#mockery

Please do not think that I am accusing socialists of insincerity or that I wish to hold them up to scorn either as bad democrats or as unprincipled schemers and opportunists. I fully believe, in spite of the childish Machiavellism in which some of their prophets indulge, that fundamentally most of them always have been as sincere in their professions as any other men. Besides, I do not believe in insincerity in social strife, for people always come to think what they want to think and what they incessantly profess. As regards democracy, socialist parties are presumably no more opportunists than are any others; they simply espouse democracy if, as, and when it serves their ideals and interests and not otherwise. Lest readers should be shocked and think so immoral a view worthy only of the most callous of political practitioners, ... ↗

— Joseph A. Schumpeter

#mockery #politics #sarcasm #men

You can spit on a rose, but it's still a rose. ↗

— Marty Rubin

#contempt #mockery #perfection #ridicule #beauty

Do you wish to speak in Provençal, French, or Latin? They are all I can manage, I'm afraid." "Any will do," the rabbi replied in Provençal. "Splendid. Latin it is," said Pope Clement. ↗

— Iain Pears

#communication #conceit #languages #mockery #papal-authority

Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#bury #carcass #friends #friendship #gone

Marilyn Manson is a mockery of American pop culture. ↗

— Marilyn Manson

#culture #manson #marilyn #marilyn manson #mockery

From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. ↗

— John Henry Newman

#any #been #cannot #dogma #dream

The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be. ↗

— George Santayana

#contradiction #every #itself #mockery #moment

Whether that lady's gentle mind, No longer with the form combined Which scattered love, as stars do light, Found sadness where it left delight, I dare not guess; but in this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem, And we the shadows of the dream, It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery. That garden sweet, that lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odors there, In truth have never passed away: 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they. For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death or change: their might Exceeds our organs, which endure No light, being themselves obscure. (--Conclusion, Autumn - A Dirge) ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#death #mockery #beauty

Let them see that their words can cut you, and you’ll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can’t hurt you with it anymore. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#inspirational #mockery #inspirational

Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity. ↗

— William Godwin

#desire #mockery #real #semblance #study