"Satire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thinking what I shall say I have provided for him. It must be a personating of himself; a satire against the softness of prosperity, with a discovery of the infinite flatteries ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... me—chiefly, I think, by its good-nature. The writer of these very up-to-date paternal admonitions is supposed to be one Sir Benjamin Budgen, Bart, "of Budgen House, Fleet Street, E.C. and Cedar Court, Twickenham, Middlesex." The addresses tell you what to expect—a satire on the methods of popular journalism. This in fact is what you get, but the satire is so neat (and withal so genial) and Mr. Max Rittenberg has so happy a knack of conveying character in a few lines that you are simply bound to enjoy reading him. One other facility ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... sweetness of voice and mien lent to his words an influence which no amount of gall or satire could have imparted; and, in the brief silence that ensued, Salome's heart was suddenly smitten with a humiliating consciousness of her childish flippancy,—her utter inferiority to this man, who seemed to walk serenely in a starry plane far beyond ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... "The doctor has been putting you up to that! It won't wash! I don't refer to your shirt cuff," she added with deep satire. ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... untranslatable French word "sale." But nearer home, one of your most brilliant writers, Mr. Henry James, has given us an equally profitable study in his novelette, What Maisie Knew, which I presume is intended as a satire on freedom of divorce, but which again can only be characterized by the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... than that of expressing, in curiously diversified forms, its most ordinary feelings. But he did much more. Literature was going astray in its tone, while growing in importance; the Commedia checked it. The Provencal and Italian poetry was, with the exception of some pieces of political satire, almost exclusively amatory, in the most fantastic and affected fashion. In expression, it had not even the merit of being natural; in purpose, it was trifling; in the spirit which it encouraged, it was something worse. Doubtless it brought a degree ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... appeared his "London," imitated from the Third Satire of Juvenal, for which he got ten guineas from Dodsley. The excellence of this poem was so immediately perceived, that it reached a second edition in the course of a week. Pope having made some ineffectual inquiries concerning ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... his pipe, "irony is so unjust: never could abide irony: something Satanic about irony. God defend me from Irony, and Satire, his bosom friend." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... our poor-houses, at our county jails, or at the state penitentiary. These debasing and corrupting appendages of civilization spent not all their influence upon the white man; and this is what gave pungency to the withering satire of the chief. They were at once working the ruin of the red man and of his ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... line, one of a sharp satire by a boy named Barnes, long since an Indian Judge and I suppose translated Elsewhere. Allen was head-gown-boy, and so chief executioner, the three rods being some five-feet bunches of birch armed with ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sensation, which is the best security for the success of a drama—curiosity. After the two first acts are over, and pleasantly over, with the excellent drawn characters of Ashfield and his wife, and the very just satire which arises from Sir Abel's propensity to modern improvements—the acts that follow excite deep interest and ardent expectation; both of which are so highly gratified at the conclusion of the play, that, from the first night of its performance, it has ranked ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... of self-educated popular writers, some of whom had come into direct contact with this foreign school. They were farmers, even in the more remote country districts, who had read the latest Scandinavian literature in the original, and who wrote stories containing radical social satire. Gumundur Frijnsson, for instance, had begun his career in this way. In many of these authors, however, we find rather a sort of native realism, where there is not necessarily a question of the influence of any particular literary tendency. Their works ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... own country, he returned. He could not, however, conscientiously take the oaths to Government, and therefore never had any other military employment. "With much truth, honour, and humanity," relates Mrs. Grant, "he inherited his father's wit and self-possession, with a vein of keen satire which he indulged in bitter expressions against the enemies of his family. Some of these I have seen, and heard many songs of his composing, which showed no contemptible power of poetic genius, although ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... to be raised by subscription: Pope was to pay twenty pounds. This plan, though finally established, took more than a year before it was carried into execution. In the mean time, the intended retreat of Savage called to Johnson's mind the third satire of Juvenal, in which that poet takes leave of a friend, who was withdrawing himself from all the vices of Rome. Struck with this idea, he wrote that well-known poem, called London. The first lines ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Archilochus was a native of Paros, and flourished about 714-676, B.C. His poems were chiefly Iambics of bitter satire. Horace speaks of him as the inventor of Iambics, and calls himself ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... much comedy that is obviously unsympathetic, even hostile. There is satire, which condemns, as well as humor which pardons. The one blames the unexpected and unconventional, the other sympathizes with it. Comedy is either biting or kindly. The one is moralistic and reformatory in its aim, the other is aesthetic and ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... some correspondent of the "Argus," who frantically exclaimed, on the occasion of a town meeting refusing to hear Sam Adams: "Shall Europe hear, shall our Southern brethren be told, that Samuel Adams rose to speak in the midst of his fellow-citizens, and was silenced!" A few lines from this satire will best illustrate the vigorous treatment which the wits employed, and the gusto with which ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... at the least hint of insolence or ill-breeding. — Respectable as he is, upon the whole, I can't help being sometimes diverted by his little distresses; which provoke him to let fly the shafts of his satire, keen and penetrating as the arrows of Teucer — Our aunt, Tabitha, acts upon him as a perpetual grind-stone — She is, in all respects, a striking contrast to her brother — But I reserve ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... accused William of breaking faith with the House of Austria, others accused him of interfering unjustly in the internal affairs of Spain. In the most ingenious and humorous political satire extant in our language, Arbuthnot's History of John Bull, England and Holland are typified by a clothier and a linendraper, who take upon themselves to settle the estate of a bedridden old gentleman in their neighbourhood. They meet at the corner of his park with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Final Answer to the Remarks on the Craftsman's Vindication, and to all the Libels which have come, or may come from the same quarter against the Person last mentioned in the Craftsman of the 22nd May, 1731, he was answered in five Poetical Letters to the King, which in keenness of wit, polished satire, and flowing ease of versification, have not been since surpassed. The title of the tract in which they are contained is The Craftsman's Apology, being a Vindication of his Conduct and Writings in several Letters to the King, printed for T. Cooper, 1732, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... a satire on him, when the late Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel was governor of Magdeburg; and I had permission to write as will hereafter appear: the Landgrave gave it to him to read himself; and so gross was his conception, that though his own phraseology was introduced, part of his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... us as clear from mixtures of blood as any in the world, and I know not which of them I could wish ourselves to be like; I mean the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish; and if I were to write a reverse to the Satire, I would examine all the nations of Europe, and prove, that those nations which are most mix'd, are the best, and have least of barbarism and brutality among them; and abundance of reasons might be given for it, too long to bring into ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... one success; for the editor (who applies to himself the words of Iago, "I am nothing if I am not critical") over-stepped the bounds of caution, and found himself seriously embroiled with the powers that were. There appeared in No. XVI. a most bitter satire upon Sir John Leslie, in which he was compared to Falstaff, charged with puffing himself, and very prettily censured for publishing only the first volume of a class-book, and making all purchasers pay for both. Sir John Leslie took up the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at her return; which was not a very favourable one. These people can add little extempore pieces to their entertainments, when they see occasion. Is it not then reasonable to suppose that it was intended as a satire against this girl, and to discourage others from ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... permitted him to mingle much with mankind without being too deeply involved in the play of their passions; while his exquisite sense of the ridiculous quickly revealed those weaknesses to him which his delicate satire did not spare, even while it refrained from wounding. All feared, marry admired, and none hated him. He was too powerful not to dread, too dexterous not to admire, too superior to hate. Perhaps the great secret of his manner was his exquisite superciliousness, a quality which, of all, is the most ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... remote and inaccessible; her beacon of democracy burned bright, but its rays scarcely shone beyond the mountain valleys. The Dutch republic, enervated by commercial success and under a constitution which by its intricate system of checks was a satire on organized liberty, had become a warning rather than a model ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... writer spread over the world. Latin—the language in which he wrote—was in universal use. It was the vernacular of the best society in Europe, and no living man was so perfect a master of it. His satire flashed about among all existing institutions, scathing especially his old enemies the monks; while the great secular clergy, who hated the religious orders, were delighted to see them scourged, and themselves to have the reputation of being ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the Tuileries with his brother and Madame Descoings, he saw a pupil drawing a caricature of some professor on the wall of the Institute, and stopped short with admiration at the charcoal sketch, which was full of satire. The next day the child stood at the window watching the pupils as they entered the building by the door on the rue Mazarin; then he ran downstairs and slipped furtively into the long courtyard of the Institute, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... English works, in cheap editions. Strauss' "Life of Jesus" and Proudhon's "Property" also circulate among the working-men only. Shelley, the genius, the prophet, Shelley, and Byron, with his glowing sensuality and his bitter satire upon our existing society, find most of their readers in the proletariat; the bourgeoisie owns only castrated editions, family editions, cut down in accordance with the hypocritical morality of to-day. The two great practical philosophers of latest date, Bentham ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... divided that some of them were for appointing public prayers for two days; others proposed to desire his Royal Highness to take care of the public safety. I resolved to treat the writing drawn up against me by the Cardinal as a satire and a libel, and, by some ingenious, short passage, to arouse the minds of my hearers. As my memory did not furnish me with anything in ancient authors that had any relation to my subject, I made a small discourse in the best ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... those men whose true character does not come out until they attain success. But no sooner was Furetiere an Immortal than he began to distinguish himself in unanticipated ways. He proved himself an adept in parody and satire, and so long as he contented himself with laughing at people like Charles Sorel, the author of Francion, who had no friends, the Academicians were calm and amused, But Furetiere was not merely the author of that extremely amusing medley, Le Roman Bourgeois (1666), which still ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... gives a long description how a man might conquer the whole world. At the end of this dialogue, which was meant as a satire on Charles ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... a portion of a clever satire on man and society, than a sincere discussion of political evils and remedies; and not intended, we trust, for Mr Carlyle's own sake, to express his real belief in the true causes of the evils of society. If we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... afternoon when nature seems in most reflective mood. For there was nothing impetuous or ardent in the composition of this good-humoured philosopher; and while he railed so well at the petty sins and vanities of the England in which he dwelt, the satire had naught ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... such moment's reflection was not to be come at without an effort. Our imagination following the costume did imperceptibly betray our judgment; we admired the human intellect, the ever ready prompt sagacity and presence of mind. We delighted in the satire on the foolishnesses and greedinesses of our own fellow mankind; but in our regard for the hero we forgot his humanity wherever it was his interest that we should forget it, and while we admired him as a man we judged ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... of the clergy, to sing on Sundays devotional strains on the harp to the assembled multitudes. At public entertainments, during week-days, gay ditties were common. One of these is extant, but is too coarse for quotation. It is entitled 'The Land of Cokayne,' an allegorical satire on the luxury and vice of the Church, given under the description of an imaginary paradise, in which the nuns are represented as houris, and the black and grey monks as their paramours. 'Richard of Alemaine' is a ballad, composed by an adherent of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... with astonishment to the stinging humour with which they would tear a brother-author to pieces the moment that his back was turned. The artist has this advantage over the rest of the world, that his friends offer not only their appearance and their character to his satire, but also their work. I despaired of ever expressing myself with such aptness or with such fluency. In those days conversation was still cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued than the crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical appliance ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... tall, fair, and handsome, the features clean cut and the eyes grey. His manners were polished, and he was always well dressed. He was full of high spirits and good temper, and was a most agreeable companion to all to whom his satire did not render him uncomfortable. Strange to say, he stood very high in the favour of Mrs. Porkington, who, had she known what fun he made of her behind her back, would, I think, have sometimes forgotten that he was the nephew of a peer. He studied ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... amazed at the vigor and fluency of Douglas' speech. Such applause arose that Wyatt was visibly embarrassed as he stood up for his rejoinder. He saw that Douglas had carried the day. He made a feeble attempt at reply. He tried satire; but it fell on unreceptive ears. He dropped denunciation. He dared not attempt that. He took up logical analysis. It left the audience cold. He pecked timidly at the doctrine of state sovereignty. Then voices ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... confessor, and she attended his church, and as she was lively and clever he enjoyed talking to her, so that at length an intimacy sprang up between them. It so happened at a time when he and the other ministers were in momentary disgrace, that a satire full of biting wit and raillery appeared, directed especially against the cardinal, and this satire had been attributed to Hammon, who was known to share, as was natural, her mistress's hatred of Richelieu. Protected as she was ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Quebec. He spent the winter of 1606-7—a merry one—at Port Royal, Acadia, in the company of Samuel de Champlain and Lescarbot. Lescarbot was the first lawyer who found his way to New France; Lescarbot was the first historian of the country; he was gifted with wit—a proclivity to mild satire; each page of his history reveals the lawyer familiar with the Bar and its lively forensic display. The winter of 1606-7, at Port Royal, was remarkable for good cheer; appetising repasts, the product of the chase or of the sea, were the order of the day to that extent that Lescarbot ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... 'Uncommercial Traveller.' But when Dickens deserted his proper function Fitzjames was roused to indignation. The 'little Nell' sentimentalism and the long gallery of melodramatic deathbeds disgusted him, while the assaults upon the governing classes generally stirred his wrath. The satire upon individuals may be all very well in its place, but a man, he said, has no business to set up as the 'regenerator of society' because he is its most 'distinguished buffoon.' He was not picking his words, and 'buffoon' is certainly an injudicious phrase; but the sentiment which it ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... origin of this nickname is traced to a satire written in the reign of Queen Anne, by Dr. Arbuthnot, to throw ridicule on the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... "As for satire, good heavens! that seemed not in him. He was always well dressed, always in high spirits and a good temper, and very demonstrative and caressing; putting his arm round one, and slapping one on the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... county of Hampshire was mentioned, for it turned out that he knew the county well, being one of the Wyses of Whitchurch. You couldn't say he talked about it, but he made other people talk about it.... He was quite impervious to satire on such points, for when, goaded to madness, Miss Mapp had once said that she was one of the Mapps of Maidstone, he had merely bowed and said: "A very old family, I believe," and when the conversation ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... London, many years ago, at a time when Mr. Vivian Grey was not entrusted, I rather imagine, with missions 'of importance.'" Although Mr. Cleveland smiled when he said this, his smile was anything but a gracious one. The subdued satire of his keen eye burst out for an instant, and he looked as if he would have said, "Who is this yonker who is trespassing ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... a drawing-room of the party, that the Liberals had no love for legitimacy. A person present defended himself from this reproach. "Yes," said M. de Montmorency, with thoughtless candour, "you love legitimacy as we do the Charter." A keen satire on the false position of both parties under the government of ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... King. He remembered that he himself, when he was first introduced into good company, with all the awkwardness and rust of Cambridge about him, was frightened out of his wits. At Cambridge he "had acquired among the pedants of an illiberal seminary a turn for satire and contempt, and a strong tendency to argumentation and contradiction," which was a hindrance to his progress in the polite world. Only after a continental education did he see the follies of Englishmen who knew nothing of modern Europe, who were always talking of the Ancients as something ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... out in the daytime." Sometimes the philosophy of the tale is expressed not at all directly. This is the case in Andersen's The Emperor's New Suit, a gem in story-telling art—more suited to the second grade—where the purpose of the story is veiled, and the satire or humor is conveyed through a very telling word or two.—"'I will send my old, honest minister to the weavers,' thought the Emperor. And the old, honest minister went to the room where the two swindlers sat working at empty looms. 'Heaven ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... who should be an astrologer indeed, and should attack John Partridge, the chief of the astrological almanack makers, with a definite prediction of the day and hour of his death. This he did in a pamphlet that brought up to the war against one stronghold of superstition an effective battery of satire. The pamphlet itself has been given in our volume of "The Battle of the Books, and other short pieces, by Jonathan Swift." * The joke once set rolling was kept up in other playful little pamphlets written to ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... them he called for his fiddlers three and their very fine fiddles. According to Robert of Gloucester, the real King Cole, a popular monarch of Britain in the third century, was the father of St. Helena, the zealous friend of church music. The nursery satire of doubtful antiquity is our sole evidence of his ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... there was some satire in Gylingden; but, in the main, it was a loyal town, and true to its princess. Mr. Wylder's settlements were not satisfactory, it was presumed, or the young lady could not bring herself to like him, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... abhorred vice, a slothful body of men, like that of the monks, must have been an object of long and deep aversion. Hence, the new religion, which opposed these orders, derived an immense advantage from having the popular opinion on its side. Occasional pamphlets, full of bitterness and satire, to which the newly-discovered art of printing secured a rapid circulation, and several bands of strolling orators, called Rederiker, who at that time made the circuit of the provinces, ridiculing in theatrical ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I laid down some Thoughts upon Devotion in general, and shall here shew what were the Notions of the most refined Heathens on this Subject, as they are represented in Plato's Dialogue upon Prayer, entitled, Alcibiades the Second, which doubtless gave Occasion to Juvenal's tenth Satire, and to the second Satire of Persius; as the last of these Authors has almost transcribed the preceding Dialogue, entitled Alcibiades the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... imagining us and our arts and sciences and religions, and is narrating or picturing us as a satire upon the ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... no plan; but I had or have materials.... You are too earnest and eager about a work never intended to be serious. Do you suppose that I could have any intention but to giggle and make giggle?—a playful satire, with as little poetry as could be helped, was what I meant." Again, after the completion but before the publication of Cantos III., IV., V., in a letter to Murray (February 16, 1821), he writes, "The Fifth is so far from being the last of Don Juan, that it is hardly ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... ingenuity with which he makes not so much our pleasant vices as our little almost-virtues into whips to scourge us with. All this has been wrung from me by the perusal of Mr. Teddy (FISHER UNWIN). Even now I can't make up my mind whether I like it or not. The first half, which might be called a satire on the folly of being forty and not realising it, depressed me profoundly. I need not perhaps enlarge upon the reason. Later, Mr. BENSON made a very clever return upon the theme; and, with a touch of real ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... rose in their cause, the gates were shut, the ramparts were manned; and the cowardice of Peter was found equal to his arrogance and injustice. The military fame of Commentiolus [37] is the object of satire or comedy rather than of serious history, since he was even deficient in the vile and vulgar qualification of personal courage. His solemn councils, strange evolutions, and secret orders, always supplied an apology for flight or delay. If he marched against the enemy, the pleasant ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the absence of any tone of satire that made this speech come home to Laura as it was meant. There was no grudging in the praise, and she answered, in a ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... debate in Lincoln with Bixbee, of the Journal, a rank republican, who used only ridicule and satire, for he had no argument of course. I lectured for and with the "Red Ribbon Alliance" there who were so faithfully working and praying for the abolition of the saloon. The spring election in Lincoln was for prohibition but lost by sixty votes. William Jennings Bryan lives there and if ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... became interested in the trouble that had befallen his kinswoman, and the more interested when Mignon hinted to him that there was reason to believe that the suspected wizard was also the author of a recent satire which had set the entire court laughing at Richelieu's expense. What lent plausibility to this charge was the fact that the satire had been universally accredited to a court beauty formerly one of Grandier's ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... have heard of your paintings,] These destructive aids of beauty seem, in the time of Shakespeare, to have been general objects of satire.] ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... of boldness, satire, and simplicity in the manner in which Miss Vernon pronounced these words. My knowledge of life was sufficient to enable me to take up a corresponding tone as I expressed my gratitude to her for her condescension, and my extreme pleasure at having met with them. To say ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a wealthy merchant, of dubious morals, and I am about to marry my housekeeper, who is on intimate terms with the Norwegian aristocracy. I have a son who loathes me, and who is either an Ibsenian satire on the Master's own ideals, or else an utterly impossible prig—I don't know or care which. Altogether, I flatter myself my household affords an accurate and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... in them an organized movement against all authority, sacred or secular, soon withdrew his support; Berquin was burned at the stake in the Place de Greve, and the Sorbonne even ventured to pursue, with open prosecution and denunciation, and with hidden satire in a comedy represented at the College de Navarre, the king's sister for having caused her brother to adopt a book of prayers translated into French and for having caused to be printed a work of her own in verse: Le Miroir de l'Ame pecheresse. The Parlement formally ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... and among them the Candidate, had laughed loudly at Emelie's descriptions; but the Judge had not once moved his lips, and replied, when she had done, with an earnestness that confounded even her satire. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... among the Bishops, or a terrible Tempest in the Sea of Canterbury, a Poem with lively Emblems. A Satire against Archbishop Laud. With Four Wood Engravings. Rare. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... heartless brutes. That is exactly what I have been called by readers of your novel; and that, indeed, is exactly what I am, judged by the fictitious and feminine standard of morality. Hence some critics have been able plausibly to pretend to take the book as a satire on Socialism. It may, for what I know, have been so intended by you. Whether or no, I am sorry you made a novel of my story, for the effect has been almost as if you had misrepresented me from ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... deep roots; a reprint such as the present is clearly no place for a discussion of the subject at large:[1] it need only be recalled here that to the age that produced The Pilgrim's Progress the art form was not new. Throughout his life Dryden had his enemies, Prior and Montague in their satire of The Hind and the Panther, for example. The general circumstances under which Dryden wrote Absalom and Achitophel, familiar enough and easily accessible, are therefore recalled only briefly ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... a new style, and if not altogether a new class of subjects, one so richly, so luxuriantly treated as to be fairly considered new. He has given to humour a gentle satire, and more especially to works of creative fancy an historical importance; for herein he is essentially different from all other painters of this class, that none of his pieces, we might almost say none of his figures, are, or pretend to be, real life. If it be said that they are theatrical, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... peniai sophias kai aporiai sunoikounton.] And as their theology was before very obscure, he drew over it a mysterious veil to make it tenfold darker. The chief of the intelligence transmitted by Solon from Egypt contained a satire upon his own country. He was told by an antient [515]priest, that the Grecians were children in science: that they were utterly ignorant of the mythology of other nations; and did not understand their own. Eudoxus likewise and Plato ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... high-mettled colt passes him on the way. He turned the discourse on shows, banquets, pageants, and on the character of those by whom these gay scenes were then frequented. He mixed acute observation with light satire, in that just proportion which was free alike from malignant slander and insipid praise. He mimicked with ready accent the manners of the affected or the clownish, and made his own graceful tone and manner seem doubly such when he resumed it. Foreign countries—their customs, their manners, the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... world and for him that at a time of life when his powers were at the highest he procured a place which kept him beyond the reach of weekly want, and enabled him to gather his great intellects together and produce the greatest satire and two of the most complete romances in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... this subject. The good doctor heard him out and then, caressing his own chin and looking over the tops of his spectacles, with good-humored satire, he said: ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... a proof of the general corruption of society. It is likely that every religion in the world has used words or practised rites in one age, which have become distasteful or repugnant to another. We cannot, though for different reasons, trust the representations either of Comedy or Satire; and still less of Christian Apologists. (4) We observe that at Thebes and Lacedemon the attachment of an elder friend to a beloved youth was often deemed to be a part of his education; and was encouraged by his parents—it was only shameful if it degenerated into licentiousness. ...
— Symposium • Plato
... to have passed an evening in a room where a number of my intimate friends were engaged in playing at cards. As I did not play, I took my seat at an office-table, and hastily sketched the conversation which I afterwards read for their amusement. But the whole was in reality a bitter satire on their language and sentiments, although it was not so designed by me, nor received by them. I several years afterwards saw the sketch of this conversation among my papers, and was forcibly struck ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... before, to join the American forces. His successor was broad-built, choleric, but kind of heart, and came from Ohio. I suspected the new doctor of a sense of humour, as well as of an understanding of current smart-set satire. "They kept me at your base two months," he told me, "but I wanted to see the war. I also heard an English doctor say he would be glad of a move, as the base was full of ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... aunt, as soon as he came in after dinner, and leaning over her with his arm on the mantelpiece, or drawing a chair beside her, would laugh and talk with endless spirit and amusement. When he talked of the people in the neighbourhood who afforded scope for satire, she would tap him with her fan and say, "Why do I not see these originals? bring them to see me," to Lucy's wonder and often dismay. "They would not amuse you at all," Sir Tom would reply, upon which the lady would turn and call Lucy to her. "My little angel! he pretends that it is ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Wherefore, the choice of these selections, like kissing, went by favor. As to the arrangement of them, every compiler will tell you that Classification is Vexation. And why not? When many a poem may be both Parody and Satire,—both Romance and Cynicism. Wherefore, the compiler sorted with loving care the selections here presented striving to do justice to the verses themselves, and taking a chance on the tolerant good ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... often extremely humorous in their newspaper letters, excelling in that department. As critics they incline to satire. No one who read them at the time will ever forget Mrs. Runkle's review of "St. Elmo," or Gail Hamilton's criticism of "The Story of Avis," while Mrs. Rollins, in the Critic, often uses a scimitar instead of a quill, though a smile always tempers the severity. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Aristophanes; Rome her Juvenal; Spain has had her Cervantes; France her Rabelais, her Moliere, her Voltaire; Germany her Jean Paul, her Heine; England her Swift, her Thackeray; and America has her Lowell. By the side of all those great masters of satire, though kept somewhat in the rear by provincialism of style and subject, the author of the "Biglow Papers" holds his own place distinct from each and all. The man who reads the book for the first time, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... militant commercialism, bellowed out between glasses of strong liquor. Now comes Mayakin, speaking softly and without satire: ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... Tibiae sinistrae. In a manuscript marginal note, it is said to have been composed by Tigellius the famous musician, whose death and character Horace takes occasion to entertain and instruct us with, in the second satire of his first Book. You see, therefore, that Lady J——'s taste for Italian music, cannot be called in question; and indeed, I think her liking Appie Mac-nab, is a very strong proof of it, as she certainly could not know its original. The Roman song-book, a very great curiosity, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... rat-elves, when Pao-ch'ai entered unannounced, and began to gibe Pao-y, with trenchant irony: how that on the fifteenth of the first moon, he had shown ignorance of the allusion to the green wax; and the three of them then indulged in that room in mutual poignant satire, for the sake of fun. Pao-y had been giving way to solicitude lest Tai-y should, by being bent upon napping soon after her meal, be shortly getting an indigestion, or lest sleep should, at night, be completely dispelled, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... find the grievous satire, the truthful picture of the society Holbein had under his eyes. Crime and misfortune, those are what impressed him; but what shall we depict, we artists of another age? Shall we seek in the thought of death the reward of mankind in the present ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... out of this vile piece of prose, the higher nature of Alfieri and of the Countess of Albany, and (what a satire upon poetic and platonic affection!) most of all, the monomaniac jealousy of Charles Edward, contrived to ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... the one deserving of satire if anybody!' she said. 'I begin to feel I was a foolish girl to run away from a father for such a trumpery reason as a little scolding because I had ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... in breathless astonishment, listened. Glorious thoughts were expressed therein, and the poets of the Muse Almanach might have thanked God if the like had 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 ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... matter of course that he should engage me in conversation. He was as lonesome for a chance to bark as a country dog. Presently when I dissented from some point in his creed, he called me a heretic, and I with gentlest satire asked him if the word yet lived. But he was not angry, and he told me of his brotherhood. It had a branch in America, and he bade me, if ever I met any of its priests, to convey to them his warm regards. As for America, it was, he said, too coldly ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... phase reaches its skeptical termination in the satire Dreams of a Ghost-seer explained by the Dreams of Metaphysics, 1766, which pours out its ingenious sarcasm impartially on spiritualism and on the assumed knowledge of the suprasensible. Here Kant is already clearly conscious of his new problem, a theory of the limits ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... They pulsate the air, and make the heart throb with a conviction that the world of literature would have been poorer had they not been written. And now, Mr Rockfeller, let us cease further attempts at satire, and get to business. I wish to visit my parents who are very old; but before doing so I should like to have our little transaction settled and the future employment of the vessel arranged." The request was duly ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... renders a man an object either of esteem and affection, or of hatred and contempt; every habit or sentiment or faculty, which if ascribed to any person, implies either praise or blame, and may enter into any panegyric or satire of his character and manners. The quick sensibility which, on this head, is so universal among mankind, gives a philosopher sufficient assurance that he can never be considerably mistaken in framing the catalogue, or incurs any danger of misplacing the objects of his contemplation: He needs only ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... if seeking for a bit of bread, but all the while keeping his face turned just so far from the fated grog-vessel that no one suspected his design. On reaching the spot his heart began to fail him, but not his wickedness; indeed, his was the very beau ideal of that character described in the satire of Junius, which, "without courage enough to resist doing a bad action, has yet virtue enough to be ashamed of it." Whether or not these mixed motives influenced old Jacko, I cannot pretend to say; but there he sat chattering, screaming, and trembling, as if ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... vagaries. To him Chaucer's Prioress, like Chaucer's monk and Chaucer's friar, will simply be one more instance of the almost photographic accuracy of the poet's observation. The rippling undercurrent of satire is always there; but it is Chaucer's own peculiar satire—mellow, amused, uncondemning, the most subtle kind of satire, which does not depend upon exaggeration. The literary critic has only Chaucer's words and his own heart, or sometimes ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... himself, has with greater probability delayed the final banishment of the fairies from England, that is, from popular faith, till the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and has represented their expulsion as a consequence of the change of religion. Two or three verses of this lively satire may be very well worth the reader's notice, who must, at the same time, be informed that the author, Dr. Corbett, was nothing less than the Bishop of Oxford and Norwich in the beginning of the seventeenth century. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... of the forest, made a scornful song about the tyrant of Oas who went to war against babes, and it was sung everywhere in the city, and the king could do nothing about it, for it was cleverly worded, seeming to approve, though in satire only. ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... recognized ambition of finding herself beautiful, prominent, and a rich man's wife, for something further and greater, she knew not what. She was an important figure in this world of hers; her word was authority, her decree law. Never was censure so quick as hers, never criticism so biting, or satire so witty. No human emotion was too sacred to form a target for her glancing arrows, nor was any affection deep enough to arouse in her anything ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... Julie. For him, in spite of her keen intelligence, she was the type passionne, from which he instinctively recoiled—the Duke of Crowborough the same. Such men feel towards such women as Julie Le Breton hostility or satire; for what they ask, above all, of the women of their world is a kind of simplicity, a kind of lightness which makes life easier ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Catholics, nor Protestants, nor those who managed "thumbscrews" and "hot irons," and other condemned instruments of the dark ages, nor yet those who now live to be the "butt" of Colonel Ingersoll's satire and ridicule. A kind feeling for all, ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... of Kettering seems not to have known that the author of this "Discourse on Ecclesiastical Polity" was the notorious Parker, immortalised by the satire of Marvell. This political apostate, from a republican and presbyterian, became a furious advocate for arbitrary government in church and state! He easily won the favour of James the Second, who made him Bishop ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the company, a hungry crew whose brain only responded to the sight of a more or less good meal, showed much animosity to the luckless Gambara, and waited only till the end of the first course, to give free vent to their satire. A refugee, whose frequent leer betrayed ambitious schemes on Marianna, and who fancied he could establish himself in her good graces by trying to make her husband ridiculous, opened fire to show the newcomer how the land lay ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... of 27th December 1733 has an essay on Christmas Pye; but it is only a political satire, and not worth quoting here. There was once a famous Christmas pie which obtained the following notice in the Newcastle Chronicle, 6th January 1770: "Monday last, was brought from Howick to Berwick, to be shipp'd for London, for sir Hen. Grey, bart., a pie, the contents whereof ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do. It is the best news that America has ever heard. It has already quickened the feeble pulse of the North, and infused more and more generous blood into her veins and heart, than any number of years of what is called commercial ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... born at Naples. Some political disturbances, in which he and his family had taken part, obliged him to quit that kingdom, and he took refuge successively in several of the petty courts of Italy. His talent for satire involved him in various literary disputes, as well as some political quarrels, and he never resided long in one place, until Mary of Medicis invited him to the court of France, where he passed much of his life, and where ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... seriously that ha' played him. I'm thinking Shakespeare's ghost maun laugh when it sees hoo all the great folk ha' missed the satire o' the character. Macbeth was a Scottish comedian like masel'—that's why I'd like to play him. And then, I'm awfu' pleased wi' the idea o' his make-up. He wears great whiskers, and I'm thinkin' they'd be a great improvement to me, wi' the style o' beauty I have. I notice ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... prejudices, no really great or disturbing imagination, no wealth of perplexing ideas. He saw America and life as something to be painted as all masters see life and paint it. Gifted with a true vein of satire, he had not, at the time of his death, quite mastered its possibilities. He still retained prejudice of one type or another, which he permitted to interfere with the very smooth arrangement of his colors. At the ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Espronceda's Classic manner, and is rightly considered one of his masterpieces. It challenges comparison with the Duque de Rivas' very similar poem. Of the numerous patriotic poems "Al Dos de Mayo" and "A la Patria" deserve especial mention. He attempted satire in "El Pastor Clasiquino," recently reprinted by Le Gentil from "El Artista." In this poem he assails academic poetry like that produced by his old fellow-academicians of the Myrtle. It betrays ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... incomprehensible even to the diviner himself; this is a satire on the obscure style of the oracles. Bacis ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... grotesque: it is the comic tragedy of vituperative malevolence. Holy-Cross Day heightens the grotesque with pity, indignation and solemnity: The Heretic's Tragedy raises it to sublimity. Browning's satire is equally keen and kindly. It never condescends to raise laughter at infirmity, or at mere absurdities of manners; it respects human nature, but it convicts falsity by the revealing intensity of its illumination. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... up! I wish I might open the pages of other gems and quote from their wit, their satire and their sentiment, but any reference to Allison's productions must of very necessity touch only the high spots and ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... become clever. And this regimen, with an occasional debauch upon macaroons, chocolate, and cheap champagne, and brisk daily walks from Oxford Circus, through Regent Street, Piccadilly, and the Green Park, to Westminster and back, should result in an animated society satire. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... between our servants, but of an insult which Spain has received from France in the face of all Rome. Yes, all Rome has witnessed this insult, and these miserable Romans have even dared to dishonor us with irony and satire, and to mock and deride Spain, while they ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... nicely," said Dayton. "Now I suppose we may call ourselves quits?" and he glanced quizzically at the boy who had clearly missed the amiable satire of the suggestion. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... "Your satire is scathing," replied the Abbe. "I can assure you that if I had serving-women and the peasant girls to deal with, I should not complain; for in simple souls there are qualities and virtues and a responsive ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... cruelty of which the Celt is capable when his abysses are in revolt, Michael was silent for some seconds, and then stepped back with an ironical bow. "Not literally true, of course," he said; "only really true. An allegory, shall we say? a social satire." ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... their mouths, is scarcely to be imagined. They were good and true in their inmost hearts; but it does appear that some of the tricks of which they were guilty left them less honest human creatures. There was a strong dash of satire in Sam's fun afterwards; there was a sharpness in Clary's temper, and a despotism in her dignity. To be sure, Clary always liked Sam's irony a thousand times better than another man's charity, and Sam ever thought Clary's impatient, imperious ways far before the cooing of any turtle-dove in the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... applied for the necessary license. But it had already been talked about: if one party had pronounced it lively, witty, and the cleverest play that had been seen since the death of Moliere, another set of readers declared it full of immoral and dangerous satire on the institutions of the country. It is almost inseparable from the very nature of comedy that it should be to some extent satirical. The offense which those who complained of "The Marriage of Figaro" on that account really found in it was, that it satirized classes ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... despot, took special exception to Holbach's remarks on government. "Il l'outrage avec autant de grossierete que d'indecence, il force le gouvernement de prendre fait et cause avec l'eglise pour s'opposer a l'ennemi commun. Mais, quand avec un acharnement violent et les traits de la plus acre satire, il calomnie son Roi et le gouvernement de son pays, on le prend pour un frenetique echappe de ses chaines, et livre aux transports les plus violens de sa rage. Quoi, Monsieur le philosophe, protecteur des moeurs et de la vertu, ignorez vous qu'un ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... her can alone imagine the satire contained in that remark, dryly said in a tone which ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... title character of a comic strip nationally syndicated in the U.S. and enormously popular among hackers. Dilbert is an archetypical engineer-nerd who works at an anonymous high-technology company; the strips present a lacerating satire of insane working conditions and idiotic {management} practices all too readily recognized by hackers. Adams, who spent nine years in {cube} 4S700R at Pacific Bell (not {DEC} as often reported), often remarks that he has never been able to come up with a fictional ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... leaned whispering some further instructions to Tommy, who again took up his desultory ballad, while I turned and fled for the street, catching, however, as I went, and high above the laughter of the crowd, the satire of this quatrain to ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Alimentive avoids people he does not care for, the Thoracic is inclined to betray his aversions. He occasionally delights to put people he dislikes at a disadvantage by his wit or satire. The stony individual who walks through life like an Ionian pillar is a complete mystery to the Thoracic; and the pillar returns the compliment. We do not like anything we do not understand and we seldom understand anything that differs decidedly ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... occasional statue brought from England. Architecture in its higher form is an unknown quantity. Painting is beginning to struggle towards the light, chiefly in the form of water-colour drawings. Political satire finds expression in cartoons, for the most part of that crude sort which depicts public men as horrific ogres and malformed monsters of appalling disproportions. Music, reading, and flower gardening ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... universally acknowledged of infinite wit and most excellent fancy; one who gave peculiar grace to the jest, and could set the table in a roar with flashes of merriment: but wit and humour were not his only excellencies; he possessed a keenness of satire, that made Folly hide her head in the highest places, and Vice tremble in the bosoms of the great: but now, blessed with that affluence which genius and prudence are sure to acquire in England, the liberal patroness of the fine arts, he now ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... century after century, and age after age, the barren and meaningless process; it is this sense that gives to this forlorn, uncomely land power to speak to the spirit and make friends with it; to, speak to it with a voice bitter with satire, but eloquent with melancholy. The deserts of Australia and the ice-barrens of Greenland have no speech, for they have no venerable history; with nothing to tell of man and his vanities, his fleeting glories and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for so long. He took the long mesh of woollen sheeting that his daughter had brought to be a rest and support to his own body, and with it he tied Toyner to the upright tree against which the log was lying; then, with an additional touch of fiendish satire, he took a bit of dry bread out of the ample bag of food which Ann had hung there for his own needs, and laid it on Toyner's knees. Having done all this he pushed his boat away with reckless rapidity, ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... Loudun took place in the reign of Louis XIII.; and Cardinal Richelieu is accused of having caused this tragedy to be enacted, in order to ruin Urban Grandier, the cure of Loudun, for having written a cutting satire against him. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... is nineteen; and of a hundred and eight which Terence is said to have translated from Menander, there now remain only six. Excepting a few inconsiderable fragments, the writings of all the other authors have perished. The early period of Roman literature was distinguished for the introduction of satire by Lucilius, an author celebrated for writing with remarkable ease, but whose compositions, in the opinion of Horace, though Quintilian thinks otherwise, were debased with a mixture of feculency. Whatever may have been their merit, they also have perished, with the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... early life a prominent figure among the French romanticists, wrote some capital satire upon the baffling and contradictory definitions of the word romantisme that were current in the third and fourth decades of this century.[18] Two worthy provincials write from the little town of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre to the editor of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," appealing ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... even though they be, in the conventional sense, knaves, products, as the case might be, of conditions or circumstance, which after all is the thing to be criticised and not the man. But pity and tolerance are rare in satire, even in clash with it, producing in the result a deep sense of tragic humour. It is this that makes of Dead Souls a unique work, peculiarly Gogolian, peculiarly Russian, and distinct from its author's ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... sermon which here follows might have had a purely serious intention in Chaucer's time, when books were rare, and moralities not such commonplaces as they are now; yet it is difficult to believe that the poet did not intend something of a covert satire upon at least the sermoniser's own pretensions, especially as the latter had declared himself against text-spinning. The Host, it is to be observed, had already charged him with forgetting his own faults, while preaching against those of others. ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... his high canonical chair, wrapped in his dressing-gown, John would bend forward listening, as if from the Bench or the pulpit, awaking to a more intense interest when some more than usually bitter vial of satire was emptied upon the fair sex. He had once amused Harding very much by his admonishment ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... those who saw it, and led to many conjectures as to its meaning. The three friends agreed, in sport, that they would each one day commit to writing his peculiar interpretation of its design. Wieland promised a satire; Von Kleist threw off a comedy; and the author of the following tale ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... lovelihood. Suggestive too of his oncoming passion for Devonshire and Western England are strains of exquisite landscape music scattered at random through these pages. More significant still, however, is the developing faculty for personal satire, pointing to a vastly riper human experience. Peak was uncertain, says the author, with that faint ironical touch which became almost habitual to him, 'as to the limits of modern latitudinarianism until he met Chilvers,' the sleek, clerical advocate of 'Less St. Paul and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... windows, the iron cages fastened to the lower ones. Part of the brooding expression of these great houses comes, even when they have not fallen into decay, from their look of having outlived their original use. Their extraordinary largeness and massiveness are a satire on their present fate. They weren't built with such a thickness of wall and depth of embrasure, such a solidity of staircase and superfluity of stone, simply to afford an economical winter residence to English and American families. I don't ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... know, he was to work out his destiny in another direction. With the simplest of means he was to delineate character, and everyday drops of ink, when filtered through his pen, were to emerge in quaint or graceful shapes, wit, satire, and sentiment taking their turns to prompt ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... This old "comical satire" has come down in a very corrupt state. A sadly tattered appearance is presented by the metrical passages. I have ventured to patch only a few of the many rents in ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... producing fire does not antedate the more primitive methods such as striking quartz or rubbing wooden sticks, because the materials required are not readily found or prepared, but it is of very remote origin. Aristophanes in his comedy "The Clouds," which is a satire aimed at the science and philosophy of his period (488-385 B. C.), mentions the "burning lens." Nearly every one is familiar with an achievement attributed to Archimedes in which he destroyed the ships ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh |
