Best 841 quotes in «irony quotes» category

We’ve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There’s been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously.

We will all be destroyed whether we like it or not. I say let's like it.

We were young, she continued, while she had a bad heart. Did we not want to earn our tips, she asked us and, cowed, we refrained from introducing the subject again. Her bad heart, I noticed, did not force her to abstain from smoking, or from eating large portions of puddings. Every time I heard her opening how she could not carry anything heavy, I thought sourly "except yourself".

What an amazing scene. You see sea of waves to those that see from within. How calm and peaceful the tides once understood

What does she even eat, do you think?" "Tea fungus,"Ruth says. "Unsweetened. From an eye dropper. Is what I picture. either that or some sort of sea vegetable." "Sad," I say. "It is," Ruth muses. We decide to order two skim milk cappuccinos and split a gluten-free carrot cake cupcake.

What does your birth date say about you? You are old!

What do you think the Order is going to do?" he asks. "Help us open a door to Hell, if we're lucky," I reply. Lucky. Ha ha. The irony.

Whatever doesn't kill them, makes them make reality TV shows...

What do you take me for? That fool Socrates, who upheld the law at the cost of his own death – just to be ironic? I suspect that act was actually the result of his secret embarrassment of his hideous nose.

Whatever we may think of the merits of torturing children for pleasure, and no doubt there is much to be said on both sides, I am sure we all agree that it should be done with sterilized instruments.

Whatever you are, do not even assume that you will be surrounded and gnawed by luxurious worms of an exquisite breed.

What I'am learning is the world laughs through its ass every day, then just lies double-time when shit goes down. It's like we're on a Pritikin diet of fucken lies. I mean - what kind of fucken life is this?

What is a saint supposed to do, if not convert wolves?

What is all this? Get him out of here, devil take me!” And that one, imagine, smiles and says: “Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!” And—bang!

What kind of soldier carries music instead of guns?

What one should add here is that self-consciousness is itself unconscious: we are not aware of the point of our self-consciousness. If ever there was a critic of the fetishizing effect of fascinating and dazzling "leitmotifs", it is Adorno: in his devastating analysis of Wagner, he tries to demonstrate how Wagnerian leitmotifs serve as fetishized elements of easy recognition and thus constitute a kind of inner-structural commodification of his music. It is then a supreme irony that traces of this same fetishizing procedure can be found in Adorno's own writings. Many of his provocative one-liners do effectively capture a profound insight or at least touch on a crucial point (for example: "Nothing is more true in pscyhoanalysis than its exaggeration"); however, more often than his partisans are ready to admit, Adorno gets caught up in his own game, infatuated with his own ability to produce dazzlingly "effective" paradoxical aphorisms at the expense of theoretical substance (recall the famous line from Dialectic of Englightment on how Hollywood's ideological maniuplation of social reality realized Kant's idea of the transcendental constitution of reality). In such cases where the dazzling "effect" of the unexpected short-circuit (here between Hollywood cinema and Kantian ontology) effectively overshadows the theoretical line of argumentation, the brilliant paradox works precisely in the same manner as the Wagnerian leitmotif: instead of serving as a nodal point in the complex network of structural mediation, it generates idiotic pleasure by focusing attention on itself. This unintended self-reflexivity is something of which Adorno undoubtedly was not aware: his critique of the Wagnerian leitmotif was an allegorical critique of his own writing. Is this not an exemplary case of his unconscious reflexivity of thinking? When criticizing his opponent Wagner, Adorno effectively deploys a critical allegory of his own writing - in Hegelese, the truth of his relation to the Other is a self-relation.

What’s fair and what’s true often bear no resemblance to each other.

What - what - what are you doing?" he demanded. "I am almost six hundred years old," Magnus claimed, and Ragnor snorted, since Magnus changed his age to suit himself every few weeks. Magnus swept on. "It does seem about time to learn a musical instrument." He flourished his new prize, a little stringed instrument that looked like a cousin of the lute that the lute was embarrassed to be related to. "It's called a charango. I am planning to become a charanguista!" "I wouldn't call that an instrument of music," Ragnor observed sourly. "An instrument of torture, perhaps." Magnus cradled the charango in his arms as if it were an easily offended baby. "It's a beautiful and very unique instrument! The sound box is made from an armadillo. Well, a dried armadillo shell." "That explains the sound you're making," said Ragnor. "Like a lost, hungry armadillo." "You are just jealous," Magnus remarked calmly. "Because you do not have the soul of a true artiste like myself." "Oh, I am positively green with envy," Ragnor snapped. "Come now, Ragnor. That's not fair," said Magnus. "You know I love it when you make jokes about your complexion." Magnus refused to be affected by Ragnor's cruel judgments. He regarded his fellow warlock with a lofty stare of superb indifference, raised his charango, and began to play again his defiant, beautiful tune. They both heard the staccato thump of frantically running feet from within the house, the swish of skirts, and then Catarina came rushing out into the courtyard. Her white hair was falling loose about her shoulders, and her face was the picture of alarm. "Magnus, Ragnor, I heard a cat making a most unearthly noise," she exclaimed. "From the sound of it, the poor creature must be direly sick. You have to help me find it!" Ragnor immediately collapsed with hysterical laughter on his windowsill. Magnus stared at Catarina for a moment, until he saw her lips twitch. "You are conspiring against me and my art," he declared. "You are a pack of conspirators." He began to play again. Catarina stopped him by putting a hand on his arm. "No, but seriously, Magnus," she said. "That noise is appalling." Magnus sighed. "Every warlock's a critic." "Why are you doing this?" "I have already explained myself to Ragnor. I wish to become proficient with a musical instrument. I have decided to devote myself to the art of the charanguista, and I wish to hear no more petty objections." "If we are all making lists of things we wish to hear no more . . . ," Ragnor murmured. Catarina, however, was smiling. "I see," she said. "Madam, you do not see." "I do. I see it all most clearly," Catarina assured him. "What is her name?" "I resent your implication," Magnus said. "There is no woman in the case. I am married to my music!" "Oh, all right," Catarina said. "What's his name, then?" His name was Imasu Morales, and he was gorgeous.

When did I start feeling so safe with him? I guess knowing that my friends wouldn’t set me up with some psycho criminal helps.

When I'm 33, I quit.

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no brick and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers. Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself.

Where did you find construction guys swapping dirty jokes in proto-Númenorean?” Aura asked. “On construction sites. Is that coffee ready?

When you raise the most valid of points, you will be grazed by the most hollow of souls, and the most vacant of personages.

When people say there is no place like home, the first to agree are the homeless.

When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help!" was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus," said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not," she said.

When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…

While appreciating the beauty around her, Eden considered the darkness that lay ahead.

While the man is putting on it's shoes, the woman can buy dozens of high heels.

Who am I to judge me?

Will 2015 ever be noted as the year Ebola was decisively downgraded from a lurid horror meme to just one of many commonly treatable diseases?

Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?' 'For fun?' 'Fun!' He pounced on the word. 'Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.

Will you stay in Germany?' 'No. Somewhere different.' 'Like where?' 'Somewhere there was no war. Ireland maybe.

Women strive to be the change they want to see in the mirror.

Women in love are pathetic and I cannot be bothered, for now, I am back to metaphysics and my armpits gather hair.

Words are double edged swords use them wisely lest they cut you too" RjS

Y Doree se preguntó por qué tenía que importarle lo que Maggie pensara. Maggie era una extraña, ni siquiera se sentía a gusto con ella. Fue Lloyd quien lo dijo, y tenía razón.

Words were his delight; Hers, a gay gracefulness Of dancing and moving. But when to the place Of deep loving (Starlight at midnight) At last they came, Their full communion And consummation, Their complete sphere, Was stillness for her, Silence for him.

Wouldn't it be ironic if everyone who got a radio up and running just sat around waiting for everyone else to transmit a message?

Wrinkles only exist in the mirror. Break the mirror and the wrinkles are gone.

You are a book being read every moment, By someone or the other, Though only in parts! But, you are extremely safe, Rather, unfortunate For no one has ever read the entire book!

You can make fun of yourself and people will laugh at you. If you’re smart, you’ll end up as a comedian. If you’re not, you’ll end up as a clown.

You are so lost to your higher self that you would resent me for my achievements, rather than celebrate them with me, sexually?

You are inseparably part of the cosmic quantum soup.

You ask about the effects of my work on others. If I may wax ironical, that is a masculine questions. Men always want to be terribly influential, but I see that as somewhat external. Do I imagine myself being influential? No. I want to understand. And if others understand - in the same sense that I have understood - that gives me a sense of satisfaction, like feeling at home.

You can put anything into words, except your own life

You can't deal with being odd? ... Become like them... Become drug delear... Live their lifes... have fun ... and be honest...

You know? Ain’t it ironic how we live our entire lives without the luxury of time, only to spend an eternity in death.

You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.

You don't buy poetry. (Neither do I.) Why? You cannot afford it? Bosh! You spend Editions de luxe on a thirsty friend. You can buy any one of the poetry bunch For the price you pay for a business lunch. Don't you suppose that a hungry head, Like an empty stomach, ought to be fed? Looking into myself, I find this true, So I hardly can figure it false in you.

You don’t need a plan. You have the Puck with you, remember? I’m an expert at this. And I’ve never needed an elaborate plan to pull anything off.” ... “Worry not, human,” the cat sighed, giving himself a thorough shake. “I am going with you as well. With Goodfellow’s exemplary planning, someone has to make sure you go through the right door.