Best 841 quotes in «irony quotes» category

The more people I am with, Dorrigo thought, the more alone I feel.

The most ironic thing was that, the thing she valued the most was freedom. For according to her, happiness can never occur in bondage. In spite of the fact that death will set her free from all humanly bondages, she wanted to live, let life be the only bondage she was tied with. She wanted it. That one single bondage, to live boundlessly.

The next morning I had Twentieth-Century American Poetry at MCC. This old woman gave a lecture wherein she managed to talk for ninety minutes about Sylvia Plath without ever once quoting a single word of Sylvia Plath.

Then there rose up before her a vision of a parish saved, a village reformed, a county reorganised, and a triumphant election at the end, the recompense and crown of all, which should put the government of the country itself, to a certain extent, into competent hands.

... the novel, arguably the author's best, had a disquieting power, like a sleeping crocodile.

The old Televisions had an off switch.

The old me is sure making things difficult for the current me.

The only ironic thing about that song is that it's called 'Ironic' and it is written by a woman who doesn't know what irony is. That's quite ironic when you think about it. (on Alanis Morissette's 'Ironic')

The only true path to helping yourself is by helping others" RjS

The over-weight and out of shape guy who owned the house had apparently decided that having a half-million dollar house meant that he couldn’t afford to hire someone to clean out his gutters. Now he was dead with what looked to me like a broken neck after the ladder had slipped. He’d taken the plunge into his fancy landscaping—complete with rock garden. But hey, his fucking gutters were clean.

The pain breached through the indolence of mind. But the dizziness made reactions very slow and stretched, like a novice stage actor stretching his death scene for missing queue of actors, leaving audience in splits.

The pages of history are red with the blood of illuminated "saints" who were murdered by their religions for actually achieving the advertised spiritual rewards.

The pinnacle of the struggle for attention, which we are promised will surely pay off through wealth and fame, is the TED Talk. Purposely informal and limited to eighteen minutes, these punchy, pithy talks are meant to inspire and entertain. They don’t invite deliberation or debate. They don’t demand immersion or even background reading. They are capsules of knowledge. To deliver a TED Talk, however, is the apex of self-branding. And, not coincidentally, one of the major ways people discover TED Talks and other self-promotional videos is through Facebook.

The Prohibition era had been a great source of material for building an excellent science of alcohol intoxication

The rare innocence of my father never hardens into experience, into knowing what's what. He never achieves irony, the consolation prize for losing innocence and gaining experience. IT would be comic except that innocence is never comic when it is an article of faith.

The proper work of a writing is truly to talk, or to reveal the truth, to some while leading others to salutary opinions; the proper work of a writing is to arouse to thinking those who are by nature fit for it; the good writing achieves its end if the reader considers carefully the ‘logographic necessity’ of every part, however small or seemingly insignificant, of the writing.

There are fascinating possibilities in this situation. I'd get it down on paper if I were you.

There are no artists! They all sell their works.

There are those who are legitimately corrupt, who cannot admit that legitimacy allows them to corrupt legitimacy, and to legitimately corrupt others.

There is a great deal in choosing colours that go well with one's complexion. People think of that for their dresses, but not for their rooms., which are of so much more importance. I should have liked blue, but blue gets so soon tawdry. I think, (...) that I have enough complexion at present to venture upon a pale spring green.

There is a great deal in choosing colours that go well with one's complexion. People think of that of that for their dresses, but not for their rooms., which are of so much more importance. I should have liked blue, but blue gets so soon tawdry. I think, (...) that I have enough complexion at present to venture upon a pale spring green.

There is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.

There is at least one advantage to being an Indonesian citizen: With this country's expanse of land and even greater expanse of sea, it's not difficult finding space for one's grave.

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

there is such an unfortunate irony in photography these days. for as people pursue desires to visit and capture images of unspoiled landscapes. they inadvertently in the process turn these beautiful locations into anything but unspoiled, regardless of ideals of conservation. and more-so, so many ruin natural beauty by exploiting these magical places with their greed and dreams of success, and regrettable egos with overdeveloped look-at-me-syndromes...sadly sometimes, for so many of us, now the only way today to truly protect an unspoiled place is to not share its beautiful photo or location with anyone, anymore

There's something inherently comical about the fact that most people want to change other people's lives, while they themselves remain stoic as they loiter in their own shortcomings.

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

There's nothing wrong with giving up all your principles for a suitable financial reward. It is indeed the basis of our society.

There was one floor that was all gynecologists. They could tell by the remnants of weird optical contraptions- all the convoluted tools men use when they're searching for the source of their anxieties.

The rich and the poor truly are from different realms: one has adapted to become an expert in material forfeit; the other has forfeited all they are to material, and thus is enslaved, by it.

The robots came bearing a gift and the name of it was "Plenty." Plenty is a habit-forming drug. You do not cut the dosage down. You kick it if you can; you stop the dose entirely. But the convulsions that follow may wreck the body entirely.

These are the best things I've ever had in my mouth!

These were always the weirdest trips for me, when it was midnight or even later, and we pulled up to a dark house, trying to be quiet. Like a robbery in reverse, creeping around to leave something rather than take it.

The smell of hot popcorn drifted upward from the concourse below, lingering in the warm Californian air like an atmospheric irony, and a Jumbotron directly in front of me displayed a blandly handsome announcer seated behind a curved desk emblazoned with DARPA’s logo: a sports broadcast mise-en-scène from some speculative future, vaguely fascist, in which the machinery of national defense had become a spectacle of mass entertainment.

the weekly thirty minutes of sexual stress was a chronic but low-grade discomfort, like the humidity in Florida

The whole justification for having such a bureaucratic system in the first place is so that balance is maintained, and so that one institution doesn't benefit at the expense of all others. Imagine the chaos that would ensue on Earth and in Hell if the Ministry of War were perpetually triumphant! Humans would be decimated and half of Hell would be out of a job.

The world isn't fair? What a huge revelation! Some people in power abuse those they have power over? Amazing! When did this start happening?

The worst way to drown is in mainstream.

They condemn our town. Separate it from their own, where the same secrets pulse.

They had supported him ... for freedom's sake, they would have said; meaning as do all men who mouth that catchword, freedom for themselves and their own class.

They say a woman's loyalty only lasts as long as it takes her to hang up and dial again.

This is not the "relativism of truth" presented by journalistic takes on postmodernism. Rather, the ironist's cage is a state of irony by way of powerlessness and inactivity: In a world where terrorism makes cultural relativism harder and harder to defend against its critics, marauding international corporations follow fair-trade practices, increasing right-wing demagoguery and violence can't be answered in kind, and the first black U.S. president turns out to lean right of center, the intelligentsia can see no clear path of action. Irony dominates as a "mockery of the promise and fitness of things," to return to the OED definition of irony. This thinking is appropriate to Wes Anderson, whose central characters are so deeply locked in ironist cages that his films become two-hour documents of them rattling their ironist bars. Without the irony dilemma Roth describes, we would find it hard to explain figures like Max Fischer, Steve Zissou, Royal Tenenbaum, Mr. Fox, and Peter Whitman. I'm not speaking here of specific political beliefs. The characters in question aren't liberals; they may in fact, along with Anderson himself, have no particular political or philosophical interests. But they are certainly involved in a frustrated and digressive kind of irony that suggests a certain political situation. Though intensely self-absorbed and central to their films, Anderson's protagonists are neither heroes nor antiheroes. These characters are not lovable eccentrics. They are not flawed protagonists either, but are driven at least as much by their unsavory characteristics as by any moral sense. They aren't flawed figures who try to do the right thing; they don't necessarily learn from their mistakes; and we aren't asked to like them in spite of their obvious faults. Though they usually aren't interested in making good, they do set themselves some kind of mission--Anderson's films are mostly quest movies in an age that no longer believes in quests, and this gives them both an old-fashioned flavor and an air of disillusionment and futility.

This life is ironic: for it takes pain to discover pleasure; it takes sadness to know happiness; it takes war to value peace; and it takes hatred to treasure love. [Culled from: "Amara & The Strange Elderly Woman"]

Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,' said Cleopatra, 'with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated!

Tolerance is the most subtle form of discrimination.

To the racist trolls complaining about my tweets. Sorry, I'm not justifying your monthly subscription of £0.00

Two examples of irony: ...a cheap knock-off of a Chinese Ming vase…made in China. ...getting murdered in a graveyard.

Two whores who finally found something to mother. A guy could write a book about it, he thought bitterly, call it From Hair To Maternity. It would probly be a very long book. Whores did not produce as fast as rabbits.

Understand yourself, accept yourself, but do not be yourself.

Users are a double-edged sword. They can help you improve your language, but they can also deter you from improving. So choose your users carefully, and be slow to grow their number. Having users is like optimization: the wise course is to delay it.