C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Satire
Satire is the disease of art.
Wit larded with malice.
No sword bites so fiercely as an evil tongue.
The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.
Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away.
Thou shining supplement of public law!
Pointed satire runs him through and through.
Among those who are able to understand it, satire has a power of fascination that no other written thing possesses.
To lash the vices of a guilty age.
Satirists do expose their own ill nature.
Undeserved merit is satire.
Fools are my theme; let satire be my song.
Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.
Satire should, like a polished razor keen, wound with a touch that is scarcely felt or seen.
In the present state of the world it is difficult not to write lampoons.
A bitter jest, when the satire comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind.
The feathered arrow of satire has oft been wet with the heart’s blood of its victims.
Satire lies about men of letters during their lives, and eulogy after their death.
When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
By satire kept in awe, shrink from ridicule, though not from law.
Men are more satirical from vanity than from malice.
Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem.
Satire often proceeds less from ill nature than a desire to display wit.
Satire that is seasonable and just is often more effectual than law or gospel.
Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.
The laughter which it creates is impish and devilish, the very mirth of fiends, and its wit the gleam and glare of infernal light.
Satire recoils whenever charged too high; round your own fame the fatal splinters fly.
You must not think that a satiric style allows of scandalous and brutish words; the better sort abhor scurrility.
It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
He that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others’ memory.
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.
Lampoons and satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.
Lampoons, like squibs, may make a present blaze; but time and thunder pay respect to bays.
Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health’s sake.
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.
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.
Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world.
Satires and lampoons on particular people circulate more by giving copies in confidence to the friends of the parties, than by printing them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But the most annoying of all public reformers is the personal satirist. Though he may be considered by some few as a useful member of society, yet he is only ranked with the hangman, whom we tolerate because he executes the judgment we abhor to do ourselves, and avoid with a natural detestation of his office. The pen of the one and the cord of the other are inseparable in our minds.
Satirical writers and speakers are not half so clever as they think themselves, nor as they are thought to be. They do winnow the corn, it is true, but it is to feed upon the chaff. I am sorry to add that they who are always speaking ill of others are also very apt to be doing ill to them. It requires some talent and some generosity to find out talent and generosity in others, though nothing but self-conceit and malice are needed to discover or to imagine faults. It is much easier for an ill-natured man than for a good-natured man to be smart and witty.