RIDICULE

Related Subjects: Absurdities, Contempt, Fool, Irony, Mockery, Nonsense, Sarcasm, Satire

1. Neither will I make myself anybody's laughing-stock.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote
   

2. I defy the wisest man in the world to turn a truly good action into ridicule.—FIELDING, Joseph Andrews
   

3. A man can stand very much in the cause of love: poverty, aunts, rivals, barriers of every sort,—all these only serve to fan the flame. But personal ridicule is a shaft that reaches the very vitals.—KENNETH GRAHAME, The Golden Age
   

4. We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.—HAZLITT, The Plain Speaker
   

5. Ridicule often decides matters of importance more effectually, and in a better manner, than severity.—HORACE, Satires
   

6. On the day of resurrection, those who have indulged in ridicule will be called to the door of Paradise, and have it shut in their faces. They will be called to another door, and again, on reaching it, will see it closed against them; and so on ad infinitum.—The Koran
   

7. The final test of truth is ridicule. .. . How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Harvey—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Jenner? Or Lincoln? Or Darwin? . . . They are laughing at Nietzsche yet.—H. L. MENCKEN
   

8. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.—THOMAS PAINE, Age of Reason
   

9. Ridicule is the test of truth.—Proverb
   

10. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a
    man from the career of his humour?—SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado About Nothing
    

11. There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.—MARK TWAIN, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar