satire quotes

Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.

- Anita Brookner
  In The Spectator, 23 Mar.

I'll publish, right or wrong: Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

-Rochdale
  English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l.5^6.

Difficile est saturam non scribere. It is difficult not to write satire.

-Juvenal full name Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis
Satirae, no.1, l.30.

The British, he thought, must be gluttons for satire: even the weather forecast seemed to be some kind of spoof, predicting every possible combination of weather for the next twenty-four hours without actually committing itself to anything specific.

- David John Lodge
  Changing Places, ch.2.

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

-Vladimir Nabokov
  Interview in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Spring.

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?

- Alexander Pope
  Of Lord Hervey.'An Epistle to DrArbuthnot', l.305^8.

Why stir the wasps that rim Fame's luscious pot? Love costs us nothing, satire costs a lot!

- Edgell Rickword
  'The Contemporary Muse'.

Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art.

- Philip Milton Roth
  Reading Myself and Others,'On Our Gang'.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.

-Jonathan Swift
  The Battle of the Books, preface.

Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.

-Jonathan Swift
  ATale of aTub,'Author's Preface'.