Quotes About Irony

How ironic that those who could most afford to pay the price refused.

tragic elements in present history are not as significant as the ironic ones. Pure tragedy elicits tears of admiration and pity for the hero who is willing to brave death or incur guilt for the sake of some great good. Irony however prompts some laughter and a nod of comprehension beyond the laughter; for irony involves comic absurdities which cease to be altogether absurd when fully understood.

Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity.

El mejor modo de castigar a los humanos, es dándoles lo que tanto reclaman.

tandis que le rationaliste vulgaire, fût-il l'homme le plus ignorant de toute philosophie, est au contraire le plus empressé à se proclamer tel, en même temps qu'il se pare fièrement du titre plutôt ironique de « libre-penseur », alors qu'il n'est en réalité que l'esclave de tous les préjugés courants de son époque.

It is a peculiar irony that in the modern—and "postmodern"—world, Christianity has come to be regarded as narrow and moralistic. Originally, it was quite the reverse: figures such as Jesus and Paul were widely regarded as rebels, antinomians, disturbers of decency.)

As we'll see, there was an irony in this. The government's claims were propagandistic exaggerations, which came to be widely disbelieved. But actually the government resisted far more than the Communists, who resisted very little and whose losses were a small fraction of those suffered by the KMT's forces.

I know you are laughing in your sleeve.

There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature -- the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.

Oh damn! One measly civil war in the entire history of England and I'm on the wrong bloody side!

The bitter irony, of course, was that the same young musicians who stood in awe of Bill Monroe were about to push him, and others like him, off the stage. Rock 'n' roll began to take the youth audience away from country music. And that was a disaster.

They may already know too much about their mother and father--nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). I've noticed this is often the time when children begin calling their parents by their first names, becoming little ironists after their parents' faults. What could be lonelier for a parent than to be criticized by his child on a first-name basis?

United Nations peacekeepers are going all over the world spreading AIDS even while they're trying to bring peace. What a supreme irony.

Yesterday's political criminals are on today's postage stamps!

Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God . . . The great surprise and irony is that you, or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It's sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn't it? All you can do is nurture it.

Wisdom happily lives with mystery, doubt, and "unknowing," and in such living, ironically resolves that very mystery to some degree.

Can it be that what provides for us is the very thing that poisons us? Who hasn't considered this terrible possibility?

Life may be a grand folly, as you say, but it is harder to appriciate the joke when you're always the butt of it.

Enduring what couldn't be cured, she supposed, was what people meant by being adult, though it was ironic that so few of them—including her parents—had mastered the skill themselves.

And do I perhaps miss the point altogether? Is the guy who wears Tommy on his back participating in a clever, knowing, postmodern joke, whose unspoken text is that we all secretly care about labels, so why not acknowledge that in big campy letters? It may be. But I don't think so.

One of the greatest ironies of the twentieth century is that when communication has reached its zenith, when the human voice can encircle the globe in a matter of seconds, when man can project the image of his face thousands of miles, it is almost impossible to know with any degree of accuracy the truth of a political situation only a hundred miles distant! Propaganda jams the media of communication.

You're pretty smug, Lord Ares, for a guy who runs from Cupid statues.

Holy mother! Hmph. More like holy father. I'd think you'd know the difference. -Hephaetus

You both should feel honored." "Right, very honored," I said. "Always wanted to be possessed!