A Quote by Ambrose Bierce

SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.

Ambrose Bierce

Quote Topics

Author Composition Enemies Follies Imperfect Kind Literary Obsolete Satire Tenderness Vices Were Which

Quote Author

Ambrose Bierce
American - Journalist
June 24, 1842 - 1914

Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.

John Dryden

Slavery is the parent of ignorance, and ignorance begets a whole brood of follies and vices; and every one of these is inevitably hostile to literary culture.

Hinton Rowan Helper

It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.

William Congreve

Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remember that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold.

Arthur Schopenhauer

HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.

Ambrose Bierce

I do not love a man, except I hate his vices, because those vices are the enemies, and the destruction of that friend whom I love.

John Donne

The follies, vices, and consequent miseries of multitudes, displayed in a newspaper, are so many admonitions and warnings, so many beacons, continually burning, to turn others from the rocks on which they have been shipwrecked.

Thomas Hartwell Horne

Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history.

Robert Hall

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.

Christian Nestell Bovee

I tell the truth and I don't try to sugarcoat things. But I also decided that if you don't use humor or satire, then it's just too dark all the time. And one of my favorite literary works is A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. As you know, that was an enormously famous satire piece that was able to point out, you know, things to people in a different way. And I do believe that satire and humor can reveal truth in a way that sometimes doesn't get revealed through other means. And so I decided to, every now and then, use satire and humor as well.

Ted Lieu

By now, abortion should be obsolete. And I - and probably a lot of other feminists - wish it were obsolete, because abortion, in itself, is not a value - it is simply the right to chose, which is an essential value.