Best 841 quotes in «irony quotes» category

In sum, then a conservative tech writer offers a really attractive way of looking at viewer passivity and TV's institutionalization of irony, narcissism, nihilism, stasis. It's not our fault! It's outmoded technology's fault! If TV-dissemination were up to date, it would be impossible for it to "institutionalize" anything through its demonic "mass psychology"! Let's let Joe B., the little lonely guy, be his own manipulator or video-bits! Once all experience is finally reduced to marketable image, once the receiving user of user-friendly receivers can choose freely, Americanly, from an Americanly infinite variety of moving images hardly distinguishable from real-life images, and can then choose further just how he wishes to store, enhance, edit, recombine, and present those images to himself, in the privacy of his very own home and skull, TV's ironic, totalitarian grip on the American psychic cajones will be broken!" E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" (The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993)

In the beginning there was the Word. Then we broke it.

In the chamber, [Frances Hamling] sat close to her husband [William Hamling, about to go before the US Supreme Court on 4/15/74], trying to repress the anxiety she felt about his future. Four years in prison and $87,000 in fines was hardly a matter of casual contemplation. Since nobody was supposed to speak or even whisper in the chamber, she diverted herself by glancing around at the room's opulent interior, the impressive bone-white china columns and red velvet draperies that formed the background behind the polished judicial bench and high black leather chairs. A gold clock hung down from between two pillars, signaling that it was 9:57 a.m. -- a few minutes before the justices' scheduled arrival. Along the upper edge of the front of the room, close to the top of the forty-four-foot ceiling, Frances noticed an interesting, voluptuous section of Classical art: It was a golden beige marble frieze that extended across the width of the room and showed about twenty nude and seminude men, women, and children gathered in various poses. The figures symbolized the embodiment of human wisdom and truth, righteousness, and virtue; but the bodies to her could as easily have represented an assemblage of Roman hedonists or orgiasts, and it struck her as ironic that such a scene should be hovering over the heads of the jurists who would be questioning her husband's use of illustrations in the Presidential Report on Obscenity and Pornography.

In the grounds of the château was a church said to date from the year 1000, and he went to look at it, but he had never really understood what people saw in old churches.

In the State of Denmark there was the odor of decay...

I paid, got up, walked to the door, opened it. I heard the man say, "that guy's nuts." out on the street I walked north feeling curiously honored.

I once saw a note on a Stasi file from early 1989 that I would never forget. In it a young lieutenant alerted his superiors to the fact that there were so many informers in church opposition groups at demonstrations that they were making these groups appear stronger than they really were. In one of the most beautiful ironies I have ever seen, he dutifully noted that, by having swelled the ranks of the opposition, the Stasi was giving the people heart to keep demonstrating against them.

I preyed on this sort of thing, discontentment, a clash of passions among the rivals, and the zealots. Open sores opened secrets. That’s how I roll.” Jackson Guild, The Trinity Conspiracy, Betrayal at Black Mesa

I recalled with some discomfort that the man driving the vehicle had invented the sport of volcano boarding, presumably as a way of solving, in one deft move, the problems of the insufficient riskiness of both snowboarding and hanging out on the slopes of active volcanoes. Although I was not sure that I wanted to live forever, I was sure that I didn’t want to go down in a blaze of chintzy irony, plunging into a ravine strapped into the passenger seat of a thing called the Immortality Bus.

...I remember that my mother had always said to be polite and finish my meal. At last he gave no more struggles. The deed was done. Now the boat contained four men, not one heartbeat among us. The fate they had destined for another claimed them as well. The irony of it all was more delicious than the blood consumed. -- Quote by Lane DeLuca

Ironic, isn’t it?” Shawn said. “It’s not ironic at all,” Gus said. “Dude, it’s so like a black fly in your chardonnay.” “How many times do I have to tell you that’s not ironic, either?” “Rain on your wedding day?” “‘Irony’ is the use of words to convey a meaning that’s opposite to their literal meaning,” Gus said. “That stupid song came out fourteen years ago, and we still have this exact conversation at least once a week.” “Yeah,” Shawn said. “Ironic, isn’t it?

Irony cleans away all those secret stains. Irony is the path that leads safely back to official realities.

Irony; we want to dance like robots and want robots to dance like us.

Irony: When those who call others a 'threat to Christianity' reject the crucial tenets of their own faith themselves.

Ironic. I'm here because of my inherent dangerousness, but it's my inherent politeness that makes me put up with this. With him.

Irony and hip ennui are extremely authoritarian.

Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism.

Irony is a linguistic trust fall.

Irony is not one of my favorite modes of communication, but I can still recognize it.

Irony is that indifference is the most easily learned attitude.

Irony of the day: arthritis medication with a cap that old people can't get off, because of their arthritis.

Irony, we want our handwriting to look like typed fonts, and our computer fonts to look like handwritten text.

Irony can be an endearing friend in one moment, and a cruel enemy in the next.

Irony can be tiresome when what you really need is a hug.

Irony is a gift of the gods, the most subtle of all the modes of speech. It is an armour and a weapon; it is a philosophy and a perpetual entertainment; it is food for the hungry of wit and drink to those thirsting for laughter...

irony is for a traveler while traveling, happiness increases as the distance increases.

Irony; these days, images have so much noise; and people, silent.

Irony is easier than hopeless silence but braver than flight.

Irony is only skin deep. Undernearh, a heart is beating.

Irony serves as an alibi for a fetish.

Irony is a treacherous servant; unless it's very carefully watched over, it has a tendency to expose the foolishness of its apparent master.

Irony is only skin deep.

Irony of the world is that it wants to simplify the complexity and complicate the simplicity.

Irony takes nothing away from pathos.

I saw an injured black cat. God knows, who has crossed her path.

ISIS stands for Islamic State In Syria. It's an acronym. ISIS is also the name of a bad ass Egyptian goddess. So for a group that is so anti woman I find it interesting and ironic that they named themselves after one

I scrupulously hide every legitimate reason for people to hate me, and it turns out they don’t need legitimate reasons. Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.

I should learn patience, it's a shame there's no time for that.

I sheep's idea of bravery : To become a wolf's pet.

The fuck are you staring at? I hiss at the stranger staring at me in my rearview. Oh, wait, that's me.

I spose it’s wrong to pray that someone dies… But I’ve thought about all the prayers. If that’s what I was doing them years…Asking something, someone, anything, for a big black anvil to fall from the sky like in the cartoons. Kerang! On Wankbag’s head. Because nothing else was gunna save [me]…

I still couldn't imagine that she was really, truly pregnant; maybe this was an hysterical pregnancy. But Sarah was never hysterical. Enthusiastic, yes, ironic on occasion. I couldn't imagine a doctor saying, "No, it's just an ironic pregnancy.

Isn't it ironic that when you accept sadness is an inevitability of the human condition you feel happier?

It had to be that Americans were taught, from elementary school, to always "say something" in class, no matter what. [...] They never said "I don't know". They said, instead, "I'm not sure," which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge. And they ambled, these Americans, they walked without rhythm. They avoided giving direct instructions: they did not say "Ask somebody upstairs"; they said "You might want to ask somebody upstairs". When you tripped and fell, when you choked, when misfortune befell you, they did not say "Sorry". They said "Are you OK?" when it was obvious that you were not. And when you said "Sorry" to them when they choked or tripped or encountered misfortune, they replied, eyes wide with surprise, "Oh, it's not your fault". And they overused the world "excited", a professor excited about a new book, a student excited about a class, a politician on TV excited about a law; it was altogether too much excitement.

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

I think the main function of contemporary irony is to protect the speaker from being interpreted as naive or sentimental.

I think you'll find that I'm qualified to deal with practically everything, if I choose. That last part, of course, is essential. --Devyn DuChien

It has been said that civilization is the process of freeing human beings from each other, and that is true. But it takes people to free each other, because people cannot be freed from each other except by each other. The irony of this cannot be overstated.

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

It is a truth widely recognized that tyranny stems from the consent of the governed as much as democracy does.