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Irony Quotes

LIII.What is the holiness of conversation? It isto master death.

She lived in fear of ifonic endings. (91)

Picture of Anne Lamott
Anne LamottCrooked Little Heart

The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle tha...

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The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of e...

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The man might have died in a fit; but then the jewels are missing," mused the Inspector, "Ha! I have...

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They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with bui...

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You are so lost to your higher self that you would resent me for my achievements, rather than celebr...

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But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.

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Barack ObamaDreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Humor is everywhere in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.

The worst thing about irony for me is that it attenuates emotion.

The world isn't fair? What a huge revelation! Some people in power abuse those they have power over?...

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It is odd that the Bible says, ‘God created man,’ whereas it is the other way round: man has created...

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I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittl...

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C. S. LewisThe Screwtape Letters

Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of ban...

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Carlos Ruiz ZafónThe Shadow of the Wind

What are all these?" Clary asked."Vials of holy water, blessed knives, steel and silver blades," Jac...

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What - what - what are you doing?" he demanded."I am almost six hundred years old," Magnus claimed, ...

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That was the last cruel irony of Tobias’s life: that he doomed the woman he would have died to save.

Il me semble que je serais toujours bien la ou je ne suis pas.It seems to me that I will always be h...

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Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising,...

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What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.

I didn't know who tobelievebutone thing I doknow: when a man islivingmany claim relationshipsthat ar...

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Charles BukowskiYou Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

I feel no grief for being called somethingwhichI am not;in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a g...

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Charles BukowskiYou Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

sometimes when everything seems atits worstwhen all conspiresand gnawsand the hours, days, weeksyear...

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Picture of Charles Bukowski
Charles BukowskiYou Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

I paid, got up, walkedto the door, openedit.I heard the mansay, "that guy'snuts."out on the street I...

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Picture of Charles Bukowski
Charles BukowskiYou Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

I hope I know my own unworthiness, and that I hate and despise myself and all my fellow-creatures as...

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Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,' said Cleopatra, 'with their delicious fortresses, and their...

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What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same the...

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John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf...

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It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.

John says I musn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to...

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Papa said that the parish priest in Abba was not spiritual enough. That was the problem with our peo...

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If we ran Nigeria like this cell," he said, "we would have no problems in this country. Things are s...

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The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal m...

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Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went...

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Christopher HitchensFor the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports

Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay ...

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When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every ...

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How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to...

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Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the lo...

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In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; eve...

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Christopher HitchensUnacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere

Crazy things seem normal, normal things seem crazy.

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Chuck KlostermanChuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

Suddenly the thought that the end of her life was imminent shocked him; it was one thing to pity som...

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Colleen McCulloughThe Ladies of Missalonghi

The Emperor, you see, protects... He protects mankind, through the Legions, through the Martial corp...

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how can it be that the modern human mind is capable of precise logical analysis, and yet simultaneou...

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Even in dying, a Thennanin ship was reputed to be not worth putting out of its misery. In battle the...

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I think the main function of contemporary irony is to protect thespeaker from being interpreted as n...

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God, what a ghastly enterprise to be in, though--and what an odd way to achieve success. I'm an exhi...

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Irony and hip ennui are extremely authoritarian.

Commercial comedy's often set up to feature an ironist makingdevastating sport of someone who's naiv...

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Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literar...

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The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the fla...

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I don't think irony's meant to synergize with anything as heartfelt assadness.

All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don't really mean what I say." So what does irony as a cul...

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David Foster Wallace"E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction"

In sum, then a conservative tech writer offers a really attractive way of looking at viewer passivit...

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David Foster WallaceA Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

And it never even occurs to them their certainty that they are different is what makes them the same...

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David Foster WallaceBrief Interviews with Hideous Men

Now it turns out that a few broadsheet film critics in Britain do indeed belong to a category of peo...

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Labour day is a great American holiday that peoplecelebrate by going out and buying products made in...

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A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder...

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There's always a 'she'. Isn't there?

Picture of Dennis Lehane
Dennis LehaneShutter Island

He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend toge...

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If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they...

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I myself," said Gibbon, "am slightly underdone in the personal worthlessness line. It was Papa's fau...

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I think this goes more to the idea of 'relentless irony' than 'divine providence.

No, there's a group of hardened, fossilised men opposed by fresh young revolutionaries as John Butte...

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But that's men all over ... Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.

(One character on another:)"Don't you know that I passionately dote on every chin on his face?

Salcombe Hardy groaned: "How long, O Lord, how long shall we have to listen to all this tripe about ...

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Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of c...

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Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,a medley of extemporanea,And love is a thing that can never go ...

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We're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford."...""And that's the deciding factor. We can...

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In the center lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived long enough to be d...

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Douglas AdamsThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

So, like I said, these are a bunch of really sweet guys, but you wouldn't want to share a Galaxy wit...

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Douglas AdamsThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Tertiary Phase

Jane, who is much better at reading guide books than I am (I always read them on the way back to see...

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Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest iron...

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How do you like your blue-eyed boy Mr Death?

Georgie, I've got it," she said. "I've guessed what it means."Now though Georgie was devoted to his ...

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The only ironic thing about that song is that it's called 'Ironic' and it is written by a woman who ...

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I was much affected by the internal troubles of the Punch family; I thought that with a little more ...

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If the empire had been afflicted by any recent calamity, by a plague, a famine, or an unsuccessful w...

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Picture of Edward Gibbon
Edward GibbonThe Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

It could draw from a greater reservoir of freedom. The irony could develop an even greater ease.

So this was the Ashram's final joke on me? Once I had learned to accept my loud, chatty, social natu...

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Humor is hard to catch in a second language. Especially when you're as serious a young man as Giovan...

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Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.

Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks ...

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You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of...

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Picture of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest HemingwayThe Sun Also Rises

You're worse than decent. You're virtuous.

So through a world of piety I made my way to Sebastian.

Picture of Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn WaughBrideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost...

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Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief- that is to say, o...

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Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

The robots came bearing a gift and the name of it was "Plenty."Plenty is a habit-forming drug. You d...

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There is no greater cruelty than a genius stumbling over something idiotic.

What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one...

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Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belo...

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Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They...

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With every mistake, we must surely be learning.

Metaphysics in philosophy is, of course, supposed to characterize what is real - literally real. The...

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Picture of George Lakoff
George LakoffPhilosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of b...

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Then you do not belong here. Death holds no sweetness in this house. We are not warriors, nor soldie...

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