quotes about Irony
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Cruel irony, the poor man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.
-- Albert Camus -
Italics provide a wonderful advantage: you see, right away, that the words are in a rush. When something exists at a slant, you can't help but consider irony.
-- Ann BeattieSource : Ann Beattie (2010). “Walks With Men: Fiction”, p.4, Simon and Schuster
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You love her," Teddy observed quietly. Henry replied with an uncharacteristic lack of irony: "Yes." Teddy's eyes shifted to the plaster interlacing that decorated the ceiling in curlicues. "Lord, you never make it easy, do you." "No.
-- Anna Godbersen -
Cervantes is the most important Spanish writer. But he is not the most representative of the Spanish. His irony, his sense of humor - they are too subtle to seem Spanish.
-- Antonio Munoz Molina -
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Listen: our culture is saturated with irony whether we know it or not.
-- Barbara Kruger -
The irony is palpable - technical access has never been greater, cultural access never weaker.
-- Beeban Kidron -
When I was young I had no means or time, and now I have the means and time, I have no youth.
-- Bess Streeter AldrichSource : Bess Streeter Aldrich (1994). “A Lantern in Her Hand”, p.241, U of Nebraska Press
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Faith is a luxury for those who are able to ignore what the rest of us must see every day. Pessimism, distrust, and irony are the holy trinity of my religion, irony in particular.
-- Brando SkyhorseSource : Brando Skyhorse (2010). “The Madonnas of Echo Park: A Novel”, p.156, Simon and Schuster
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There is not much irony when people are being happy on screen.
-- Carter Burwell -
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.
-- Charles Lamb -
I suppose that's one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.
-- Charlie Chaplin -
At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee -
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Even if that were true, it wouldn't be irony," Lucas pointed out. "Irony is the contrast between what's said and what happens.
-- Claudia Gray -
Corporate irony not only ridicules the thing it is selling but the very act of selling it. In the process it disarms critics by making anyone who goes against the flow of commerce seem clueless.
-- David Denby -
Truth offends everyone outside its definitions. But the irony of truth is that the greater its potential for offense, the greater its potential for giving hope.
-- David Jeremiah -
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One of the persistent ironies of reform is the impossibility of predicting the full consequences of change ...
-- Diane Ravitch -
Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently.
-- Dick Cavett -
No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.
-- Don DeLilloSource : "White Noise". Book by Don DeLillo, 1985.
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Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.
-- Edwin Percy Whipple -
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It could draw from a greater reservoir of freedom. The irony could develop an even greater ease.
-- Elfriede JelinekSource : Interview with Marika Griehsel, www.nobelprize.org. November 2004.
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Irony is the hygiene of the mind.
-- Elizabeth BibescoSource : Elizabeth Bibesco (1951). “Haven: Short Stories, Poems, and Aphorisms”
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Haven't you picked up on the irony of life by now? Things only just happen when you're not ready. When you're ready, you start trying, and gadamn I feel like trying right now.
-- Elizabeth Reyes -
In the end, the Labour party could cease to represent labour. Stranger historic ironies have happened than that.
-- Enoch PowellSource : The Sunday Telegraph, October 18, 1964.
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Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.
-- Erica Jong -
I've learned not to hide behind a veil of irony - to talk about my work in a more honest way.
-- Florence Welch -
Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.
-- Frederick Douglass -
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To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.
-- Frederick Douglass -
Well, it'd certainly be fascinating if we discovered that gays were better at being married than heterosexuals are. Talk about irony.
-- Gail Collins -
The truth is you really are nothing, but this nothing is full, whole, infinite in everything and everywhere. This nothing is conciousness itself. It is already whole, complete and fulfilled. This is the amazing irony.
-- Gangaji -
Irony gives us, at little expense, the impression that we are experienced psychologists.
-- Gaston Bachelard -
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I need an irony punctuation mark for the clueless.
-- Gene Weingarten -
The Book of History is the Bible of Irony.
-- George SaintsburySource : George Saintsbury, Oliver Elton, Adam Blyth Webster (1945). “George Saintsbury: The Memorial Volume : a New Collection of His Essays and Papers”
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... the irony of life is not that you cannot forget but that you can.
-- Gertrude Atherton -
The irony of prison is that it takes years and years and years to plan an elaborate escape, but all you have is years and years and years.
-- Greg Gutfeld -
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From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.
-- H. P. Lovecraft -
In the end, we know what makes us happy. We also know what makes us unhappy. That's the irony. We know and yet we still mess it up. That's part of the human condition, no, and why we need to work on it.
-- Harlan Coben -
Hamlet, Kiekegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates.
-- Harold Bloom -
Don't you find any irony in a vampire sucking up?
-- Heather Brewer -
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Don’t underestimate the value of irony—it is extremely valuable.
-- Henry James -
My friend "M" says the irony of being a zombie is that everything is funny, but you can't smile, because your lips have rotted off.
-- Isaac MarionSource : Isaac Marion (2016). “Warm Bodies and The New Hunger: A Special 5th Anniversary Edition”, p.11, Simon and Schuster
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There are a million ways to make money in the markets. The irony is that they are all very difficult to find.
-- Jack D. SchwagerSource : Jack D. Schwager (2012). “The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders”, p.7, John Wiley & Sons
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What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.
-- Jacques Derrida -
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Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle?
-- James Branch Cabell -
Everything becomes symbol and irony when you've been betrayed
-- Jay McInerneySource : Jay McInerney (2014). “Bright Lights, Big City”, p.54, A&C Black
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It's no small irony that the government inevitably and invariably ends up promoting precisely that which they would most like to repress.
-- Jock SturgesSource : Interview with David Steinberg, www.nearbycafe.com. May 25, 1994.
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The irony of Christmas is always upon the poor in heart; the mystery of the solstice is always upon the rest of us.
-- John Cheever -
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It is one of the ironies of history that reformers so often misjudge the consequences of their reforms.
-- John W. Gardner -
I have wit in my work and a sense of humor, but I do not use irony in any way
-- John Zorn -
Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.
-- Joseph Brodsky -
I think the French have a romantic cliche that Englishmen have great style, great music, irony and sense of humour. Well, sometimes cliches are true.
-- Josephine de La Baume -
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Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos.
-- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel -
Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
-- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel -
Humor, together with irony,forms a safeguard against idolatry.
-- Krister Stendahl -
One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.
-- Lewis Mumford -
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The irony of loneliness is that everybody shares it from time to time.
-- Lil B -
There's a certain amount of what I wear that I wear for irony.
-- Lily Allen -
I am a connoisseur of fine irony. 'Tis a bit like fine wine, but it has a better bite.
-- Lynn Kurland -
There's a large strain of irony in our human affairs... Interwoven with our affairs is this wonderful spirit of irony which prevents us from ever being utterly and irretrievably serious, from being unaware of the mysterious nature of our existence.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge -
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Here we have the great irony of modern nutrition: at a time when hundreds of millions of people do not have enough to eat, hundreds of millions more are eating too much and are overweight or obese.
-- Marion Nestle -
Hollywood is a place of great irony at all times.
-- Mark CantonSource : "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
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It's an irony of our times that men seeking peace must make war.
-- Mark LawrenceSource : Mark Lawrence (2013). “Emperor of Thorns”, p.243, Penguin
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I wonder if Bettie Page original gay cult had something to do with the ironies inherent in her image, as well as her innate fabulousness as an image.
-- Mary Harron -
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The irony is that science has served only to show how small human knowledge is.
-- Masanobu FukuokaSource : Masanobu Fukuoka (2010). “The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming”, p.29, New York Review of Books
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Irony is the word I forget the meaning of immediately after I look it up, but I kind of feel like I live in a constant state of it.
-- Maureen Johnson -
Everything we say about other people is really about ourselves.
-- Merrit Malloy -
That's the irony in the work: the best stories are the worst things that happen. My best times were somebody else's worst.
-- Michael Connelly -
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The accident was a horrible thing - but that horrible thing made Chris, at the end of his life, Superman. It's a happy irony if there is such a thing. I'm proud to have known him.
-- Morgan Freeman -
That's the trouble with honorable mentions: they let everyone know you applied and didn't win.
-- Nancy Mairs -
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Dangerously well’— what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well
-- Oliver Sacks -
Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. But that is the irony of honesty.
-- Patrick White -
It is one of the ironies of biographical art that some details are more relevant than others, and many details have no relevance at all.
-- Paul Bailey -
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Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence.
-- Paul Fussell -
All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel
-- Paul Fussell -
Irony differentiates. Cynicism never does.
-- Paul HorganSource : "Approaches to Writing". Book by Paul Horgan, No. 398, 1973.
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Human nature is pretty shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.
-- Peter De Vries -
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The irony is that the person not taking risks feels the same amount of fear as the person who regularly takes risks.
-- Peter McWilliamsSource : Peter McWilliams (1997). “Do It!: Let's Get Off Our Buts”, Mary Book / Prelude Press
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There is no paradox. There is only irony.
-- Philip K. Jason -
The irony of New Testament lordship is that only in slavery to Christ can a man discover authentic freedom.
-- R. C. Sproul -
Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.
-- Rachel HartmanSource : Rachel Hartman (2012). “Seraphina”, p.104, Random House
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Irony: Don't let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke -
The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
-- Ralph Ellison -
Some of Mr. Gregory's poems have merely appeared in The New Yorker ; others are New Yorker poems: the inclusive topicality, the informed and casual smartness, the flat fashionable irony, meaningless because it proceeds from a frame of reference whose amorphous superiority is the most definite thing about it they are the trademark not simply of a magazine but of a class.
-- Randall Jarrell -
Skype is a wonderful thing. The irony is that you never Skype when you're in the same country as someone.
-- Richard Fleeshman -
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United Nations peacekeepers are going all over the world spreading AIDS even while they're trying to bring peace. What a supreme irony.
-- Richard Holbrooke -
...his job was the very least important part of his life, never to be mentioned except in irony.
-- Richard Yates -
What would we do without irony? Check out your own daily reliance on it, the foul-weather friend who's there for you when nothing else is.
-- Robin Morgan -
Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument.
-- Rufus ChoateSource : "Dictionary of American Maxims". Book by David George Plotkin, 1955.
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We Americans only voted for George Bush to prove to the British that Americans understand irony. Unfortunately, it kinda backfired.
-- Scott Capurro -
Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.
-- Serj TankianSource : "The Imperfect Harmony of Serj Tankian". Interview with Chris Carle, www.ign.com. September 27, 2010.
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Every man is a prisoner, and the greatest irony of all is to be the prisoner of another man.
-- Sidney Sheldon -
You know, sometimes I swear the whole universe runs on irony.
-- Simon R. GreenSource : Simon R. Green (2007). “The Man With the Golden Torc”, p.196, Penguin
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Royal Young's writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty.
-- Simon Van Booy -
I was not interested in irony; I wanted to emphasize the primacy of the idea in making art
-- Sol LeWitt -
The irony of the information age is that it lends credibility to uninformed opinion.
-- Stephen Coonts -
Making a film that's supposed to be fun to watch is really hard - that's the weird irony of it.
-- Steven Soderbergh -