"Satirical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Roguery, and not a rogue is my subject," he wrote; adding, that the ideas of goodness and greatness are too often confounded together. "A man may be great without being good, or good without being great." The story of "Jonathan Wild" is really a bitter, satirical attack on what Fielding called "the greatness which is totally devoid of goodness." He avowed it his intention "to expose the character of this bombast greatness," and no one can deny the success of his achievement. Surely no story was ever written under more desperate ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... other hand, in spite of all my precautions, the same misfortune which overtook Erewhon has also come upon The Fair Haven. It has been suspected of a satirical purpose. The author of a pamphlet ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... Mr. Joe confidentially to his cigar, as he pulled off his coat and stuck his feet up in the privacy of his own apartment. "She looks as mild as strawberries and cream till you come to the complimentary, then she turns on a fellow with that deused satirical look of hers, and makes him feel like a fool. I'll try the moral dodge to-morrow, and see what effect that will have; for she is mighty taking, and I must amuse myself somehow, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... is familiar with the name of the Abbe Geoffroy of satirical memory, who drove the most popular actors and authors of the time to desperation. This pitiless Aristarchus must have been most ardently enamored of this disagreeable profession; for he sometimes endangered ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... build Golden Palaces of Love, and Castles—in the Air (interrupted her Majesty, Lucy I. smiling.) 'Gad take me (cry'd King Wou'd-be) thou dear Partner of my Greatness, and shalt be, of all my Pleasures! thy pretty satirical Observation has oblig'd me beyond Imitation.' I think your Majesty is got into a Vein of Rhiming to-night, (said Philadelphia.) Ay! Pox of that young insipid Fop, we could else have been as great as an Emperor of China, and as witty as Horace in his Wine; but let him ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... flattery is so cheap, and every man of quality keeps so many flatterers about him, that egad our trade is quite spoil'd; but if I am not paid for this dedication, the next I write shall be a satirical one; if they won't pay me for opening my mouth, I'll make them pay me for shutting it. But since you have been so kind, gentlemen, to like my dedication, I'll venture to let you see my prologue. Sir, I beg the favour of ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... any one of these poems he must already have attained considerable note as a dramatic writer, since Robert Green, in a satirical piece printed in 1592, speaking of theatrical concerns, stigmatizes this "player" as "an absolute Joannes Factotum," and one who was "in his own conceit the only Shake-scene ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... as—'A great writer in France is invariably a great man; he writes in a language which compels him to think; it is otherwise in other countries'—and so on, and so on. Then, to prove your case, draw a comparison between Rabener, the German satirical moralist, and La Bruyere. Nothing gives a critic such an air as an apparent familiarity with foreign literature. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... critic thought he was giving the poetess a good lesson; but if he had seen the suffering that his letter caused, and the youth and inexperience, and the sad circumstances of the poor girl who received it, he would have repented somewhat of his very clever and satirical letter. ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... Pencil wiped away a tear of regret for the decadence of English satirical art the Pen jotted down the following lines culled from ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... humor, delightful flavor, and refined quality of Mr. Fuller's work impart a peculiar zest to this subtly satirical picture of the extraordinary vicissitudes of arts and ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... protective, but with whims of its own) underwent changes, successive redactions or editions; which the reader would grudge to hear explained to him. [Account of them in Orlich, ii. 273-278 (from various RUTOWSKI Papers; and from the contemporary satirical Pamphlet, "MONDSCHEINWURFE, Mirror-castings of Moonshine, by ZEBEDAUS Cuckoo,) beaten Captain of a beaten Army."] Of the final or acted edition, some loose notion, sufficient for our purpose, may be collected from the following fractions ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... laughing; but then remembering her promise to Redbud, to treat Verty well, and amuse him, checked this exhibition of satirical feeling, and said: ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... obliged to you," the tall man answered, his voice cool and satirical, while his eyes continued to scan the other's features. "But, I say again, you have chosen a strange time to give it, young sir. Moreover, your name is new to me, and I do not know ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... by a woman, and purporting to be a picture of life and manners, that lived or deserved to live. "The Female Quixote" is no exception. That work has undoubtedly great merit, when considered as a wild, satirical harlequinade; but if we consider it as a picture of life and manners, we must pronounce it more absurd than any of the romances which it ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... early life showed the results of his relationship to the aristocratic house of Cholmondeley by supporting the lost cause of James II. So fervent an admirer was he of that apology for royalty that he took up the pen, if not the sword, in his behalf, and steeped the mightier weapon with satirical ink when he wrote a pamphlet entitled "The King of Hearts." Rumour paid to the young author an unintentional compliment by insisting that the brochure came from the great Mr. Dryden, but that genius denied the soft impeachment while gracefully ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... three contributions. Paul J. Campbell's lines on "The Heritage of Life" are smooth in construction and proper in sentiment, though they are far from showing their author at his best. Mr. Campbell is a supreme master of the philosophical essay and of pointed, satirical prose, being a very "Junius" in bold, biting invective; but is placed at something of a disadvantage in the domain of conventional poetry. Rheinhart Kleiner and ourselves revel in heroic couplets of widely differing nature. Our own masterpiece is in ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the Abbot with a look half-satirical and half indignant; 'So then you mean to stay here tonight? Do so, in God's name! Nobody will prevent you. Sit up to watch for the Ghost's arrival: I shall sit up too, and the Lord grant that I may see nothing worse than a Ghost! I quit not ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... he should be attacked by the twins. The final blow he received occurred on the 19th of September. He had gone down-stairs to the great entrance-hall, feeling sure that there, at any rate, he would be quite unmolested, and was amusing himself by making satirical remarks on the large Saroni photographs of the United States Minister and his wife which had now taken the place of the Canterville family pictures. He was simply but neatly clad in a long shroud, ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... be, parody and the parodists were themselves a cause of decay. They weakened morals. Gallic-like, they popularized little bourgeois sentiments, narrow-minded, satirical sentiments; they inoculated manly souls with contempt for such great things as one performs disinterestedly. This disdain is a sure element of decay, and we may regard it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... admired in his family circle as a man of great humor, has so cultivated that faculty that it presents an abnormal development, and if petrification ever does overtake him, posterity may hope it will not operate upon his intellectual faculties. Dick, on the other hand, is gloomily satirical, and by the aid of that useful faculty utterly annihilates his opponents without saying anything. But last, Harry takes up the theme and treats it in a spirit becoming the gravity of ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... speak with decision, not with the decision of arrogance, but with that which rightfully belongs to a faithful study of the author. The editors of Pope are not all equally careless, but all are careless; and, under the shelter of this carelessness, the most deep-seated vices of Pope's moral and satirical sketches have escaped detection, or at least have escaped exposure. These, and the other errors traditionally connected with the rank and valuation of Pope as a classic, are what I profess to speak of deliberately and firmly. Meantime, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the life at West Point in the least, though he amused his mates by writing satirical verses about the professors. After a few months he asked to be discharged; but Mr. Allan would not consent. So Poe made up his mind that he would have himself expelled. He stayed away from parade, roll-call, and guard duty. As a court-martial was then ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... like all husbands," replied Sebastiano, with a broadly satirical grin. "As your man will some day, Lucrezia mia. All husbands are good and faithful. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the poem based upon the lines of my conjectural scheme, I asked him if he knew that a continuation was actually published in Coleridge's own paper, The Morning Post. It appeared about 1820, and was satirical of course—hitting off many peculiarities of versification, if no more. With Coleridge's playful love of satirising himself anonymously, the continuation might even be ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... to find the difference, between saltness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others' memory. He that questioneth much, shall learn much, and content much; but especially, if he apply his questions to the skill of the persons whom he asketh; for he shall give them occasion, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... as quick to detect the satirical smile in Sara's frank, amused eyes as she graciously accepted the invitation to the home whose doors had only been half-open to her in the past. It scratched his pride a bit to think of the opinion she must have of the family, and ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... well to berate one another or to berate one another's motives or to assail human nature or to grow satirical about God with all our little battered helpless Christians about us and our ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the refectory, and be content with the ordinary fare of the monks, unless he had to entertain a guest. These ordinances proved, however, generally ineffectual to secure strictness of diet, and contemporaneous literature abounds with satirical remarks and complaints concerning the inordinate extravagance of the tables of the abbots. When the abbot condescended to dine in the refectory, his chaplains waited upon him with the dishes, a servant, if necessary, assisting them. At St Alban's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... she, with the smile of a happy heart, "that is not so easy to do—for you see all that belongs to the one is so interwoven with what belongs to the other. But I will tell you something about myself. I looked at myself this morning in the glass—no satirical looks, my love!—and it seemed to me as if I appeared strong and healthy. I thought of you, thought how good and kind you were, and how, whilst I had walked by your side, I had been strengthened both in body and mind; ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... ladylike. But what seemed strange to me was to see Sadler and Irish, that were taken for drowned beyond further trouble, standing in front of the mule-drivers, looking down at us, and then up at the Helen Mar, and Sadler seeming like he had a satirical poem on his mind which he was ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... this mele, apparently under the sanction of his poetic license, uses toward the great god Ku a plainness of speech which to us seems satirical; he speaks of him as makole, red-eyed, the result, no doubt, of his notorious addiction to awa, in which he was not alone among the gods. But it is not at all certain that the Hawaiians looked upon this ophthalmic redness as repulsive ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... raillery has also the upper hand of mirth; the action is insignificant and not in the least degree attractive; and the catastrophe, after the manner of Moliere, is arbitrarily brought about by foreign means. Yet these technical imperfections might well be excused for the sake of its satirical merit. But in this respect the composition, from the limited nature of its views, is anything but equal throughout. We are not to expect from the comic poet that he should always give us, along with the exhibition ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... teetotaller-led local governing bodies over theatres. Fifth, there were the playwrights, without political power, but with a very close natural monopoly of a talent not only for play-writing but for satirical polemics. And since every interest has its opposition, all these influences had created hostile bodies by the operation of the mere impulse to contradict them, always strong ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... first wilful, had its rise in the sixteenth century, in the furious attacks of a monk of Fontevrault, Gabriel de Puy-Herbault, who seems to have drawn his conclusions concerning the author from the book, and, more especially, in the regrettable satirical epitaph of Ronsard, piqued, it is said, that the Guises had given him only a little pavillon in the Forest of Meudon, whereas the presbytery was close to the chateau. From that time legend has fastened on Rabelais, has completely travestied him, till, bit by bit, it has ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... interest his wife apart from the satirical point it had for themselves. "You ought to get Mr. Fulkerson to let you work some of these New York sights up for Every Other Week, Basil; you could do ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... them some privileges granted to other cities; they were sullen at first and would not be wooed. The university declined to arm her scholars, Church and Parlement were hostile. The idle, vagabond clercs of the Palais and the Cite composed coarse gibes and satirical songs and ballads against his person. Louis, however, set himself with his insinuating grace of speech to win the favour of the Parisians. He supped with the provost and sheriffs and their wives at the Hotel de Ville. He ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... perpetually craving sympathy and support. The most independent people feel the effect of a man's silence in heightening their value for his opinion—feel an additional triumph in conquering the reverence of a critic habitually captious and satirical: no wonder, then, that an enthusiastic self-distrusting youth should watch and wait before the closed secret of a sarcastic woman's face, as if it were the shrine of the doubtfully benignant deity who ruled his ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... piped Blount with a satirical smile, and the Board stirred and nodded significantly. "Well, since you've just come in and are evidently unaware of the wide interest that has been taken in this case, I'll tell you a few things, Mr. Holman. The people of this town do not approve of the manner in which you have treated ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... cart to the house of a great gentleman near the aqueduct where he was going to stay on a visit. That Tom was about five feet eight inches high, lusty, and very strongly built; that he had something the matter with his right eye; that he was very satirical and very clever; that his wife was a very clever woman and satirical; his two daughters both clever and satirical, and his servant-maid remarkably satirical and clever, and that it was impossible to live with Twm O'r Nant without learning to be clever and satirical; that he always appeared to be ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... satirical, and overbearing Freda Gwynne is,' a fourth; 'her very countenance is altered; I am sure there has been some great change in ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... man. This was in the form of a story and signed by "Rebecca of the Lost Townships." The article created considerable amusement and might have passed unnoticed by the conceited little auditor if it had not been followed by another, less humorous, but more personal and satirical, signed in the same way, but the second communication was written by two mischievous (if not malicious) girls—Mary Todd and her friend, Julia Jayne. This stinging attack made Shields wild with rage, and he demanded the name ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... desire to be level with Rome for his own early fetters, and desiring also an antagonist worthy of his satirical powers, Erasmus (or so I think) hit independently upon the need for a revised Bible. But Luther to a large extent was the outcome of his times and of popular feeling. A spokesman was needed, and Luther stepped forward. The inventor of printing ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... sings a satirical Yemeni: the Somal retort by comparing the lank haunches of their neighbours to those of tadpoles or young frogs. One of their peculiar charms is a soft, low, and plaintive voice, derived from their African progenitors. Always an excellent thing in woman, here ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the office," he replied, with one of his sidelong, satirical glances, "I should have too much to do in keeping the clerks at work and in their places, to have much time for looking out of the window. My father would do well to hire an overseer for ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... single anapest, a single foot of any kind, or even a single long syllable, may be, and sometimes is, in certain rather uncommon instances, set as a line, is not to be denied. "Dr. Caustic," or T. G. Fessenden, in his satirical "Directions for Doing Poetry," uses in this manner the monosyllables, "Whew," "Say," and "Dress" and also the iambs, "The gay" and, "All such," rhyming them with ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... arch-wit of his age outdid his brilliant self in "Zadig." So surpassingly sharp and quick was this finished sleuth that his methods far outlived his satirical mission. His razor-mind was reincarnated a century later as the fascinator of nations—M. Dupin. And from Poe's wizard up to Sherlock Holmes, no one of the thousand "detectives," drawn in a myriad scenes that thrill the world ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... observed enthusiastically—he always called me "A W" with just enough of a curious intonation to make it doubtful whether the use of the initials was respectful or satirical—"you know, A W, I understand those fellows who went and chucked themselves into the grass. It's sublime; it has never happened in nature before. Ive read newspaper and magazine accounts and either the writers have no eyes or else they ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... [313:1] A satirical view of these concessions, in the vast dimensions which they had reached twenty-five years later in the city and county of New York, was published in two articles, "Our Established Church," and ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... began, but then her eyes fell upon Biddy. Her brows went up with a satirical action; she compressed her lips and kept ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... heart was almost breaking for her, and yet who maintained such a quiet, masterful self-control that the object of his passion, which had become like a torturing flame, was not subjected to even the slightest annoyance; and she said, "You are satirical today. In my opinion there are as true knights now as your favorite ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... aim of the author of the Satirical Romance before us, is to fulfil for the present age, what Swift so successfully accomplished for that which has passed by:—to attack, by the weapons of ridicule, those votaries of knowledge, who may have sought to avail themselves of the universal ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... even blow upon the pipe of Burns and yet his tune will be no echo, but one which utters the heart and mind of a Scots maker who has his own outlook on life, his own special and profitable vein of smiling or satirical contemplation. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... definite piece of literary work, or even to throw off a fatal habit, which could not fail, if persevered in, to destroy all power of steady application in the future. That neither the comic nor the pathetic element in the situation was lost upon Southey is evident from his half-sad, half-satirical, wholly winning reply. "Your plan," he writes, "is too good, too gigantic, quite beyond my powers. If you had my tolerable state of health and that love of steady and productive employment which is now grown into a necessary habit with me, if you were to execute and would ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... given offense, it appears, to some of the gensd'armes of the Press, by his satirical sketches of the literary profession. Those whose withers are unwrung will admit the truth of many pages and laugh at the caricature in the rest. In the last number of the North British Review is a clever article upon the subject, written with good temper and ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... purchase of campaign committees, and legislatures, and courts, Dumont had made himself in the public mind an embodiment of the "mighty and menacing plutocracy" of which the campaign orators talked so much. And the various phases of the scandal gave the press a multitude of texts for satirical, or pessimistic, or fiery discourses upon the public and ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... narrowed and he frowned as though he were trying to believe he had heard correctly. Then he laughed—laughed softly—and Old Jerry knew what that laugh meant. The boy didn't believe even when he had heard; and his slow-drawled, half-satirical question ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... us much more than this statuesque posing, who have transformed Galatea into a woman of flesh and blood, animated by true womanly love for Pygmalion as the first man on whom her eyes alight. Sentiment of this kind, whether intended by the author or not, would scarcely harmonize with the satirical spirit of the play, and the innocent prattle which Miss Anderson gives us in place of it meets sufficiently well the requirements of the case dramatically, leaving the spectator free to derive pleasure from his sense of the beautiful, ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... may be formed of those, more or less satirical, in which the ideas and methods of the Sophists are criticised: Protagoras, {137} in which Socrates suggests that all virtues are essentially one; Euthydemus, in which the assumption and 'airs' of some of the Sophists are made fun ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... his Address to the Unco Guid, a plea for charity in judgment, kept from sentimentalism by its gleam of humor. It has perhaps the widest appeal of any of his poems of this class. One may note that as Burns passes from the satirical and humorous tone to the directly didactic, the dialect disappears, and the last two stanzas ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... continued from 1792 as the Philosophisches Archiv. The Illumination collected its forces in the Philosophische Bibliothek, edited by Feder and Meiners. Nicolai waved the banner of common sense in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, and in satirical romances, and was handled as he deserved by the heroes of poetry and philosophy (cf. the Xenien of Goethe and Schiller, Kant's Letter on Bookmaking, and Fichte's cutting disposal of him, Nicolai's Life and Peculiar Opinions). The attacks of the faith-philosophers ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... is gossiping about it! A dozen papers have printed the confounded notice this morning, with satirical comments. They quote our pedigree, our ancestors, our illustrious dead. They pretend ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... of Mrs. Johnson was, that she had a good understanding and great sensibility, but inclined to be satirical. Her first husband died insolvent [this is a mistake, see ante, i. 95, n. 3]; her sons were much disgusted with her for her second marriage; ... however, she always retained her affection for them. While they [Mr. and Mrs. Johnson] resided in Gough Square, her son, the ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... sometimes been received after the irrevocable operations of the printer had taken place.[1] On the second point, he may have been too lavish in historical notes, and entered too deeply into the secret history of the persons and times to which Dryden's satirical poems refer. But he has endeavoured to avail himself of all information, so soon as communicated, whether corrective or corroborative of his prior opinions; and the wish, not only to render intelligible, blanks, allusions, and feigned names, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... journalist and novelist, Christo Boteff (1847-1876), lyric poet, whose ode on the death of his friend Haji Dimitr, an insurgent leader, is one of the best in the language, and Petko Slaveikoff (died 1895), whose poems, patriotic, satirical and erotic, moulded the modern poetical language and exercised a great influence over the people. Gavril Krstovitch, formerly governor-general of eastern Rumelia, and Marin Drinoff, a Slavist of high repute, have written historical works. Stamboloff, the statesman, was the author of revolutionary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... slow a day. The minutes lagged unaccountably, the hours crawled forward at the most snail-like pace, and his impatience at this was tempered to a satirical amusement by the fact that the entire world of his friends seemed banded together in a conspiracy to engage his society ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... nor attention was regarded as requisite in "hearing mass." Dennet, unchecked, was exchanging flowers from her Sunday posy with another little girl, and with hooded fingers carrying on in all innocence the satirical pantomime of Father Francis and Sister Catharine; and even Master Headley himself exchanged remarks with his friends, and returned greetings from burgesses and their wives while the celebrant priest's voice droned on, and the choir responded—the peals of the organ in the Minster ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... their artless gossip, and fancied himself extremely knowing. In these circumstances of temptation, BROWZER fell, as many better men have done, and wrote a Novel. He drew on the recollections of his suburban youth; he revived the sorrows of his sole flirtation; he sketched his aunts with a satirical hand, and he produced a packet of manuscript weighing about 7-1/2 lbs. This manuscript he sent, first, to a literary man, whose name he had seen in the papers, with a long and fulsome letter, asking for an opinion. The parcel came back next day, accompanied by a lithographed form ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... pieces of silver from the galleries above, and which the gorgeously dressed officials readily unbent to gather. Among the fair hands which rewarded this perfunctory apostrophe to the tender passion none was more lavish in offerings than those matrons and maids in the vicinity of the king. A satirical smile again marred Caillette's face, but he kept his reflections to himself, reverting to ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... friend's admiration of my satirical sketches led him into talking about them in public with too little reserve; or whether the servants at home found private means of watching me in my moments of Art-study, I know not: but that some one betrayed me, and that the ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... ended he also delivered two speeches in the House—one on the general subject of internal improvements, and the other the usual political campaign speech which members of Congress are in the habit of making to be printed for home circulation; made up mainly of humorous and satirical criticism, favoring the election of General Taylor, and opposing the election of General Cass, the Democratic candidate. Even this production, however, is lighted up by a passage of impressive earnestness and eloquence, in which he explains ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... to Grantham, nothing in the whole affair provoked him so much as the condolences of his friends, and the foolish figure they should both make at church, the first Sunday;—of which, in the satirical vehemence of his wit, now sharpen'd a little by vexation, he would give so many humorous and provoking descriptions,—and place his rib and self in so many tormenting lights and attitudes in the face of the whole congregation;—that my mother ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... pages; his topics were, that Miss Gale was an extraordinary woman, but too masculine for his taste, and had made her own troubles setting up doctress, when her true line was governess—for boys. He was also glib and satirical upon that favorite ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... humorous and witty, without vulgarity, and satirical without malice. It will be printed on a superior tinted paper of sixteen pages, size 13 by 9, and will be for sale by all respectable newsdealers who have the judgment to know a good thing when they see it, or ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... little thought what I should have to boast, when Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and Jill, by two bits of paper on his fingers." But neither of these statements seems to have more weight in solving the mystery of the editor's name than the evidence of the whimsically satirical notes themselves. How like the author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" and the children's "Fables in Verse" is ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... wealth as well as years, had passed his youth in the midst of those pleasures which people at that age indulge in without restraint; he was one of the brightest geniuses England ever produced, for wit and humour, and for brilliancy of composition: satirical and free in his poems, he spared neither frigid writers, nor jealous husbands, nor even their wives: every part abounded with the most poignant wit, and the most entertaining stories; but his most delicate and spirited raillery turned generally against matrimony; and, as if he wished ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... it is written from himself, and nobly from himself. How was it received? 'It was no sooner read,' says one of his contemporary biographers, 'than universally admired: those only excepted who had not been used to feel, or to look for any thing in poetry, beyond a point of satirical or epigrammatic wit, a smart antithesis richly trimmed with rhyme, or the softness of an elegiac complaint. To such his manly classical spirit could not readily commend itself; till, after a more attentive perusal, they had got the better of their ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... (excepting, perhaps, Middleton's Life of Cicero.) This brings on a remark I have often made in distinguishing your philosophy from ours. It seems to me that you who excel so admirably in biography, memoirs, comedy, satirical observation on peculiar classes, and pointed aphorisms, are fonder of considering man in his relation to society and the active commerce of the world, than in the more abstracted and metaphysical operations of the mind. Our ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... themselves as hostages, of whom William did not chuse to lose sight, lest, while he was conquering Ireland, he might, perchance, lose England, by means of the very men by whom he had won it. The disbanding of the royal regiment had furnished a subject for the satirical wit of Buckingham, at least, such a piece is printed in his Miscellanies; and for that of Shadwell, in his epilogue to Bury-fair. But Shadwell was now poet-laureat, and his satire was privileged, like the wit of the ancient royal jester. Our author was suspected ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... remarks. From the oldest tapestry to the most modern printed paper; from the noblest family pictures to the most frivolous new copper-plate: one as well as the other had to suffer—one as well as the other had to be pulled in pieces by her satirical tongue, so that, indeed, one had to wonder how, for twenty miles ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... expedition being explained, the Governor found on his register that poor Hathelin, aged thirty-two to thirty-four years, was an engraver by profession. The lieutenant-general of police had arrested him long ago for a comic or satirical engraving on the subject of M. le Marquis ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... under the ferule, bring a hornet's nest about one's ears. take blame, stand corrected; have to answer for. Adj. disapproving &c v.; scandalized. disparaging, condemnatory, damnatory^, denunciatory, reproachful, abusive, objurgatory^, clamorous, vituperative; defamatory &c 934. satirical, sarcastic, sardonic, cynical, dry, sharp, cutting, biting, severe, withering, trenchant, hard upon; censorious, critical, captious, carping, hypercritical; fastidious &c 868; sparing of praise, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... very similar to that of his Bohemian companions. The younger son of a poor Gascon family of doubtful nobility, he had come to seek his fortune at Paris; by turns petty officer of a forlorn hope; provost of an academy, bath-keeper, horse jockey, peddler of satirical news and Holland gazettes; he had more than once pretended to be a Protestant, feigning conversion to the Catholic faith in order to secure the fifty crowns that M. Pelisson paid each neophyte as the price of conversion. This cheat ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Sentiments, which ought to be adapted to different Characters in Comedy, according to their different Dispositions, or, as he phrases it, Humours: As for Instance, he very rightly observes, That a Character of a splenetic and peevish HUMOUR, Should have a satirical WIT. A jolly and sanguine HUMOUR should have a facetious WIT. —But still this is no Description of what is well felt, and known, by the general ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... Miss Garth, when Magdalen came her way next. "Well?" she went on, taking the girl's chin familiarly in her hand, with a half-satirical, half-fond attention which betrayed that the youngest daughter, with all her faults, was the governess's favorite—"Well? and what has the concert done for you? What form of suffering has dissipation inflicted on your ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... his Border Minstrelsy, not a few in London or its neighbourhood,—of whom the most important at this time was the grey-eyed, hatchet-faced, courteous George Ellis, as Leyden described him, the author of various works on ancient English poetry and romance, who combined with a shrewd, satirical vein, and a great knowledge of the world, political as well as literary, an exquisite taste in poetry, and a warm heart. Certainly Ellis's criticism on his poems was the truest and best that Scott ever received; and had he lived to read his novels,—only one of which was published ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... could not help discovering that she was not without tenderness of feeling for Miss Morley, and did not like to proclaim, in Caroline's strong and rather satirical language, across the breakfast table, that Mrs. Lyddell had discovered by accident that she and her pupil were in the habit of amusing themselves with novels which were far better unread. After reading quickly to the end of the letter, she answered, "O, she has been reading books with Clara ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... MILTON, in answer to the most learned Salmasius, who declaimed against the same with most solid arguments and pathetical expressions; in which Answer he did so bespatter the white robes of your Royal Father's spotless life (human infirmities excepted) with the dirty filth of his satirical pen that to the vulgar, and those who read his book with prejudice, he represented him a most debauched, vicious man (I tremble, Royal Sir, to write it), an irreligious hater and persecutor of Religion and religious men, an ambitious enslaver of the nation, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... passions of the world, may justly call them irrational. They would not justify themselves in his experience; they make grievous demands and yield nothing in the end which is intelligible to him. His picture of them, if he be a dramatist, will hardly fail to be satirical; fate, frailty, illusion will be his constant themes. If his temperament could find political expression, he would minimise the machinery of life and deprecate any calculated prudence. He would trust the heart, enjoy nature, and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... forms of irreverent fantasies were the very whisperings of the devil, to her, as to me, consequently, an ever-present spirit, perpetually tempting me to repeat, and so make myself responsible for the wickedness in them. I remember with great vividness a caricature of Mrs. Trollope in a satirical illustrated edition of her travels in America, representing her sitting in a large armchair surrounded by negroes on their knees, one of whom was represented as saying, "De Lord lub Missee Trollope," an expression which my mother stigmatized as impious ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the answer of the Lieutenant, with a satirical emphasis on the second word which indicated that some other would have been quite as well ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... have ten thousand francs," said old Sechard, fingering the bouquets and garlands with a satirical expression. "You gave them daisies, and they give you posies in ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... while he was struggling with the King. Sir Anthony Weldon informs us, that, upon the annual return of the day, the King's deliverance was commemorated by an anniversary feast. The time was the fifth of August, "upon which," proceeds the satirical historian, "Sir John Ramsay, for his good service in that preservation, was the principal guest, and so did the King grant him any boon he would ask that day. But he had such limitation made to his asking, as made his suit as unprofitable, as the action for which ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... high up in the mountains, the young city was neither too far nor too high for vice to reach it; and so it came about that a certain woman, whose gold-bought smiles had become a trifle too mocking and satirical to be attractive, had come to the young city and placed herself at the head of an establishment where, at command, every one from sunset laughed and was merry, and held out hungry, grasping little hands for the gold showered upon ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... writer, save Shakespeare, has drawn so many and so varied characters. It would be as absurd to interpret all of these as caricatures as to deny Dickens his great and varied powers of creation. Dickens exaggerated many of his comic and satirical characters, as was his right, for caricature and satire are very closely related, while exaggeration is the very essence of comedy. But there remains a host of characters marked by humour and pathos. Yet the pictorial presentation of Dickens's ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... looked as if she might, in another instant, cap the suggestion by a satirical climax, and Ellen Bayliss rested her sewing hand on her knee and glanced thoughtfully about as if to ask, in her still, earnest way, what her own part could be in such an enterprise. But a step came hurrying down the stairs, the step of a heavy ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... to be intoning in the void. There is always an inner history in all this, as well as an outer one—such, however, as it would take much space to relate. Mr. Reinhart's more or less alienated accent fell, by good-fortune, on a comprehending listener. He had made a satirical drawing, in the nature of the "cartoon" of a comic journal, on a subject of the hour, and addressed it to the editor of Harper's Weekly. The drawing was not published—the satire was perhaps not exactly on ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... A.D. 1061-1079. The diocese had been administered for the last four years by the Bishop of Worcester, when Queen Edith's chaplain, a foreigner by birth, Walter of Lorraine, was appointed. Beyond a probably satirical reference by William of Malmsbury, all that is known of Walter is an ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... containing only two or three lines. You will find beautiful translations of these in Symonds's "Studies of Greek Poets," in the second volume. Following Greek taste, the Roman poets afterwards cultivated short forms of verse, but they chiefly used such verse for satirical purposes, unfortunately; I say, unfortunately, because the first great English poets who imitated the ancients were chiefly influenced by the Latin writers, and they also used the short forms for epigrammatic satire rarely for a purely esthetic object. Ben ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... and they began to whisper satirical criticisms on the remarks and manners of those around. Hemstead's interest mainly centred in watching Lottie, and in noting the effect of her contact with plain and uncultured people. He was glad ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... acquaintance: Satirical portraits: Reception of a new comedy; or, of how much worth ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... SATYRS, a sort of demi-gods, who with the Fauns and Sylvans, presided over groves and forests under the direction of Pan. They made part of the dramatis pers{o}nae in the ancient Greek tragedies, which gave rise to the species of poetry called satirical. ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... up to Hortense. He was a young man, very smartly dressed, with a narrow and rather pale face, whose eyes held by turns the gentlest and the harshest, the most friendly and the most satirical expression. He bowed to her, kissed her ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... suppressed, he has had abundant means of information. If he now refuses to correct a misstatement which grossly injures me, after he has been informed of the truth, the refusal admits of but one interpretation, and throws a satirical light on the merely private 'regret' he professes. Inasmuch, however, as you have objected (quite unnecessarily, as I think) to the 'form' of the Card I sent you, and inasmuch as I intend to leave no room for doubt as to Dr. Royce's real animus ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... has it that Sir Thomas Lucy got a lawyer from Warwick to prosecute the boys, and that Shakespeare stuck his satirical ballad to the park gates at Charlecot. The ballad is said to have been lost, but certain verses were preserved which fit the circumstances and suit Shakespeare's character so perfectly that I for one am content ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... vehement, dogmatic, and often offensive, not only from his more violent and passionate nature, but for his bitter and ironical sallies. It is the manner more than the matter which offends. Had Wyclif been as satirical and boisterous as Luther was, he would not probably have ended his days in peace, and would not have accomplished so much as a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... and fifty people, orchestra, chorus, punch, pastry, Meeresstille Psalm, Bach's Triple Concerto, choruses from St. Paul, Fantasia on Lucia, the Erl King, the Devil and his Grandmother, the latter probably a mild satirical reference to Liszt's stormy and often incoherent playing. It is also pleasant to find how cordially Mendelssohn received Berlioz there, as told in the "Memoirs" of the latter, spending ungrudgingly long days in aiding in rehearsals for his "Romeo et Juliette," though Mendelssohn ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... enemies with all his force. If "Fathers and Children" had been received in Russia with more intelligence or more sympathy, it is certain that "Smoke" would never have appeared. This is the most bitter and purely satirical of all the works of Turgenev; the Slavophils, with their ignorance of the real culture of western Europe, and their unwillingness to learn from good teachers, are hit hard; but still harder hit are the Petersburg aristocrats, the "idle rich" (legitimate conventional target for ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... at my door, months ago," said Richard, "I didn't dream you were such a satirical little piece, or may be you wouldn't have got in. You stood there as meek as Moses, with your frock reaching only to the tops of your boots. You were ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that nowadays at the hands of these clever young satiricals; and most of us have enough common honesty to appreciate our tormentors. It is that, just for a time, I was troubled with a genuine doubt whether Mr. A. NEIL LYONS was not becoming too satirical to be sincere, and allowing his gift for facetiousness to betray him. The device of inventing a simple-minded young enthusiast, and making him ask perpetual questions to the undoing of all those who accept blindly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... air of ambition about everything, as though the premises, like their occupiers, were aiming to be something above their station, while at the same time a manifest absence of cleanliness and neatness only presented a sort of satirical contrast to ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... [26] The satirical pen of Aristophanes has not spared the Dionysiac festivals. But the raillery and sarcasm of a comic writer must always be received with many grains of allowance. He has, at least, been candid enough to confess that no one could be initiated who had been guilty of any crime against his country ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... portrait-painting turn of the author. Its identity is very entertaining, and is very superior in interest to the satirical nommes in the fashionable novels of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... short serial articles of one and a half or two columns in length, signed or not signed, but always either well written or describing something new and interesting. 'Talk on 'Change' heads a column and a half of satirical or humorous notes, which are very much appreciated, and form a more leading feature of the paper than their merit warrants. The anecdotes are often new and always admirably told, but the comments ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... have been more amused, than in reading lately a satirical sketch, entitled 'The House of Mourning: a Farce.' Squire HAMPER and his lady, personages rather of the rustic order, who have come up to London from the family seat in the country, in the progress of shopping in a street at the west end of the metropolis, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... are never disinterested ones. To say that Thackeray was a cynic because he drew a large number of villains is as untrue as to say Swift was a cynic because he wrote satire. Thackeray wrote about villains because he wished to also write about heroes; Swift was satirical because he had the intelligence to see that his contemporaries were fools when they might have been wise. The cynics are the people of to-day who write books which attribute low motives to every one, which turn ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... and called to the English bar, but owing to deafness was more successful as a chamber counsel than as a pleader. Emigrating to India in 1782, he became joint proprietor of a newspaper in Calcutta, and there he died. He wrote several satirical romances, such as Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea; The Reverie, or a Flight to the Paradise of Fools; and The History of Arsaces, Prince of Betlis. Of these the first was the best. Samuel Johnson, who read it in manuscript, advised ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... accompanied by a huge buzz of whispers, and there is much craning of necks and long-distance nodding and smiling. Here and there an unusually gorgeous hat is the target of many converging glances, and of as many more or less satirical criticisms. To the damp funeral smell of the flowers at the altar, there has been added the cacodorous scents of forty or fifty different brands of talcum and rice powder. It begins to grow warm in the ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... the scene in the store that afternoon it was given in a transparent fulness of detail; while all his changing emotions, from his first glimpse of Prather's profile to the effort to speak with him and the ultimatum of Prather's satirical gesture, were reflected in his features. He was the story-teller, putting his gift to an unpleasant task in illumination of sober fact and not the uses of imagination; and his audience was his father's cheek ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... fair way of considering these Letters would be as a kind of satirical poems; the short, and for ever balanced, sentences constitute a true metre; and the connection is that of satiric poetry, a witty logic, an association of thoughts by amusing semblances of cause and effect, the sophistry of which the reader has an interest in not stopping to detect, for it flatters ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the satirical doctor into deep water for printing asne for ame; the council of the Sorbonne took the matter up and asked Francis I. to prosecute Rabelais for heresy; this the king declined to do, and Rabelais proceeded forthwith to torment the council ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... retorted his father, with obvious intent of satirical contrast. "Because within a year or two he'll know the business from end to end—as his father ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Extravagantly satirical as he was at times, John had always an indefinable drollery about him that made him agreeable company to his friends, at least; and such an admiring friend he had constantly at hand in the person of Bert Haines. Both were Bohemians in natural tendency, ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... of being written in a hostile—sometimes even in a mocking spirit. That aspect is untrue, nor am I answerable for it: the things of which I had to speak could not be shortly described but in terms which might sound satirical; for all error, if frankly shown, is precisely most ridiculous when it is most dangerous, and I have written no word which is not chosen as the exactest for its occasion, whether it move sigh or smile. In my earlier ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... for the public to mock at. Not that she is personal in her allusions, but her thorough knowledge of the philosophy of human nature and the deep, secret springs of human action lead her to witty, satirical generalizations, which are so painfully true that each one of her hearers goes home hugging a personal affront, while poor Rachel never dreams of lacerated feelings until she meets averted faces or hears a whisper of her heinous sin. This ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... was addicted to some gay extravagances, such as gaming, and an unlicensed indulgence in women and wine, which brought some satirical reflexions, upon him. Gildon in his Lives of the Dramatic Poets, says, that upon marrying a fortune, he was knighted; the circumstances of it are these: He had, by his gaming and extravagance, so embarrassed his affairs, that he courted a rich widow in order to retrieve them; but ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... comedy, John Lyly. Even the word "humour" seems to have been employed in the Jonsonian sense by Chapman before Jonson's use of it. Indeed, the comedy of humours itself is only a heightened variety of the comedy of manners which represents life, viewed at a satirical angle, and is the oldest and most persistent species of comedy in the language. None the less, Jonson's comedy merited its immediate success and marked out a definite course in which comedy long continued to run. To mention only Shakespeare's Falstaff ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... malevolence, the gorgeous appearance of Mrs. Hastings at St. James's, the galaxy of jewels, torn from Indian Begums, which adorned her head-dress, her necklace gleaming with future votes, and the depending questions that shone upon her ears. Satirical attacks of this description, and perhaps a motion for a vote of censure, would have satisfied the great body of the Opposition. But there were two men whose indignation was not to be so appeased, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... indigenous for translation and this may account for the fact that he has not been presented to English readers. It is hoped, however, that a fairly accurate version, with the text in view[2], may give some idea of his genius. The religious, the patriotic-imperial, the satirical and the pastoral sides of his drama are represented respectively by the Auto da Alma, the Exhorta[c,][a]o, the Almocreves and the Serra da Estrella, while his lyrical vein is seen in the ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... people of Saint-Chartier, although very satirical and a little inclined to be disagreeable in their intercourse with the neighboring parishes which had been combined with theirs, did not think of laughing when they saw such a handsome bridegroom and lovely bride, and a ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... inclined to get into a passion, but the consciousness of his guilt restrained him, and he listened in silence to the satirical ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... subject, and know everything about it!" I eagerly followed his advice, and began to work at early Spanish in the Bodleian. But I think he was wrong—I venture to think so!—though, as his half-melancholy, half-satirical look comes back to me, I realize how easily he would defend himself, if one could tell him so now. I think I ought to have been told to take a history examination and learn Latin properly. But if I had, half the exploring joy ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grown older and had read the frequent paragraphs and anecdotes that appeared in the papers about her stepfather's aunt, she could understand why. She knew now what everybody knew of Mrs. Oakley—her history, her eccentricities, and the miserliness of which the papers spoke with a satirical lightness that seemed somehow but a thin disguise for ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... pensioner, partly founded on the satirical verses of Pope[1110], which he quotes, may be generally true; and yet every body must allow, that there may be, and have been, instances of pensions given and received upon liberal and honourable terms. Thus, then, it is clear, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... atrocities have set her free? Do you suppose that I have no soul, no beliefs, no religion? Your glee this evening has been really too barefaced; you have paraded me odiously. Really, a schoolboy would have been less of a coxcomb. And the ladies have dissected me with their side-glances and their satirical remarks. Every woman has some care for her reputation, and you ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... occurred to them. Love was not the burden of the song; neither hearts, griefs, nor bliss, but satire, lashing right and left with graceful dexterity, and dealing a harmless thrust to every one. All were forced to laugh; the happy faces animated and inspired every thing. The brilliant satirical verses rushed like rockets from the lips of the reader—a real illumination of wit and humor, of good-natured jokes and biting sarcasm, and it delighted the old man that every one had received hits and thrusts but ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... to "The Fortune of the Rougons." It has, as I have said, its satirical and humorous side; but it also contains a strong element of pathos. The idyll of Miette and Silvere is a very touching one, and quite in accord with the conditions of life prevailing in Provence at the period M. Zola selects for his narrative. Miette is a frank child of nature; ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... loyal, and had smiled at them, proposing to let matters take their course, and to give little aid in extricating him from his dilemma. But, if she had interpreted her friend's face aright, she could no longer stand aloof, an amused and slightly satirical spectator. If Burt deserved some punishment, Gertrude did not, and she was inclined to guess the cause of the latter's haste to ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... (1137-96) is the right one; his abilities were equal to any literary performance; his evident familiarity with things Welsh (he seems to have been a Herefordshire man) would have informed him of Welsh tradition, if there was any, and the De Nugis Curialium shows us in him, side by side with a satirical and humorous bent, the leaning to romance and to the marvellous which only extremely shallow people believe to be alien from humour. But it is necessary for scholarship of the kind just referred to to be always devising some new ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... and he shrank like a woman from a coarse word or the utterance of an impure thought. He was a man whom many women admired, of whom some were afraid, whom many liked and trusted, for he could not be bribed to say a mean thing about one of their number, though he would sometimes be satirical to her very face. It was among the men that Sam Waring was hated or loved,—loved, laughed over, indulged, even spoiled, perhaps, to any and every extent, by the chosen few who were his chums and intimates, and absolutely hated ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... his family approached, the conversation was transferred from the political to the personal, and he, his wife, and his children, received at the hands of the people that satirical abuse, equally unjust and ungenerous, which an industrious family, who have raised themselves from poverty to independence, are in general certain to receive from all those who are deficient in the virtues ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton |
