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Clever jabs

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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh (August 12, 1720)
- Money
Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.
Edith Wharton1862–1937“Xingu” (1911), from Xingu and Other Stories (1916)
The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Edmund Burke1729–1797A Vindication of Natural Society (1756), Preface
- Religion
One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Letters to Madame Louise Colet, 22 October 1846
- Art
No one minds what Jeffrey says:[…] it is not more than a week ago that I heard him speak disrespectfully of the Equator.
Sydney Smith1771–1845Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855), Vol. I, ch. 2, p. 36
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Macaulay is like a book in breeches… He has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.
Sydney Smith1771–1845Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855), Vol. I, ch. 11, p. 415
- Talking
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
- Politics
Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865On popular sovereignty; rejoinder in the Sixth Lincoln-Douglas Debate (13 October 1858); reported in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (1953), vol. 3, p. 279
I suspect that there are just two sorts of lawyers: those who spend their efforts making life easy for other people⁠—and parasites.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988Friday (1982), Chapter 24 (p. 257)
- Laws
Critics must have been created on the seventh day. Because if God had created them on the first day, what on earth would they have done?
Goncourt brothersMarch 8, 1863; translation from Robert Baldick Dinner at Magny’s (London: Victor Gollancz, 1971) p. 77.
It is as absurd to expect members of philosophy departments to be philosophers as it is to expect members of art departments to be artists.
Leo Strauss1899–1973“What Is Liberal Education?”, in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), p. 7
- Philosophy
He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.
Sydney Smith1771–1845Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855), Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 310
But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I (14 July 1763) p. 123
- Virtue
Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a blockhead.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)