: With Life ; Six Engravings on Steel”, p.78

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• The end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction; and he who writes honestly is no more an enemy to the offender than the physician to the patient when he prescribes harsh remedies.

  John Dryden

  Writing, Enemy, Vices

  John Dryden (1850). “The Poetical Works of John Dryden”, p.123

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• Should a writer single out and point his raillery at particular persons, or satirize the miserable, he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man if he could please himself.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Might, Miserable

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• Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem.

  John Dryden

  Greek, Bitter

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• It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Distance, Government, Rome

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• Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Latin, Poet, Models

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• Satire is what closes Saturday night.

  Juvenal

  Night, Saturday Night, Saturday

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• Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health's sake.

  Samuel Richardson

  Friendly, Veins, May

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• A little wit and a great deal of ill-nature will furnish a man for satire; but the greatest instance of wit is to commend well.

  John Tillotson

  Men, Littles, Wit

  John Tillotson (1819). “The wisdom of being religious”, p.185

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