One does not lash what lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden mus ...

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

Ridicule is the language of the devil.

Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to amend. It is cruel to beat a cripple with his own crutches!

That passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense.

We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is ...