In view of all this, I have no doubt that Cambyses was completely out of his mind; it is the only possible explanation of his assault upon, and mockery of, everything which ancient law and custom have made sacred in Egypt. If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably, after careful consideration of their relative merits, choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things. There is abundant evidence that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one's country. One might recall, in particular, an anecdote of Darius. When he was king of Persia, he summoned the Greeks who happened to be present in his court, and asked them what they would take to eat the dead bodies of their fathers. They replied that they would not do it for any money in the world. Later, in the presence of the Greeks, and through an interpreter, so that they could understand what was said, he asked some Indians, of the tribe called the Callatiae, who do in fact eat their parents' dead bodies, what they would take to burn them. They uttered a cry of horror and forbade him to mention such a dreadful thing. One can see by this what custom can do, and Pindar, in my opinion, was right when he called it king of all.
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Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health everything unconditional belongs in pathology.
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In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion -- or a new form of Christianity -- based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.
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No mockery in the world ever sounds to me as hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.
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Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
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Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.
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...they no longer felt like newlyweds, and even less like belated lovers. It was as if they had lept over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion: beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.
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Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery.
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There's a fine line between participation and mockery.
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No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.
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The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.
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Protest, evasion, merry distrust, and a delight in mockery are symptoms of health: everything unconditional belongs in pathology.
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The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty.
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Where wit is a form of criticism or mockery, humor includes an element of self-criticism or self-mockery; where wit tends to proclaim imperfec...
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Mockery is often the result of a poverty of wit.
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Laugh away; I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend I am satisfied when I am hungry
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And when you call to prayer they make it a mockery and a joke; this is because they are a people who do not understand. (The Dinner Table 5.58)
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Isn't it the sweetest mockery to mock our enemies?
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