Quote by Italo Calvino

The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him.

The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better

Summary

This quote suggests that as a satirist, one is both repelled by and attracted to the world they aim to critique. Despite finding the world unappealing, they are compelled to engage with it through satire, attempting to shed light on its flaws. However, their disdain prevents them from fully understanding or appreciating the world they critique. This paradoxical situation highlights the complex dynamic between the satirist and their subject matter, encapsulating the simultaneous repulsion and attraction that motivates their work.

Topics

By Italo Calvino

Liked the quote? Share it with your friends.

Random Quotations

An unexpected benefit of my career in biochemistry has been

An unexpected benefit of my career in biochemistry has been travel.

Toxins love to get you while you're young. Lead, mercury, se

Toxins love to get you while you're young. Lead, mercury, secondhand smoke and sundry other environmental nasties do a lot more damage when tissue is immature, vulnerable and growing than when it's mature and comparatively fixed.

The secret to happiness is the journey, not the destination.

The secret to happiness is the journey, not the destination.

Happiness Inspirational

One usually dies because one is alone, or because one has go

One usually dies because one is alone, or because one has got into something over one's head. One often dies because one does not have the right alliances, because one is not given support. In Sicily the Mafia kills the servants of the State that the State has not been able to protect.

Giovanni Falcone

Experience has taught me that the shallowest of communist pl

Experience has taught me that the shallowest of communist platitudes contains more of a hierarchy of meaning than contemporary bourgeois profundity.

Walter Benjamin

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

Henry David Thoreau

A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should

A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the spring of 1994 I decided not to seek reelection to th

In the spring of 1994 I decided not to seek reelection to the Senate. I had made the decision 12 years earlier, Christmas Day of 1982, just after I had been first elected to a full term, that I would do the best I could for a limited time.

George J. Mitchell

It's fantastic to strive towards a nice life where you eat n

It's fantastic to strive towards a nice life where you eat nice organic food and your children go to a nice school and you can afford nice clothes and nice perfume and the hypoallergenic make-up. But there's never a day goes by, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, that I don't think about where I'm from.

Samantha Morton

I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would h

I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God.

Despair gives courage to a coward.

Despair gives courage to a coward.

Usually the greatest boasters are the smallest workers. The

Usually the greatest boasters are the smallest workers. The deep rivers pay a larger tribute to the sea than shallow brooks, and yet empty themselves with less noise.