“It is difficult not to write satire.”

— Juvenal , book Satires

I, line 30.
Satires, Satire I

Original

Difficile est saturam non scribere.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is difficult not to write satire." by Juvenal?

Juvenal 24

ancient roman poet 50

Related quotes

“The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little — or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Source: An Autobiography (1883), Ch. 10

“Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“I suppose that I am a very serious poet – except for satirical verse, which I have also been compelled to write, though much of it may be inferior to my more serious poems – perhaps because I am not playful enough by nature, and even my satirical or polemical verse is not entertaining.”

Michael Hamburger (1924–2007) British translator, poet, critic, memoirist and academic

Interview with Lidia Vianu http://lidiavianu.scriptmania.com/Michael%20Hamburger.htm

“Nothing is more difficult than writing an autobiography.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)
Context: Nothing is more difficult than writing an autobiography. What should be emphasized? Just what is of general interest? It is advisable, above all, to write honestly and dispense with any of the conventional introductory protestations of modesty. For if one is called upon to tell about one's life so as to make the events that made it what it became useful to the general public, it can mean only that one must have already wrought something positive in life, accomplished a task that people recognize. Accordingly it is a matter of forgetting that one is writing about oneself, of making an effort to abjure one's ego so as to give an account, as objectively as possible, of one's life in the making and of one's accomplishments.

“In the United States of America, satire is protected speech, even if the object of the satire doesn’t get it.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

As quoted in "The Trump Era Is Al Franken’s Time to Shine" by Graham Vyse, in New Republic (2 February 2017) https://newrepublic.com/article/140342/trump-era-al-frankens-time-shine