Quotes by Satirists - Page 16

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.
Samuel Butler
There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman—the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles—the work of a shell.The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries—something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey—a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.
Ambrose Bierce
Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
Jonathan Swift
All evil begins with this belief: that another’s existence is less precious than mine.
Tony Hendra
Fate would have no divinity if we were wise: it is we who make her a goddess and place her in heaven.
Juvenal
SOSTRATUS: Observe then your injustice! You punish us who are but the slaves of Clotho's bidding, and reward these, who do but minister to another's beneficence. For it will never be said that it was in our power to gainsay the irresistible ordinances of Fate?MINOS: Ah, Sostratus; look closely enough, and you will find plenty of inconsistencies besides these. However, I see you are no common pirate, but a philosopher in your way; so much you have gained by your questions. Let him go, Hermes; he shall not be punished after that. But mind, Sostratus, you must not put it into other people's heads to ask questions of this kind.
Lucian of Samosata
When rich, being poor seems *adventurous.*
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.
Samuel Butler
I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells; a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there; and often, when there is nothing in the world at the bottom, besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and half under ground, it shall pass however for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark.
Jonathan Swift
There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof Ihope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am notunderstood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profoundis couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentenceis printed in a different character shall be judged to contain somethingextraordinary either of wit or sublime.
Jonathan Swift
A writer's pen depreciates with every word that it writes. Whereas she appreciates with every word that she writes.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A writer is merely a reader that had the guts to be read, and, heard.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There are more writers who read than readers who write.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
To put an arrogant 'famous' writer in his place: pretend to be illiterate.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Sometimes it is the reader that sucks, not the book.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A writer’s primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore’s is to make cents.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
When reading a book, you are sold what some writer thought. When reading a newspaper, you are sold what someone did, and, what some advertiser made.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Every artist takes their final work to the grave.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Peanut butter is a poor man’s marmalade.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Shyness is a luxury reserved for those who are above the poverty line. To a beggar, being shy is deadly.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There’s a very fine line between being broke and being humble.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Juice is a poor man’s dessert.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Using money in one’s attempt to put an end to poverty is like using a border in one’s attempt to put an end to xenophobia.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Rich people read their bills. Poor people dread theirs.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Distinctive facial features of a parent are poor people’s paternity test.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Narcissism is as profitable to a model as scruffiness is to a homeless person.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Leftovers are less tasty if they were left over by someone else, unless you are poor.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Many a rich man’s bed is bigger than many a poor woman’s bedroom; his bedroom, her house.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth!
Ambrose Bierce
Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live!
Ambrose Bierce
What did I fear, and why? — I, to whom the night had beena more familiar facethan that of man —I, in whom that element of hereditary superstition from which none of us is altogether free had given to solitude and darkness and silence only a more alluring interest and charm!
Ambrose Bierce
From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and here, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is - how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers, whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap of a wood rat, it may be the footstep of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? What the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live! ("A Tough Tussle")
Ambrose Bierce
A mere wilderness, as you see, even now in December; but in summer a complete nursery of briers, a forest of thistles, a plantation of nettles, without any live stock but goats, that have eaten up all the bark of the trees. Here you see is the pedestal of a statue, with only half a leg and four toes remaining: there were many here once. When I was a boy, I used to sit every day on the shoulders of Hercules: what became of him I have never been able to ascertain. Neptune has been lying these seven years in the dust-hole; Atlas had his head knocked off to fit him for propping a shed; and only the day before yesterday we fished Bacchus out of the horse-pond.
Thomas Love Peacock
Raven: The Honourable Mr Listless is gone. He declared that, what with family quarrels in the morning, and ghosts at night, he could get neither sleep nor peace; and that the agitation was too much for his nerves: though Mr Glowry assured him that the ghost was only poor Crow walking in his sleep, and that the shroud and bloody turban were a sheet and a red nightcap.
Thomas Love Peacock
Raven: The Reverend Mr Larynx has been called off on duty, to marry or bury (I don't know which) some unfortunate person or persons, at Claydyke:...
Thomas Love Peacock
Those half-learn'd witlings, num'rous in our isle As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile
Alexander Pope
The lieutenant’s fooling around again with the telegraph girl at the station,” said the corporal, after he had gone. “He’s been running after her for a fortnight and he’s always frightfully furious when he comes from the telegraph office and he says about her: “She’s a whore. She won’t sleep with me!
Jaroslav Hašek
Peter remained on friendly terms with Christ notwithstanding Christ's having healed his mother-in-law.
Samuel Butler
Moreover, you can’t stand so much as an hour of your own companyor spend your leisure properly; you avoid yourself like a truantor fugitive, hoping by drink or sleep to elude Angst.But it’s no good, for that dark companion stays on your heels
Horace
Saepa stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturas. (Turn the stylus [to erase] often if you would write something worthy of being reread.)
Horace
To be a better cook, cook more. To be a better writer, read more.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis.(Whatever advice you give, be brief.)
Horace
It is a sign of arrogance to be mad at someone for not acting as per your advice, especially if it was unsolicited.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There's a large strain of irony in our human affairs... Interwoven with our affairs is this wonderful spirit of irony which prevents us from ever being utterly and irretrievably serious, from being unaware of the mysterious nature of our existence.
Malcolm Muggeridge
We preoccupy ourselves with what we had — or what we want to have — at the expense of what we have.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Employment is the exploitation of the employer’s courage, and, the employed’s fear of failure.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A son is an unfulfilled man’s last attempt to fulfill his unfulfilled dreams.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
To fail, try to please your critics. To please your critics, try to fail.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Miracles' rely on their observer’s ignorance. 'Perfection' relies on the observer’s failure to notice the observed’s defects.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There is nothing wrong with being wrong.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Without doing one cannot fail. But one cannot succeed either.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The fear of failure is a liability.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A social critic is someone whose work revolves around where and how our successes are failing us.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most people do not want much. All they want is to be envied by most people.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Well-known, alas, is the case of the poor German who was very fond of three and who made each aspect of his life a thing of triads. He went home one evening and drank three cups of tea with three lumps of sugar in each cup, cut his jugular with a razor three times and scrawled with a dying hand on a picture of his wife good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.
Flann O'Brien
I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong.
Samuel Butler
The presence of confidence can make an unable man appear able. While its absence can make an able man appear unable.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
One of life's sorest tragedies is that the people who brim with confidence are always the wrong people.
Charlie Brooker
If life really begins at forty, then all poor people die in their teens.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If history really forever repeats itself: then, it has always been then.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana