"A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor."

Satire, Leisure, Writing, Literature, Profession

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"A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor."

Exlpore more Satire quotes

"Most politicians lie for the same reason a monkey swings by his tail, which is to say because he can."

Stephen King, American Author

Satire, Politics, Truth, Wisdom, Power

"Piracy n: commerce without its folly-swaddles - just as God made it."

Ambrose Bierce, American Journalist

Satire, Commerce, Freedom, God

"Or he'd watch the news: more plagues, more famines, more floods, more insect or microbe or small-mammal outbreaks, more droughts, more chickenshit boy-soldier wars in distant countries. Why was everything so much like itself?"

Margaret Atwood, Canadian Novelist

Satire, News, Despair, Disaster, War

"New York is a sucked orange."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Poet

Satire, City, Metaphor

"Fella says today, 'Depression is over. I seen a jackrabbit, an' they wasn't nobody after him.' An' another fella says, 'That aint the reason. Can't afford to kill jackrabbits no more. Catch 'em and milk 'em an' turn 'em loose. One you seen prob'ly gone dry."

John Steinbeck, American Author

Satire, Depression, Poverty, Humor, Survival

"On the Kite, the situation was being 'workshopped'. This is the means by which people who don't know anything get together to pool their ignorance."

Terry Pratchett, English Author

Satire, Ignorance, Truth, Idea, Action

"You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps."

Ambrose Bierce, American Journalist

Satire, Humor, Religion, Ignorance, Critique

"Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality."

Oscar Wilde, Irish Dramatist

Satire, Scandal, Gossip, Morality, Truth

"I'm joking when I say I'm the grand-pop of those claiming to be an avatar-messiah or god. But if they're serious, then, I am who I am."

Fakeer Ishavardas, Indian Spiritual Leader

Satire, Humor, Ego, Truth, Delusion

"Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing."

Jane Austen, British Writer

Satire, Humor, Gender, Science, Men

Explore more quotes by Henry David Thoreau

"We have the St. Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still."

Metaphor

"Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity."

Emotion

"I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness."

Friendship

"True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance."

Friendship

"Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that musty old cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post office, and at the sociable, and at the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another."

Culture

"City life - millions of people being lonesome together."

Society

"There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance."

Nature

"The silence rings-it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible-I hear the unspeakable."

Nature

"They who suspect a Mephistophiles, or sneering, satirical devil, under all, have not learned the secret of true humor, which sympathizes with gods themselves, in view of their grotesque, half-finished creatures."

Humor

"When I hear music I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times and to the latest."

Emotion