The pleasantry of one nation or the gravity of another may, by a little penciling, be distorted into whimsical features, and the painter becomes so much laughed at as the painting.
Thomas Paine: “The pleasantry of one nation or the gravity of another may, by a little penciling, be distorted into whimsical features…”
Editor's note · Context
Paine illustrates how perceptions of different nations can be humorously distorted through caricature.
Share
More from Thomas Paine
Reason and discussion, persuasion and conviction, become the weapons in the contest, and it is only when those are attempted to be suppressed that recourse is had to violence.
I have no idea, considering the reforms which are now passing and spreading throughout Europe, that England will permit herself to be the last; and where the occasion and the opportunity quietly offer, it is better than to wait for a…
But as religion is very improperly made a political machine, and the reality of it is thereby destroyed, I will conclude this work with stating in what light religion appears to me.
I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all.