Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.
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Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
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Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend.
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Unless a love of virtue light the flame, Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame; He hides behind a magisterial air He own offences, and strips others' bare.
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By rights, satire is a lonely and introspective occupation, for nobody can describe a fool to the life without much patient self-inspection.
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Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
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Men are more satirical from vanity than from malice.
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Pornographers are the enemies of women only because our contemporary ideology of pornography does not encompass the possibility of change, as if we were the slaves of history and not its makers. Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.
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The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little -- or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.
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Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.
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Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.
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What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politic, which now for the ages has signified cunning, intima...
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A fondness for satire indicates a mind pleased with irritating others for myself, I never could find amusement in killing flies.
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Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
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You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.
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Satire is focused bitterness.
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I wear my Pen as others do their Sword. To each affronting sot I meet, the word Is Satisfaction: straight to thrusts I go, And pointed satire runs him through and through.
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Why should we fear; and what? The laws? They all are armed in virtue's cause; And aiming at the self-same end, Satire is always virtue's friend.
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