Satire Quotes

While pensive poets painful vigils keep,Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

~ Alexander Pope

People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh?And of course there clearly had to be, said Koomi, a Supreme Being. But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn't in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a better job of it, with far better thought given, taking an example at random, to things like the design of the common nostril. Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere. This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn't looking, in the same way that Boy Scouts' Association minutes are done on office photocopiers all over the country.So, reasoned Koomi, it was not a good idea to address any prayers to a Supreme Being. It would only attract his attention and might cause trouble.

~ Terry Pratchett

Really, I protest--what is left for the satirical mind to invent when reality so surpasses it?

~ Jude Morgan

More often than not, you will never be judged by your intentions because the world can't read minds and very few will know the heart of a person they have not given time to know personally.

~ Shannon L. Alder

In some rare cases, a friendship between two people benefits both of them, and what’s more, in some rarer cases, it benefits both of them equally.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The real satire starts when I’m shockingly mocked,not mockingly shocked.

~ Munia Khan

Sophia shrieked and fainted on the ground – I screamed and instantly ran mad. We remained thus mutually deprived of our senses, some minutes, and on regaining them were deprived of them again. For an Hour and a Quarter did we continue in this unfortunate situation – Sophia fainting every moment and I running mad as often. At length a groan from the hapless Edward (who alone retained any share of life) restored us to ourselves.

~ Jane Austen

Dear Eloisa (said I) there’s no occasion for your crying so much about such a trifle. (for I was willing to make light of it in order to comfort her) I beg you would not mind it – You see it does not vex me in the least; though perhaps I may suffer most from it after all; for I shall not only be obliged to eat up all the Victuals I have dressed already, but must if Henry should recover (which however is not very likely) dress as much for you again; or should he die (as I suppose he will) I shall still have to prepare a Dinner for you whenever you marry any one else. So you see that tho perhaps for the present it may afflict you to think of Henry’s sufferings, yet I dare say he’ll die soon and then his pain will be over and you will be easy, whereas my Trouble will last much longer for work as hard as I may, I am certain that the pantry cannot be cleared in less than a fortnight

~ Jane Austen

Some of our friends are our friends only because we used to be friends.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Ah, I believe Schacht. Only too willingly; that’s to say, I think what he says is absolutely true, for the world is incomprehensibly crass, tyrannical, moody, and cruel to sickly and sensitive people. Well, Schacht will stay here for the time being. We laughed at him a bit, when he arrived, that can’t be helped either, Schacht is young and after all can’t be allowed to think there are special degrees, advantages, methods, and considerations for him. He has now had his first disappointment, and I’m convinced that he’ll have twenty disappointments, one after the other. Life with its savage laws is in any case for certain people a succession of discouragements and terrifying bad impressions. People like Schacht are born to feel and suffer a continuous sense of aversion. He would like to admit and welcome things, but he just can’t. Hardness and lack of compassion strike him with tenfold force, he just feels them more acutely. Poor Schacht. He’s a child and he should be able to revel in melodies and bed himself in kind, soft, carefree things. For him there should be secret splashings and birdsong. Pale and delicate evening clouds should waft him away in the kingdom of Ah, What’s Happening to Me? His hands are made for light gestures, not for work. Before him breezes should blow, and behind him sweet, friendly voices should be whispering. His eyes should be allowed to remain blissfully closed, and Schacht should be allowed to go quietly to sleep again, after being wakened in the morning in the warm, sensuous cushions. For him there is, at root, no proper activity, for every activity is for him, the way he is, improper, unnatural, and unsuitable. Compared with Schacht I’m the trueblue rawboned laborer. Ah, he’ll be crushed, and one day he’ll die in a hospital. or he’ll perish, ruined in body and soul, inside one of our modern prisons.

~ Robert Walser

But that's men all over ... Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Females and boys are the only creatures that propose others for friendship. As for the rest of us, friendship sort of just happens.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings, and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge.

~ Jane Austen

If the sale of flesh could be made as easily as the sale of spiritual exemption, the prescience of a dedicated businessman might be well preserved.

~ Michelle Franklin

Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write The Way We Live Now. And as I had ventured to take the whip of the satirist into my hand, I went beyond the iniquities of the great speculator who robs everybody, and made an onslaught also on other vices;--on the intrigues of girls who want to get married, on the luxury of young men who prefer to remain single, and on the puffing propensities of authors who desire to cheat the public into buying their volumes.

~ Anthony Trollope

They always loved my sense of humor. There used to be a light switch inside one of the nurseries that was a cutout of Jesus putting his arm around two children on each side of him as he towered above them. The switch was ironically located in the spot of where his penis would have been and I was the first to point this out. Everyone thought it was funny until I started singing the childhood church song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” In fear of being struck by lightning or being involved in a massive pile-up car accident after leaving, their laughing ceased. I still thought it was funny.

~ Chase Brooks

Fortunately the essence of this revelation did not escape Mary despite the angel's obscure speech, and, much surprised, she asked him, So Jesus is my son and the son of the Lord, Woman, what are you saying, show some respect for rank and precedence, what you must say is the son of the Lord and me, Of the Lord and of you, No, of the Lord and of you, You're confusing me, just answer my question, is Jesus our son, You mean to say the Lord's son because you only served to bear the child, So the Lord didn't choose me, Don't be absurd (...) Is there any real proof that it was the Lord's seed which engendered my first-born, Well, it's a delicate matter, and what you're demanding is nothing less than a paternity test which in these mixed unions, no matter how many analyses, tests, and globule counts one carries out, can never give conclusive results.

~ José Saramago

The only thing I hate about good people is that they like making their being good people bad people’s problem.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The pleasure or the benefit that the object of our deed derives from it is every now and then greater or even more important than the one we derive from the deed.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Every single good person is a good person for their own sake, not for the sake of humanity, not even for the sake of another human being.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

No single bad person regards themselves as a bad person.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

To label someone as selfless is symptomatic of having bought the preposterous claim that a human being can have great concern for other human beings and little concern for themselves, or that, when taken to extremes, a human being can have great concern for other human beings and absolutely no concern for themselves.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It is humanly impossible to be selfless. As a matter of fact, human beings are inherently selfish.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

He was no stranger to compassion: his heart was open to many good impulses, though his rank often prevented their manifestation.

~ Nikolai Gogol

You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones.

~ Jane Austen

I don’t even pretend to believe I know everything; I just believe in arguments God told me I had a pretty good chance of winning, while I was traveling through hell.

~ Shannon L. Alder

When you are gunning to be like other people, you are foolishly repeating their mistakes, and the worst of it all is that you can't even correct yours.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

...heaven wouldn’t be like this earth, this tormented earth ruled by evil forces that tossed humanity to and fro like a slow clown in a two-bit rodeo.

~ Joe Laflam

Beneath the skin of everything is something nobody can know.

~ Stephen Collins

-Oh yes? Can you identify yourself?-Certainly. I'd know me anywhere.

~ Terry Pratchett

Mr Kingsley begins then by exclaiming- 'O the chicanery, the wholesale fraud, the vile hypocrisy, the conscience-killing tyranny of Rome! We have not far to seek for an evidence of it. There's Father Newman to wit: one living specimen is worth a hundred dead ones. He, a Priest writing of Priests, tells us that lying is never any harm.'I interpose: 'You are taking a most extraordinary liberty with my name. If I have said this, tell me when and where.'Mr Kingsley replies: 'You said it, Reverend Sir, in a Sermon which you preached, when a Protestant, as Vicar of St Mary's, and published in 1844; and I could read you a very salutary lecture on the effects which that Sermon had at the time on my own opinion of you.'I make answer: 'Oh...NOT, it seems, as a Priest speaking of Priests-but let us have the passage.'Mr Kingsley relaxes: 'Do you know, I like your TONE. From your TONE I rejoice, greatly rejoice, to be able to believe that you did not mean what you said.'I rejoin: 'MEAN it! I maintain I never SAID it, whether as a Protestant or as a Catholic.'Mr Kingsley replies: 'I waive that point.'I object: 'Is it possible! What? waive the main question! I either said it or I didn't. You have made a monstrous charge against me; direct, distinct, public. You are bound to prove it as directly, as distinctly, as publicly-or to own you can't.''Well,' says Mr Kingsley, 'if you are quite sure you did not say it, I'll take your word for it; I really will.'My WORD! I am dumb. Somehow I thought that it was my WORD that happened to be on trial. The WORD of a Professor of lying, that he does not lie!But Mr Kingsley reassures me: 'We are both gentlemen,' he says: 'I have done as much as one English gentleman can expect from another.'I begin to see: he thought me a gentleman at the very time he said I taught lying on system...

~ John Henry Newman

(About a cookbook...)- What about this one? Maids of Honor?- Weeelll, they starts OUT as Maids of Honor...but they ends up Tarts.

~ Terry Pratchett

World opinion, though sharply divided on nuclear tests and the risk of atmospheric pollution, could congratulate itself on being united in its opposition to cannibalism. No country in the world was prepared to support the custom of eating the dead, though the right of governments to kill people, individually or by hundreds of thousands, was not questioned for a moment.

~ Leonard Wibberley

There are worse things than eating the dead, my dear fellow. Far worse things. There is, for instance, making a huge profit out of their funeral, which is the normal custom in the civilized world.

~ Leonard Wibberley

[representative government is] deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament

~ Karl Marx

They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.

~ Oscar Wilde

I have been told the best things in life are free ~ I found them very expensive.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

Ryker, you ride with Orlando,” Ryker mocked in a snarky voice as he turned to the other man. He gestured toward the Pinto with a look of revulsion on his rugged face. “How the hell does he expect both of us to fit into that tiny metal trap? Even if we could squeeze in, the tires will probably pop. In fact, let's just carry it over. It'll be faster that way.

~ Rose Wynters

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion ... Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity ... Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.

~ Richard Dawkins

You stick a bunch of drunken murderers together, ain't long before some turn to thieving, then to lying, then to bad language, and pretty soon to sobriety, raising families and making an honest living.

~ Joe Abercrombie