Skip to content

Satire should, like a polished razor keen,
Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.

— Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Another quote →

Topics

Funny

More quotes by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Civility costs nothing and buys everything.

Let this great maxim be my virtue’s guide,—
In part she is to blame that has been tried:
He comes too near that comes to be denied.

The Lady’s Resolve (1713)

But the fruit that can fall without shaking
Indeed is too mellow for me.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet;
In short, my deary, kiss me, and be quiet.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

But when the long hours of Public are past
And we meet with Champaign and a Chicken at last,
May every fond Pleasure that hour endear.

All Lady Mary Wortley Montagu quotes →

You may also like

Wit's an unruly engine, wildly striking
Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.

George Herbert The Temple (1633)

A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.

Horace Walpole

The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel– a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

Horace Walpole

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Karl Barth The Harper Book of Quotations (1993)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.