Satire is a composition of ...

Satire is a composition of salt and mercury; and it depends upon the different mixture and preparation of those ingredients, that it comes out a noble medicine, or a rank poison.
 Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

Quotes from the same author

He will always see the most beauty whose affections are the warmest and most exercised, whose imagination is the most powerful, and who has most accustomed himself to attend to the objects by which he is surrounded.
 Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey