Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Satire
Why should we fear; and what? The laws?
They all are armed in virtue’s cause;
And aiming at the self-same end,
Satire is always virtue’s friend.
Churchill—Ghost. Bk. III. L. 943.
Unless a love of virtue light the flame,
Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame;
He hides behind a magisterial air
His own offences, and strips others’ bare.
Cowper—Charity. L. 490.
Difficile est satiram non scribere.
It is difficult not to write satire.
Juvenal—Satires. I. 29.
Men are more satirical from vanity than from malice.
La Rochefoucauld—Maxims. No. 608.
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.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague—To the Imitator of the First Satire of Horace. (Pope.)
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.
John Oldham—Satire upon a Printer. L. 36.
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.
Pope—Prologue to Satires. L. 201.
Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
Pope—Prologue to Satires. L. 307. (“Sporus,” Lord John Hervey.)
There are, to whom my satire seems too bold;
Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough,
And something said of Chartres much too rough.
Pope—Second Book of Horace. Satire I. L. 2.
Satire’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet
To run amuck and tilt at all I meet.
Pope—Second Book of Horace. Satire I. L. 71.
It is a pretty mocking of the life.
Timon of Athens. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 35.
La satire ment sur les gens de lettres pendant leur vie, et l’éloge ment après leur mort.
Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
Voltaire—Lettre à Bordes. Jan. 10, 1769.