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

“I've never read the feminist version of The Odyssey, but I imagine it goes something like this:

"Odysseus was a man. A complicated man. (Did I mention he was a prick and a fucker with a revolting rapist penis too? Well, he was and he did have one.)

Odysseus was at the apex of an oppressive Greek patriarchy, perhaps the OG patriarchy. He had "men" under his command. I suppose you're wondering what these "men" were like? (Hint: see above.)

(N.B. If I have accidentally written anything remotely complimentary or positive about men, please contact my publisher and I will retract it in future editions.)

Being toxically masculine, Odysseus abandoned his wife Penelope and their son and disappeared for twenty years for island hook-ups with nymphs and to commit ableist, homicidal thuggery against one-eyed, cave-dwelling primitives. Meanwhile, Penelope, the real hero of this epic — afflicted by her internalised misogyny — defended the oppressive marriage through the menial, degrading task of weaving, while resisting the 108 potential rapists who had moved into his home and wanted her sexually non-stop.”
― Stewart Stafford