Sarcasm

“ Remember sarcasm is forbidden and sincerity the order of the day. You are country folks now, and it will do you good to try their simple, honest ways for a few days." ”

“ Those who eagerly crowded around to gaze at this grim exemplification of the covert sarcasm and irony which dwells in every human breast, nearly died with laughter at the sepulchral immobility of the sneering smile. ”

“ Taking it as a whole, however, I felt then, as I feel now, that sarcasm is the one weapon which it is never right or useful to use in the case of persons who are in the dependent position when compared with the wielder of the sarcastic rapier;—persons in statu pupillari, persons much younger than oneself, persons in one's employment, or, finally, members of one's own family. Sarcasm should be reserved for one's equals, or, still better, for one's superiors. ”

“ We forbid ourselves the use of sarcasm. Of serious things we will speak seriously and unsmilingly, without banter and without the appearance of banter;—and even so of all things, for there are serious ways of being light of heart. ”

“ Just at this time friends depart, for the grouch phase of the disease has started.
Sarcasm and ridicule are powerful weapons when used adroitly and for good purposes. But when sarcasm and ridicule are used constantly as a means to generate fun or as vehicles for humor, then the evil commences.
People will listen to you for awhile, if you good-naturedly ridicule a thing, but when you are known to have the habit, then is when friends give you the go-by. ”

“ Ridicule implies laughter mingled with contempt; derision is ridicule from a personal feeling of hostility; mockery is insulting derision; satire is witty mockery; sarcasm is bitter satire and irony is disguised satire. ”

“ It is true enough for a proverb, that the pleasantest parties are those of which the least can be told. To make a recital entertaining, there must be a little touch of the ridiculous—a few sparkles of satire—the excellence of a sarcasm lies, like a cimeter, in its keenness;—and they enjoyed themselves too much to be witty—"la sauce vaut le poisson;" and hence it is that, even when good-natured people do say a clever thing, it rarely tells—and all to-day were in a good humour. ”

“ Every line in this sterling comedy sparkles with wit, and is fraught with the keenest sarcasm. The very wit, however, takes off from the offensiveness of the satire; and we have seen great statesmen, very great statesmen, heartily enjoying the joke, laughing most immoderately at the compliments paid to them as not much worse than pickpockets and cut-throats in a different line of life, and pleased, as it were, to see themselves humanised by some sort of fellowship with their kind. ”

“ Don't juggle with ridicule or sarcasm, for people look beneath the veneer nowadays. They remember and repeat the axiom, "There's many a true word spoken in jest." There are so many beautiful things to say, so many kind expressions to utter, so many helpful hints to give, that we should be ashamed to say or do things even jokingly that may hurt another.
When you ridicule a thing or a person, you may ridicule the tender heart of one you should cheer and help.
Ridicule is the negative approach to a subject anyway; the only good it can accomplish is by reflex action or rebound force. ”

“ But the quality of humor, depending upon various moral traits, exists only wherever a broad imagination is combined with a sweet and tolerant moral sense that is devoid of malice and all uncharitableness, and at peace with all mankind. A petulant egotism may exist with wit, but never with humor. Sarcasm and satire are the forms which best agree with imperfect moral dispositions. A too prolonged irony has something melancholy and dyspeptic in it, and passes into the blood of a faulty temper even if there be the tonic of an upright moral sense. ”

“ SARCASM, an ironical or sneering remark or taunt, a biting or satirical expression. The word comes through the Latin from the Greek σαρκάζειν, literally to tear flesh (σάρξ) like a dog; hence, figuratively, to bite the lips in rage, to speak bitterly (cf. Stobaeus, Eclog. ii. 222) . ”

“ I speak not of a prompt and spirited vindication of our country, or the keenest castigation of her slanderers—but I allude to a disposition to retaliate in kind, to retort sarcasm and inspire prejudice, which seems to be spreading widely among our writers. Let us guard particularly against such a temper; for it would double the evil, instead of redressing the wrong. Nothing is so easy and inviting as the retort of abuse and sarcasm ”

“ How with a casual remark here, a covert sarcasm there, he endeavoured to stimulate the other’s jealousy and to arouse his alarm, whilst, at the same time, with many a plausible argument and choice anecdote, introduced as it were by chance, he endeavoured to establish the expediency of prompt and desperate measures on all occasions where a man had to deal with cases of mystery and intrigue. ”

“ Persons who by no stretch of the fancy could be so described have made a great stir in the world during the last thirty years and they have used all the resources of their sarcasm to render odious a title which they are perhaps all too conscious of never deserving. ”

“ But the use of sarcasm itself indicates an abnormal state of mind, and its frequent cultivation during a certain epoch, or in a certain country, is almost an infallible symptom of disease in some quarter. When polite and otherwise weak words are used in a powerful context, it is almost invariably a sign of over-frequent and hackneyed use of strong words. ”

“ Nothing could be more unlike the laughter of virulent satire than that provoked by the expression of humour in literature. As our analysis would lead us to expect, we find in the truly humorous writer the mellowing influences of good nature and sympathy, and a large understanding and acceptance of that against which he pokes fun. While satire, sarcasm and their kind seem to be trying to push things away, or at least to alter them, humour, curiously enough, looks as if it were tenderly holding to the world which entertains it. ”

“ But even in gentle and cultured persons, an insult, a disappointment, a blow will provoke the tell-tale signs of pugnacity and anger, the flushing of the cheeks, the flash of the eye, the incipient clenching of the fists, the compressing of the teeth and lips, and the trembling of the voice. We substitute sarcasm for punching, and find subtly civilized, and, in the long run, more terrible, ways than bruises of punishing those who oppose us in our play, our passions, our professions. ”

“ Sarcasm is a weapon we are almost sure to find constantly used by the gossip; and whether it be shown in the coarse ridicule of the vulgar, or the keen satire of the refined, it springs ever from the same source, and is directed to the same end ”

“ It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid. ”

“ Sarcasm, directed into the blue in the hope of hitting the person you want, may not be effective, but it does relieve the feelings. I had a thoroughly sarcastic morning all to myself. My deadly irony took the form of turning everything in the library upside-down. The cup was in position already; I turned up two pewter mugs (third prizes in Consolation Races) , the flower bowls, the cigarette box, the lamp, a stool, half-a-dozen pictures, two photographs and the mahogany clock. They all stood on their heads and sneered at Jane. "Why don't you do the thing properly while you're about it?" ”

“ The motivation seems to be to imagine remarks that would humiliate the offender. The visual imagery of the astonished humble opponent is usual in these imaginary attacks. Crude and abusive remarks may at times seem entirely appropriate; at others, sarcasm and irascible joking seem more adequate. Sarcasm usually develops rather slowly with a period of restraint preceding it, unless it is ready made for the occasion. When the fitting sarcastic remark is found, it is usually accompanied by pleasantness in some degree. ”

“ This is scarcely the spirit in which one would expect to see a subject of so grave importance treated. Sarcasm and ridicule doubtless have their place even in polemics, but it is only as they may be incidentally used that they can be of force. ”

“ It is true there are contradictions in the physiognomy: sarcasm and benevolence alternate, as the dominating expression of the man's character. The whole face is marked by the refinement of one from whom precision and niceness of judgment would be expected. ”

“ The quality of wit he occasionally manifests in the form of keen sarcasm, when he gives full vent to his feelings of scorn and contempt; as when, for example, he describes those who went out to fight, "but did not hazard their precious persons, lest they should seem to trust to the arm of flesh." ”

“ Then he worked his mouth round and round to clear the course for a sarcasm.
"So you're the puir crittur," said the stone-breaker, "'at's meanin' to be a humorist."
This was the challenge. We all knew what it meant, and fixed our eyes on the stranger.
"Certainly," was his answer; "that is exactly my meaning. I trust I make myself plain, I'm willing to meet any man at catch-weights. ”

“ As to the meaning of the words, we confess that we are so completely at fault that we do not thoroughly understand whether they imply censure or commendation. The air of sarcasm and contempt with which they are commonly delivered leave us to conclude that the former is intended to be conveyed; yet we cannot but think that the words themselves signify the latter, if they have any signification at all. ”

“ Curiosity, incredulity, sarcasm, or a mocking levity, were more plainly perceptible in the expression of the men's faces, than either devotion or the longing expectancy of men habitually deprived of what they once highly valued. ”

“ His powers of sarcasm were a cause of terror to his adversaries, and his presence in debate was much dreaded. His arguments were felicitous, and, though he never aimed at the highest flights of eloquence, his choice of language was the theme of constant admiration. ”

“ Here we approach the unlimited humour displayed in the dialects. It is of all kinds—the ironical, the sage, the frankly jolly, the merely ridiculous. It takes every shape; we meet it in similes, metaphors, proverbs, and in various other forms which elude description. A characteristic form of humour, often combined with sarcasm, appears in those comparisons wherein the moods, habits, and actions of men are likened to those of birds, beasts, fishes, and even insects in real or imaginary situations. ”

“ Its mechanism depends for the most part upon the inflection and tone of voice in speaking. The words themselves in sarcasm are innocent enough, but the mode of expression and the meaning involved are the sources of hostility. ”

“ Thus it happened that this close observer, who could display unrivalled tact in developing a joke or driving home a sarcasm, was unable to use the same power to make men further his fortunes and promote him. ”

“ The four faculties in question seem to me all of their class; but when either fancy or humour is expressed to gain an end, is pointed at a purpose — whenever either becomes objective in place of subjective, then it becomes, also, pure wit or sarcasm, just as the purpose is benevolent or malevolent. ”

“ The most pointed darts of wit, and even the poisoned shafts of malice, are less disconcerting to delicacy, than the unqualified bluntness of the curious under-bred; for that which cannot be imputed to a spirit of sarcasm, or a desire of shining, passes, to the bye-standers, for unvarnished truth. ”

“ The man who is treated with sarcasm, if he cannot answer back either because it is true, or he is stupid, or he is afraid to counter-attack a superior, is filled, and naturally filled, with a sense of burning indignation. ”

“ The whole tribe of double entendres, or double meanings, where one thing is said and another thing is meant, or at least where the apparent and honest is not the only or the real meaning; satire, which is only a modification of the same principle, drawn out into somewhat more extended and dignified discourse, and which, under the form of apparent praise, hides the shafts of ridicule and invective; sarcasm, which conveys the intended censure and invective in a somewhat more indirect and oblique manner;—these are all but various modes of what we have called intentional incongruity of ideas. ”

“ In describing harshness we use words that are harsh, in describing awkwardness we use words that are awkward, in describing brightness and lightness we use words that are bright and light, in the very words themselves giving a concrete illustration of what we mean.
CHAPTER V. RIDICULE: Poe.
I have said that humor is good-natured and winning. This is always true, though the winning of one reader may be at the expense of some other. Humor used to win one at the expense of another is called satire and sarcasm. The simplest form of using satire and sarcasm is in direct ridicule. ”

“ Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it. ”

“ We usually include under the general term all forms of pleasantry, grotesqueness, drollery, sarcasm, irony, ridicule. Our common acceptation shall serve us in these studies.
“There are many things,” says Prof. Matthews, “that definition helps us to understand, but there are other things that we understand better than we can any possible definition of them; among these are the cold, sparkling, mercurial thing we call wit, [Pg 21] and that genial, juicy, unconscious thing we call humor.” ”