Quotes by Satirists - Page 10

We are slaves whose masters are dead. For we are mostly controlled by doctrines which were established centuries heretofore.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A realist is a slave to reality.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A freedom-fighter is a slave to freedom.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Lectio, quae placuit, decies repetita placebit.(What we read with pleasure we can read many times with pleasure.)
Horace
If my belief in the God-force-principle-thing had faltered from time to time, it was completely reaffirmed that morning when I considered how completely brilliant a creation was fermentation. From decay came a pleasure sublime enough to keep decay at bay. Only for a few minutes, perhaps, but some minutes are like no others.
Tony Hendra
Generally, people need less than a quarter of what they want.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A man’s bank balance is the new penis size.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A cowardly critique starts with a compliment.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I will only start taking book reviews seriously from the day that books are able to review readers.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Alexander Pope
Not everybody that says that you suck is a hater. There are people who suck.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Procrastination threatens critics’ livelihood.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Critiquing a doer isn’t doing.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most people say that Shakespeare rocked merely because most people say that Shakespeare rocked.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made.
Jonathan Swift
As uncomfortable as it might be, I refuse to let the comfort of being agreed with suffocate my opinions.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.
Jonathan Swift
Most critics, fond of subservient artstill make the whole depend upon a part.They talk of principles, but notions prizeAnd all to one loved folly sacrifice.
Alexander Pope
The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
Jonathan Swift
We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.
Jonathan Swift
Back then: to be paid more, one needed to increase the number of things that are by him known. Today: to be paid more, one needs to increase the number of people by whom he is known.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
So, if you don't summon a book and a light before dawn,If you don't set your mind on honest aims and pursuits,On waking, you'll be tortured by envy or lust.Why so quick to remove a speck from your eye, whenIf it's your mind, you put off the cure till next year?Who's started has half finished: dare to be wise: begin!
Horace
For when success a lover's toil attends,Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends
Alexander Pope
To flatter a young man, tell him that you thought that he was older than he is. To flatter an old woman, tell her that you thought that she was younger than she is.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Getting older comes with abilities. Being old comes with disabilities.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The only things that old age comes standard with: grey hair and wrinkles. Wisdom and intellect are earned.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If we really exist merely to fulfill God’s plan: then life is a television drama; with God being the scriptwriter, the director, and, the audience.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.
Karl Kraus
Capture your reader, let him not depart, from dull beginnings that refuse to start
Horace
I am neither for conformity nor non-conformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.
Paul Krassner
Eyes are a deaf man’s ears. Ears are a blind man’s eyes.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If love wasn't conditional, everybody would be in love with everybody.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Primary purposes of a mirror: (1) To help civilized men realize their imperfections, and, (2) To help the imperfect hide their imperfections.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Later the place was as deserted as Malcolm Muggeridge's Christmas party of fellow intellectuals.
William Donaldson
Without the door let sorrow lie,And if for cold it hap to die,We'll bury 't in a Christmas pie,And evermore be merry.
George Wither
They were obviously headstones of graves, though the graves themselves no longer existed as either mounds or depressions; the years had leveled all. Scattered here and there, more massive blocks showed where some pompous or ambitious monument had once flung its feeble defiance at oblivion.
Ambrose Bierce
There will be no beautiful widow with Persian eyes sitting at your grave. And teary-eyed kids won't be asking: "Papa, papa, can you hear us?
Ilya Ilf
Retro is a symptom of a generation that is too lazy to innovate.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Jonathan Swift
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Alexander Pope
In some cases, people with a body (whose size) they did not long for are victims of having a bank balance (whose size) they longed for.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find,Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less!Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are madeTaller or stronger than the weeds they shade?Or ask of yonder argent fields above,Why Jove's Satellites are less than Jove?
Alexander Pope
Whenever they are given the choice, some people choose a bath over a shower; they, too, would like to do their bit to waste water.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Inscriptions here of various Names I view'd,The greater part by hostile time subdu'd;Yet wide was spread their fame in ages past,And Poets once had promis'd they should last.
Alexander Pope
As learnèd commentators viewIn Homer more than Homer knew.
Jonathan Swift
Jesus Christ was innocent too,' said Svejk, 'and all the same they crucified him. No one anywhere has ever worried about a man being innocent. Maul halten und weiter dienen ['Grin and bear it and get on with the job'] - as they used to tell us in the army. That's the best and finest thing of all.
Jaroslav Hašek
Ambition’ is ‘greed’ rebranded.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Ambition is greed without makeup.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Must this with farce and folly rack myhead unpunish'd ? that with sing-song,Whine me dead?
Juvenal
Life enslaves the poor by giving them problems that money can resolve, or, dissolve
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Life humbles the rich by giving them problems that money can’t resolve, or, dissolve. Life enslaves the poor by giving them problems that money can resolve, or, dissolve.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A satirist that criticizes religion is seen as a satanist.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tom Lehrer
I don’t think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It’s not even preaching to the converted; it’s titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, ‘We need satire of them, not of us.’ I’m fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the ’30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War.
Tom Lehrer
Yet, Malice never was his Aim;He lash'd the Vice but spar'd the Name. No individual could resent,Where thousands equally were meant. His Satry points at no Defect, But what all Mortals may correct...Verses on the death of Dr Swift
Jonathan Swift
People who regularly abuse power don't like being laughed at'.
Pieter-Dirk Uys
Let Sporus tremble — "What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?"Yet let me flap this Bug with gilded wings,This painted Child of Dirt that stinks and stings; Whose Buzz the Witty and the Fair annoys,Yet Wit ne'er tastes, and Beauty ne'er enjoys,
Alexander Pope
I replied that England (the dear place of my nativity) was computed to produce three times the quantity of food, more than its inhabitants are able to consume, ... But, in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, from whence in return we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, freethinking,
Jonathan Swift