“SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the satirist is popularly regarded as a soul-spirited knave, and his ever victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung In the dead language of a mummy's tongue, For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well -- Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell. Had it been such as consecrates the Bible Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel. --Barney Stims”
Ambrose Bierce
“Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.”
Voltaire
“I can't do literary work for the rest of this year because I'm meditating another lawsuit and looking around for a defendant”
Mark Twain
“I'll publish, right or wrong: / Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.”
Lord Byron
“I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.”
Oscar Wilde
“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.”
Anais Nin
“Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality”
C.S. Lewis
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