Bathos Quotes

“In the end, notwithstanding a surreal detour in the 1970s, Patricia led the life she for which she was destined back in Hillsborough. The story of Patricia Hearst, as extraordinary as it once was, had a familiar, even predictable ending. She did not turn into a revolutionary. She turned into her mother.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst

“Maybe, despite ideology, politics, and history, a genuine catastrophe is always personal bathos at the core. Life can’t be impugned for any failure to trivialize people. You have to take your hat off to life for the techniques at its disposal to strip a man of his significance and empty him totally of his pride.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“Interstellar Corduroy Roy by Stewart Stafford

Taunted since he was a boy,
Thorn-crowned “Corduroy Roy”,
Hurled across sanity’s border,
A reluctant thundercloud hoarder.

His spacesuit? Pants! - Shade? Maroon!
Playing soccer-tennis on the moon,
Astronaut dust, his alma mater,
Hitched to Earth in a pocket crater.

Leapfrogged back to terra firma,
Just in time for his dog’s dewormer,
Gravity’s cords in the machine, unclean,
Freed himself from the lunar silt routine.

© 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford