Satire Quotes
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Unless a love of virtue light the flame, Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame; He hides behind a magisterial air He own offences, and strips others' bare. (Quote by - William Cowper)
The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails. (Quote by - James Joyce)
It is difficult not to write satire. (Quote by - Juvenal)
Satire is what closes Saturday night. (Quote by - Juvenal)
Men are more satirical from vanity than from malice. (Quote by - Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld)
Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen. Thine is an oyster knife, that hacks and hews; The rage but not the talent to abuse. (Quote by - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu)
I wear my Pen as others do their Sword. To each affronting sot I meet, the word Is Satisfaction: straight to thrusts I go, And pointed satire runs him through and through. (Quote by - John Oldham)
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend. (Quote by - Alexander Pope)
Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? (Quote by - Alexander Pope)
There are, to whom my satire seems too bold; Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough, And something said of Chartres much too rough. (Quote by - Alexander Pope)
Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To run amuck and tilt at all I meet. (Quote by - Alexander Pope)
It is a pretty mocking of the life. (Quote by - William Shakespeare)
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own. (Quote by - Jonathan Swift)
Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die. (Quote by - Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire)
The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little - or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives. (Quote by - Anthony Trollope)
There is a place in this world for satire but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs begins. (Quote by - Isaac Hayes)
Verse satire indeed is entirely our own. (Quote by - Quintilian)
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song. (Quote by - Lord Byron)
Pornography is a satire on human pretensions. (Quote by - Angela Carter)
Tomorrow is a satire on today, And shows its weakness. (Quote by - Edward Young)
The trouble with most comedians who try to do satire is that they are essentially brash, noisy and indelicate people who have to use a sledge hammer to smash a butterfly. (Quote by - Imogene Coca)
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. (Quote by - Joseph Addison)
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. (Quote by - Joseph Addison)
Lampoons and satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. (Quote by - Joseph Addison)
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. (Quote by - Joseph Addison)
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. (Quote by - Joseph Addison)
He that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others' memory. (Quote by - Francis Bacon)
Her caustic manner of speaking of friends as well as foes caused Madame du Deffand to be compared to the physician who said: "My friend fell sick--I attended him; he died--I dissected him." (Quote by - J.A. Bent)
Satire often proceeds less from ill nature than a desire to display wit. (Quote by - Lady Marguerite Blessington)
By satire kept in awe, shrink from ridicule, though not from law. (Quote by - Lord Byron)
Satire is the disease of art. (Quote by - Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas de Chamfort)
Though folly, robed in purple, shines, Though vice exhausts Peruvian mines, Yet shall they tremble and turn pale When satire wields her mighty flail. (Quote by - Charles Churchill)
To lash the vices of a guilty age. (Quote by - Charles Churchill)
When satire flies abroad on falsehood's wing, Short is her life, and impotent her sting; But when to truth allied, the wound she gives Sinks deep, and to remotest ages lives. (Quote by - Charles Churchill)
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. (Quote by - William Cowper)
Undeserved merit is satire. (Quote by - Samuel Sullivan Cox)
In general satire, every man perceives A slight attack, yet neither fears nor grieves. (Quote by - George Crabbe)
You must not think that a satiric style allows of scandalous and brutish words; the better sort abhor scurrility. (Quote by - Wentworth Dillon)
The feathered arrow of satire has oft been wet with the heart's blood of its victims. (Quote by - Benjamin Disraeli)
Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem. (Quote by - John Dryden)
Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended. (Quote by - John Dryden)
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. (Quote by - John Dryden)
Of satires I think as Epictetus did, "If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it." By dint of time and experience I have learned to be a good post-horse; I go through my appointed daily stage, and I care not for the curs who bark at me along the road. (Quote by - Frederick)
Wycherley in his writings is the sharpest satirist of his time, but in his nature he has all the softness of the tenderest dispositions. In his writings he is severe, bold, undertaking; in his nature, gentle, modest, inoffensive. (Quote by - George Granville)
Of a bitter satirist it might be said that the person or thing on which his satire fell shriveled up as if the devil had spit on it. (Quote by - Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Satire is a composition of salt and mercury; and it depends upon the different mixture and preparation of these ingredients, that it comes out a noble medicine or a rank poison. (Quote by - Lord Francis Jeffrey)
In the present state of the world it is difficult not to write lampoons. (Quote by - Juvenal)
Among those who are able to understand it, satire has a power of fascination that no other written thing possesses. (Quote by - Stanley Lane-Poole)
Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much; yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirized can join in the satire. (Quote by - Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld)
Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine. (Quote by - James Russell Lowell)
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. (Quote by - Thomas Babington Macaulay)
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. (Quote by - Thomas Babington Macaulay)
Pointed satire runs him through and through. (Quote by - John Oldham)
Whose wound no salve can cure. Each blow doth leave A lasting sear, that with a poison eats Into the marrow of their fame, and lives; Th' eternal ulcer to their memories. (Quote by - Thomas Randolph)
Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health's sake. (Quote by - Samuel Richardson)
In fashionable circles general satire, which attacks the fault rather than the person, is unwelcome; while that which attacks the person and spares the fault is always acceptable. (Quote by - Jean Paul Friedrich Richter)
Satire that is seasonable and just is often more effectual than law or gospel. (Quote by - Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Satires and lampoons on particular people circulate more by giving copies in confidence to the friends of the parties, than by printing them. (Quote by - Richard Brinsley Sheridan)
No sword bites so fiercely as an evil tongue. (Quote by - Sir Philip Sidney)
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. (Quote by - Robert Southey)
The men of the greatest character in this kind were Horace and Juvenal. There is not, that I remember, one ill-natured expression in all their writings, not one sentence of severity, which does not apparently proceed from the contrary disposition. (Quote by - Sir Richard Steele)
It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues. (Quote by - Jonathan Swift)
When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric. (Quote by - Jonathan Swift)
A bitter jest, when the satire comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind. (Quote by - Tacitus)
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. (Quote by - John Tillotson)
Lampoons, like squibs, may make a present blaze; but time and thunder pay respect to bays. (Quote by - Edmund Waller)
In my youth I thought of writing a satire on mankind! but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them. (Quote by - Horace)
Satirists do expose their own ill nature. (Quote by - Isaac Watts)
As men neither fear nor respect what has been made contemptible, all honor to him who makes oppression laughable as well as detestable. Armies cannot protect it then; and walls which have remained impenetrable to cannon have fallen before a roar of laughter or a hiss of contempt. (Quote by - Edwin Percy Whipple)
The laughter which it creates is impish and devilish, the very mirth of fiends, and its wit the gleam and glare of infernal light. (Quote by - Edwin Percy Whipple)
Satire recoils whenever charged too high; round your own fame the fatal splinters fly. (Quote by - Edward Young)
Thou shining supplement of public law! (Quote by - Edward Young)
Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded. (Quote by - Anita Brookner)
I'll publish, right or wrong: Fools are my theme, let satire be my song. (Quote by - Rochdale)
Difficile est saturam non scribere. It is difficult not to write satire. (Quote by - Juvenal)
Satire is a lesson, parody is a game. (Quote by - Vladimir Nabokov)
Let Sporus trembleö'What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk? Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? (Quote by - Alexander Pope)
Why stir the wasps that rim Fame's luscious pot? Love costs us nothing, satire costs a lot! (Quote by - Edgell Rickword)
Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art. (Quote by - Philip Milton Roth)
Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any. (Quote by - Jonathan Swift)
Praise to the undeserving is severe satire. (Quote by - Benjamin Franklin)
Vice is as much a part of human nature as folly, and pornography may be as necessary to vent vice as satire is to vent folly. (Quote by - Mavor Moore)
What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous. (Quote by - Arthur Schlesinger)
When the audience knows you know better, it's satire, but when they think you can't do any better, it's corn. (Quote by - Spike Jones)
A sitcom isn't usually the right tool for satire. (Quote by - Chris Morris)
All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire. (Quote by - Theodor Adorno)
But in terms of satire and comedy, our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine. (Quote by - Jerry Zucker)
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. (Quote by - James Thurber)
Conventional show-biz savvy held that Americans hated to be the objects of satire. (Quote by - Carroll O'Connor)
For years, reality has been nipping at the heels of satire. Now, it's finally caught up. I don't need to make this stuff up. (Quote by - Paul Krassner)
Hollywood is horrible... it's beyond satire. (Quote by - Yahoo Serious)
I like the George Romero films, which were really great, social satire movies; really twisted. (Quote by - John Cusack)
I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me. (Quote by - Tracey Ullman)
I think up until the point when we started in the business, which was in the early '70s, most of the humor was political. The smart humor was political satire. (Quote by - David Zucker)
If you're going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can't be politically correct when you do that. (Quote by - John Cusack)
It is hard for power to enjoy or incorporate humour and satire in its system of control. (Quote by - Dario Fo)
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. (Quote by - Mike Judge)
It struck me that working digitally with a small crew, I could lay out a general plan for Famous and hope for mistakes which would create something more than satire and something less than truthful reality. (Quote by - Griffin Dunne)
People say satire is dead. It's not dead; it's alive and living in the White House. (Quote by - Robin Williams)
Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise. (Quote by - Alexander Pope)
Satire is fascinating stuff. It's deadly serious, and when politics begin to break down, there is a drift towards satire, because it's the only thing that makes any sense. (Quote by - Ben Nicholson)
Satire is focused bitterness. (Quote by - Leo Rosten)
Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out. (Quote by - Dawn Powell)
Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. (Quote by - Molly Ivins)
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it. (Quote by - Lenny Bruce)
The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species. (Quote by - Alan Lomax)
The Irish and British, they love satire, it's a large part of the culture. (Quote by - Ben Nicholson)
The journey of your first movie is not just beyond belief it can be truly beyond satire. (Quote by - Yahoo Serious)
The modern form of things had begun to appeal to me, also (as material for satire) politics, and the lives of the great and little, high up in the social scale. (Quote by - Laurence Housman)
The show is a satire, which gives us freedom to do anything we want. Satire is the magic word that wipes away any culpability. The media is jealous of this freedom. (Quote by - Rob Corddry)
We've managed to keep a spirit of fun, I guess, of urban satire and finding new and odd interesting angles to the ways of life to put on the stage. (Quote by - Adolph Green)
When you look at golf films before us they're all - garbage or satire. A lot of sports films tend to vilify the opposition. Where the opposition becomes this big angry monster, so big you can't beat him. (Quote by - Shia LaBeouf)
You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it. (Quote by - Art Buchwald)
