Satire

Satire is a literary technique of writing or art which exposes the follies of its subject (for example, individuals, organizations, or states) to ridicule, often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change.

Sourced

• Unless a love of virtue light the flame,
  Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame;
  He hides behind a magisterial air
  His own offences, and strips others' bare.
  • William Cowper, Charity (1781), line 490.

• 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.
  • Charles Churchill, The Ghost (1763), Book III, line 943.

• It is a pretty mocking of the life.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 1, line 35.

• Satire is a kind of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
  • Jonathan Swift, The Battle of the Books (1704).

• Satire, by being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
  • Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub (1704).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 690.

• Difficile est satiram non scribere.
  • It is difficult not to write satire.
  • Juvenal, Satires, I. 29.

• Men are more satirical from vanity than from malice.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims. No. 608.

• 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.
  • Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, To the Imitator of the First Satire of Horace (Pope).

• 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.
  • John Oldham, Satire upon a Printer, line 36.

• 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.
  • Alexander Pope, Prologue to Satires, line 201.

• Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel?
  Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
  • Alexander Pope, Prologue to Satires, line 307. ("Sporus," Lord John Hervey).

• There are, to whom my satire seems too bold;
  Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough,
  And something said of Chartres much too rough.
  • Alexander Pope, Second Book of Horace, Satire I, line 2.

• Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet
  To run amuck and tilt at all I meet.
  • Alexander Pope, Second Book of Horace. Satire I, line 71.

• La satire ment sur les gens de lettres pendant leur vie, et l'éloge ment après leur mort.
  • Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
  • Voltaire, Lettre à Bordes (Jan. 10, 1769).

Unsourced

• In its essence the purpose of satire - whether verse or prose - is aggression ... Satire has a great big blaring target. If successful, it blasts a great big hole in the center.
  • Wyndham Lewis, Not on the Verse-Satire.