Quotes by Satirists

The news is glorified gossip.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Dear Whoever-that-just-found-out-that-they-have-a-terminal-illness, don't let that put you down. Technically, we are all dying.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Learn whom God has ordered you to be, and in what part of human affairs you have been placed.
Persius
I think it is true to say only an inferior person has rights. When you hear a person talking about his rights, you may be sure he is trying to gain by dint of shouting something which he lacks ( or had and lost) by reason of some culpable deficiency in himself.
Flann O'Brien
Only serfs or ex-serfs find it necessary to draw up a statement of their 'rights'.
Flann O'Brien
We think our fathers fools so wise we grow Our wiser sons no doubt will think us so.
Alexander Pope
Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones.
G. C. Lichtenberg
You praise the firm restraint with which they write - I'm with you there of course: They use the snaffle and the curb all right But where's the bloody horse?
Roy Campbell
Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.
Jonathan Swift
A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
Karl Kraus
In adversity remember to keep an even mind.
Horace
Worth makes the man and want of it the fellow The rest is all but leather and prunello.
Alexander Pope
There was all the world and his wife.
Jonathan Swift
They dream in courtship but in wedlock wake.
Alexander Pope
He who begun has half done. Dare to be wise begin.
Horace
Offend her and she knows not to forgive Oblige her and she'll hate you while you live.
Alexander Pope
Woman's at best a contradiction still.
Alexander Pope
True wit is Nature to advantage dress'd What oft was thought but ne'er so well express'd.
Alexander Pope
True wit is nature to advantage dress'd What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed.
Alexander Pope
I wish I knew the good of wishing.
Henry S. Leigh
All other goods by fortune's hand are given: A wife is the peculiar gift of Heav'n.
Alexander Pope
No man ever became very wicked all at once.
Juvenal
Riches either serve or govern the possessor.
Horace
Get place and wealth if possible with grace If not by any means get wealth and place.
Alexander Pope
The smell of profit is clean and sweet whatever the source.
Juvenal
Most sorts of diversion in men children and other animals are in imitation of fighting.
Jonathan Swift
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Jonathan Swift
My thoughts by night are often filled With visions false as fair: For in the past alone I build My castles in the air.
Thomas Love Peacock
A virtue to be serviceable must like gold be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.
Samuel Butler
When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
Jonathan Swift
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable grounds.
Samuel Butler
One can live in this world on soothsaying but not on truth saying.
G. C. Lichtenberg
Loyalty is still the same Whether it win or lose the game True as a dial to the sun Although it be not shined upon.
Samuel Butler
To put one's trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
Samuel Butler
Usually speaking the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.
Jonathan Swift
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift
Enjoy the present day trusting very little to the morrow.
Horace
Not to go back is somewhat to advance. And men must walk at least before they dance.
Alexander Pope
Our latest moment is always our supreme moment. Five minutes delay in dinner now is more important than a great sorrow ten years gone.
Samuel Butler
The changing year's progressive plan Proclaims mortality to man.
Horace
Who knows if the gods above will add tomorrow's span to this day's sum?
Horace
Very few men properly speaking live at present but are providing to live another time.
Jonathan Swift
Seize the day and put the least possible trust in tomorrow.
Horace
Cease to inquire what the future has in store and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.
Horace
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another man's resemblance to ourselves.
Ambrose Bierce
People care more about being thought to have good taste than about being thought either good clever or amiable.
Samuel Butler
Good taste and humour are a contradiction in terms like a chaste whore.
Malcolm Muggeridge
What so tedious as a twice-told tale?
Alexander Pope
Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden not silence.
Samuel Butler
Women and foxes being weak are distinguished by superior tact.
Ambrose Bierce
Never elated while one man's oppress'd Never dejected while another's bless'd.
Alexander Pope
And he gave it for his opinion that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift
We grow weary of those things (and perhaps soonest) which we most desire.
Samuel Butler
Achievement: The death of an endeavor and the birth of disgust.
Ambrose Bierce
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten and to leave off fighting at once.
Samuel Butler
Vice Is nice But a little virtue Won't hurt you.
Felicia Lamport
Get place and wealth if possible with grace If not by any means get wealth and place.
Alexander Pope
Perseverance n.: A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.
Ambrose Bierce
The bookful blockhead ignorantly read With loads of learned lumber in his head.
Alexander Pope
Sport begets tumultuous strife and wrath and wrath begets fierce quarrels and war to the death.
Horace