“Satire should, like a polished razor keen,
Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.”

—  Mary Wortley Montagu

To the Imitator of the First Satire of Horace, Book ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen." by Mary Wortley Montagu?
Mary Wortley Montagu photo
Mary Wortley Montagu 8
writer and poet from England 1689–1762

Related quotes

Edmund Burke photo

“That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 332
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Helen Keller photo

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Variant: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
Variant: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched... but are felt in the heart.

Samuel Johnson photo

“Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound; great debts are like cannon, of loud noise but little danger.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=yEA_AQAAMAAJ&q=%22small+debts+are+like+small+shot+they+are+rattling+on+every+side+and+can+scarcely+be+escaped+without+a+wound+great+debts+are+like+cannon+of+loud+noise+but+little+danger%22&pg=PA189#v=onepage to Joseph Simpson, circa 1759
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Jacqueline Winspear photo

“Shame, isn’t it? That we only like our heroes out in the street when they are looking their best and their uniforms are ‘spit and polished,’ and not when they’re showing us the wounds they suffered on our behalf.”

Jacqueline Winspear Maisie Dobbs

Source: Maisie Dobbs

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 74
(1819)

John Muir photo

“Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

July 1890, page 320
John of the Mountains, 1938
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

“It was like this sometimes, and I felt I should look away, but I couldn't. I wanted to be there, having my face touched, defeating a heart like Peter's, but the next best thing was seeing it for Tiger Lily.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Andrew Vachss photo

“Everything that's in [my] books comes out of what I've seen, or touched, or felt, or smelt, and if I had one wish it would be that the books were fiction.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Dave Thompson interview

Robert Burns photo

“A gaudy dress and gentle air May slightly touch the heart;
But it's innocence and modesty
that polished the dart.”

Robert Burns Handsome Nell

Handsome Nell (1773) (also known as "My Handsome Nell"), st. 6.
Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1787-1796)

William Shakespeare photo

“He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Related topics