Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week ("Sarcasm")

March 31—April 6, 2024 | THIS WEEK: “Sarcasm”

Opening Line of the Week

It is generally inadvisable to begin a book with a sarcasm-laced observation, but Leonard—a leader of the human potential movement as well as a critic of the educational establishment—was clearly trying to get people’s attention. In the first paragraph, he continued:

“What energy it takes to make a torrent into a trickle, to train that trickle along narrow, well-marked channels!“

For nearly 2,000 memorable opening lines from every genre of world literature, go to www.GreatOpeningLines.com.

This Week’s Puzzler

On April 1, 1855, this woman was born in Philadephia, Pennsylvania. I first learned of her about fifteen years ago when Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda wrote glowingly about her in a 2009 review of American Austen: The Forgotten Writings of ____ ________, edited by John Lukacs.

Even though Austen was a novelist and this week’s Mystery Woman was an essayist, Dirda wrote that she was “a literary journalist” who “resembles Jane Austen in her intelligence and shrewd insight into human interaction.” Dirda went on to add:

“Moreover, being deeply read in history and literature, [she] could always illustrate her points with an apt quotation or telling anecdote.”

At age twenty, two years after graduating from the prestigious Agnes Irwin School (then in Philadelphia), she began publishing poems, short stories, and articles in Catholic World magazine and other religious publications. Her first major literary success occurred in 1886, when, at age 31, her “Children, Past and Present” essay was published in the Atlantic Monthly (she went on to become a regular contributor).

From then until her death at age 95 in 1950, she became one of the 20th century’s most prolific essayists, penning hundreds of articles for such publications as Life, Harper’s, Commonweal, the New Republic, and The Yale Review. In 1946, the noted critic Edward Wagenknecht called her “our dean of essayists.”

In addition to fourteen books of essays, she also wrote five biographies, and eight nonfiction books on other subjects, including a 1936 study of humor, The Pursuit of Laughter. Her works were filled with aphoristic insights and epigrammatic gems, including this from an 1893 essay:

Who is this person? (Answer below)

What Role Has Sarcasm Played in Your Life?

This is how three major dictionaries define sarcasm, a word that first appeared in print in English in the early 1500s.  The word derives from the Greek noun sarkasmos, which means “a sneer, jest, or taunt,” and the Greek verb sarkazein, meaning “to tear flesh, gnash the teeth, speak bitterly.”   In his Dictionary of Quotations (1968), Bergen Evans wrote that, in the 19th century, sarcastic remarks “were sometimes called dry blows.”

In addition to being sharp and cutting, there is one other quality that generally accompanies sarcasm. None of the definitions above formally mention it, but two of them provide a hint by alluding to sarcasm’s association with irony.  Before reading on, do you know what that additional component is?

If you answered that sarcastic remarks are generally phrased so that the intended meaning is different from what is literally said, then pat yourself on the back.  This say-one-thing-but-mean-another quality is the essence of irony, which the AHD defines as “The use of words to express something different and often opposite to their literal meaning.”

If, for example, I say, “Beautiful weather we’re having” during a nasty thunderstorm, I’m speaking ironically. But if I say “Nice move, graceful” after watching you carelessly drop a carton of eggs on the kitchen floor, I’m using irony to express sarcasm. Here are some other thoughts on the irony-sarcasm connection.

If you’re still a little unclear on the concept, here’s an example. Imagine you are married and, after you’ve done something extra-thoughtful, your spouse says, “You are so sensitive; I’m fortunate to have you in my life.” That is a compliment.

Now, imagine you’re that same person and you’ve recently done something so insensitive or callous that you’ve deeply hurt your spouse’s feelings. This time, your mate says the same words seen in the previous paragraph, but now the words are accompanied by a little eye-rolling, a slightly different tone or speech cadence, and perhaps some “air quotes” around the word sensitive. That, my friends, is sarcasm.

Sarcasm is frequently described as a nuanced form of communication, which means that the recipient of the message must rely on clues—sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious—to correctly decipher the message.

While sarcasm often gets a “bad rap,” there is no question that people love sarcasm when it is employed to skewer people or practices we don’t like. For example, when people approvingly quote Mark Twain as saying “We have the best government money can buy,” they clearly admire the sarcasm behind the remark. Here, while literally using a common complimentary expression, he is in reality being harshly critical of a government that ignores the public interest by catering to wealthy donors and deep-pocket lobbyists. It is observations like this one that has led many people to sing the praises of sarcasm.

We can also appreciate sarcasm when it appears in that fascinating form of male bonding that goes by the name of badinage (BAD-uh-nahzh). In badinage, men show their affection to one another other by engaging in playful insults or put-downs. Over the years, the phenomenon has been pervasive among blue-collar workers and it also shows up with great frequency in male-dominated occupations.

In a typical example, after Person A makes a mistake or blunder, Person B will say something like, “Excellent move! It’s so inspiring to see an expert at work.” Historically, women have found such banter a little bizarre, but in recent decades, as women have become more involved in traditional male-dominated pursuits, we’ve begun to see an increase in female badinage as well.

Let me bring my remarks to a close this week by briefly examining the one area of human life in which sarcasm has been most problematical: intimate relationships. In Irony and Sarcasm (2020), Roger Kreuz wrote:

“Sarcasm…is antithetical to the concept of intimacy.”

While most of the psychologists I know would essentially agree with this assessment, I would add that in modest and occasional doses, sarcasm can be appropriate, and even helpful. It happened to me just a few nights ago while having dinner with my wife Katherine. After I blurted out a long-held opinion on a particular subject, she looked up and said, “Gee, I had no idea you felt that way.” In this case, her sarcasm was the perfect response, effectively reminding me that endlessly repeating strong opinions on worn-out topics wasn’t exactly making me the most scintillating conversationalist.

When taken too far or employed too often, though, sarcasm can indeed be hazardous to a relationship. A few decades ago, I saw a couple in marriage counseling, and the “presenting problem” was that the wife was fed up with her husband’s sarcasm—especially remarks he made about her in public.  In our first session, she mentioned a bunch of examples, but two stand out in my memory.  One time, he said to her, “Are you always so dense, or are you making a special effort today?”  Another time, when someone asked him at a dinner party why he was so quiet, he said, “I do like to talk, but my wife is so verbal I generally hate to interrupt her.” Whenever she objected to his behavior, he’d say something to negate her feelings, like “Don’t be so thin-skinned,” “Can’t you take a joke?” or “I’m just messin’ with you.”

The husband, as it turns out, had grown up in a family filled with witty banter, so the sarcasm was pretty well-established in his behavioral repertoire (in fact, it was one of the qualities that had made him most attractive to his wife when they started dating). The wife, on the other hand, was a sensitive soul who’d inherited the scholarly introversion of both of her parents. In fact, when I first met her, she brought to mind a character I’d recently read about:

Over a period of several months, I met with the couple jointly and individually—and the final result was spectacular. The husband made a dramatic turnaround, completely changing the behavior his wife had found so distressing and ultimately restoring the emotional connection they once had. Did the successful outcome result from my skills as a therapist? I’d like to think that I helped, but my efforts were insignificant compared to what eventually motivated him to change.

One day, while his children thought he was napping in the family room, he witnessed his 12-year-old son sarcastically—and in his own words “quite cruelly”—putting down his 10-year-old daughter in a way that was strikingly similar to the way he’d been behaving toward his wife. In that moment, he later reported, he knew that his life would never be the same way again. When we discussed what happened in our next session, he said that this was the very first “Eureka” moment he’d ever experienced, and almost certainly the most important he would ever have.

This week, take a few moments to think about the role that sarcasm has played in your life—either as the perpetrator, the victim, or simply as an observer. To stimulate your thinking, here are some of my favorite quotations on the subject: 

• Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it. — Thomas Carlyle

• Her sarcasm was so quick, so fine at the point—it was like being touched by a metal so cold that one doesn’t know whether one is burned or chilled. — Willa Cather

• Inevitably, anytime we are too vulnerable we feel the need to protect ourselves from further wounds. So we resort to sarcasm, cutting humor, criticism—anything that will keep from exposing the tenderness within. — Stephen Covey

• It is smart to think of some sarcastic thing to say; but it is smarter still to think of it and not say it. — Lillian Eichler

• It is better to sacrifice one’s love of sarcasm than to indulge it at the expense of a friend. — Théophile Gautier

• Sarcasm is when you tell someone the truth by lying on purpose. — Chuck Klosterman

• Sarcasm is a subtle form of bullying and most bullies are angry, insecure, cowards. — Clifford N. Lazarus

• We are suffering from too much sarcasm. — Marianne Moore

• The talent for being sarcastic is a most dangerous one. No one ever knew a sarcastic woman who could keep friends. — Helen Ekin Starrett

• Sarcasm and jokes were often the bottle in which clinical depressives sent out their most plangent screams for someone to care and help them. — David Foster Wallace

For source information on these quotations, and many others on the topic of SARCASM, go here.

Cartoon of the Week:

Answer to This Week’s Puzzler:

Agnes Repplier (1855-1950)

Dr. Mardy’s Observation of the Week:

Thanks for joining me again this week. See you next Sunday morning, when the theme will be “A Sense of Purpose.”

Mardy Grothe

Websites: www.drmardy.com and www.GreatOpeningLines.com

Regarding My Lifelong Love of Quotations: A Personal Note