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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.
Author: Charles Churchill
Source: Ghost (bk. III, l. 943)
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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.
Author: William Cowper
Source: Charity (l. 490)
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The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or
behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out
of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
Author: James Joyce
Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
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It is difficult not to write satire.
[Lat., Difficile est satiram non scribere.]
Author: Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenal)
Source: Satires (I, 29)
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Satire is what closes Saturday night.
Author: Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenal)
Source: Satires (I, 29)
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Men are more satirical from vanity than from malice.
Author: Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
Source: Maxims (no. 508)
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Satire should, like a polished razor keen,
Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.
Thine is an oyster knife, that hacks and hews;
The rage but not the talent to abuse.
Author: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Source: To the Imitator of the First Satire of Horace, (Pope)
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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.
Author: John Oldham
Source: Satire upon a Printer (l. 35)
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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.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: Prologue to Satires (l. 201)
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Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: Prologue to Satires (l. 307), (Sporus is Lord John Hervey)
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There are, to whom my satire seems too bold;
Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough,
And something said of Chartres much too rough.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: Second Book of Horace (satire I, l. 2)
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Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet
To run amuck and tilt at all I meet.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: Second Book of Horace (satire I, l. 71)
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It is a pretty mocking of the life.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Life of Timon of Athens (Painter at I, i)
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Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally
discover everybody's face but their own.
Author: Jonathan Swift
Source: The Battle of the Books
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Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies
about them when they die.
[Fr., La satire ment sur les gens de lettres pendant leur vie, et
l'eloge ment apres leur mort.]
Author: Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire)
Source: Lettre a Bordes
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