Best 841 quotes in «irony quotes» category

Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.

You should never try irony or self-effacing humour.

Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. … I was present not long since at a party of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected ; and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British way), that I wished it were the father instead of the son — when four of them started up at once to inform me, that ‘that was impossible, because he was dead.’ An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive.

About two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible "answers all or most of the basic questions of life"—and 28 percent of them admit that they rarely or never read it!

You know the great irony is that people think you have to have money to enjoy fine food, which is a shame.

A constant factor in human history is the need to protect oneself. Another factor is the urge to attack someone else.

A couple of weeks ago I received a phone call form a young woman who inquired as to how she might obtain a copy of In Memory Yet Green (the first volume of my autobiography)... There seemed no point in suggesting that she haunt the second bookstores because no one but an idiot ever abandons one of my books after it has come in his possession, and there are few idiots who know enough to buy one of my books in the first place.

Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan—'a land without a people for a people without a land'—disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea?

A DEAD STATESMAN I could not dig: I dared not rob: Therefore I lied to please the mob. Now all my lies are proved untrue And I must face the men I slew. What tale shall serve me here among Mine angry and defrauded young? from EPITAPHS OF THE WAR 1914-18

A good lover? One percent talent and ninety nine percent hard work.

A gurgling chuckle came from behind him; Jonas had heard it often enough to know that it signified something as close to laughter as the creature ever got. “Yet you believe those things won’t come if you serve your Lord? You know what they say about the road to Hell, Judas.

Ah ! quelle plaisanterie. Pas besoin de gril : l'enfer, c'est les Autres.

- Aló, ¿con la Casa de la Cultura? - Sí conchetumadre.

A man may have ‘his moment,’ and that moment endure for decades, or only for the few seconds it takes for a bullet to travel across a courtyard to the balcony upon which he stands as he exhorts his people to follow him.

A million years ago - some hairy bastard daubed a horse on the wall of his cave, he saw it, he drew it - well done! Flash forward: 'Hello, welcome to my vlog. Today I bought a plum

And for God's sake, if you need to shoot make sure to release the safety ,” he murmured, as we moved across the front, careful to stick to the shadows as often as we could. So far, I hadn't seen anyone, not even zombies. It wasn't uncommon for a straggler to come along, every now and then. Lucky for us, we were remote enough that we hadn't had any major issues with any hordes locating us. The men were quick to dispatch any zombies that hung around, not willing to take the risk that somehow they could communicate with each other. Not to mention, the zombies were strong and fast. It was better to end them, rather than to risk them one day killing one of us.

And how is your head? Better?" he asked. "Very much. Sometimes it hurts." Right now it was throbbing. "But every day I am much improved." "Where did you hit it? Are you bruised?" I put a hand to the back of my head, a little to the left, where I had landed with such jarring force. "Here," I said. "It's still a little tender." And leaning forward, he touched my hair right where I had just laid my hand. Such was he glamour that attended him that I expected the ache to instantly melt away, healed by his royal caress. But in fact, I felt a sudden leap in my heart that made the pain briefly more intense.

A joke made at someone else's expense is not humour its cruelty" RjS

All of which does not alter the fact that Pnin was on the wrong train.

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

... And I wondered if we had disappointed God so much, that he wrote us off as pets, just alive to entertain.

And now none of it could be undone. That was the exquisite irony: the act that had undone everything could not itself be undone.

All you had to do was line up events as though they had happened in linear fashion and let the crowds draw what they thought was their own conclusion.

and their days make no story for they were good and joyful and without event

And that's my problem. I love to be alone and hate being around people, but I love to be with people and hate being alone. I don't know what I like and I don't know what I want. Time is a difficult thing. It moves too slowly and speeds up when you finally wish it would slow down or stop. You get to the aftermath and all you have are your memories. Precious memories. The kind that make you smile and laugh like you're living it again, while a nostalgic tear falls. And then another. And then another, until you want to just forget it all to stop the painfully happy memories because at the end of the day, those - not the sad ones - are the memories that hurt us most.

And where our hearts should be are but the palms of monkeys.

And yet Praecursoris is not punished the same way, only because it is not practical, and he is needed for breeding?

An unhappy ending makes it literature rather than romantic fiction.

Anyway, if the Cetagandans really wanted to assassinate you, they'd hardly do it here. They'd slip something subtle under your skin that wouldn't go off for six months, and then would drop you mysteriously and untraceably in your tracks

Anyway, I'm in bed with her, with her bracelets. Her face is a blank, so I darken the lights. Off go her silky undergarments. The bracelets are all she has on. They glint slightly, a pleasant muffled clinking on the sheets. I have a hard-on. Which, halfway down the ladder, is what I noticed. Just great. Why now? Why didn't I get an erection when I needed one? And why was I getting so excited over two lousy bracelets? Especially under this slicker, with the world about to end.

A painting is worth a thousand confused art-gallery visitors.

And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.

A politician is a man who checks his views in the internet and his value in the bank.

Aramis liked the t-shirt he was given because it had the image of the Grim Reaper on it. He liked the irony, since the Grim Reaper took lives, while he was a saver of lives.

Are you so busy fighting you cannot see your own ship has set sail?

As a youth I enjoyed — indeed, like most of my contemporaries, revered — the agitprop plays of Brecht, and his indictments of Capitalism. It later occurred to me that his plays were copyrighted, and that he, like I, was living through the operations of that same free market. His protestations were not borne out by his actions, neither could they be. Why, then, did he profess Communism? Because it sold. The public’s endorsement of his plays kept him alive; as Marx was kept alive by the fortune Engels’s family had made selling furniture; as universities, established and funded by the Free Enterprise system — which is to say by the accrual of wealth — house, support, and coddle generations of the young in their dissertations on the evils of America.

As learnèd commentators view In Homer more than Homer knew.

As she stepped into the steamboat at Dover which was to convey her to scenes so new, Lucilla felt more and more that she who held the reorganisation of society in Carlingford in her hands was a woman with a mission.

As soon as whatever provisional well of confidence dries up, I will feel like a frightened motherless child. And I will—what? Lessee, I'll beg friends to assure me I'm fascinating, that my soul is complex so I can once more conduce to irony. An abyss opens up.

As soon as they leave, Leon says to me: "I disagree, sir. There are people who aren't insane, and I'm one of them. People who generalize are mentally ill.

A sudden, uncontrollable fury rose in him, and he cast around for something to smash. He snatched the whiskey bottle from the table and was about to launch it at the wall, but changed his mind at the last moment. Lifelong training in self-control, he thought, opening the bottle and putting it to his mouth.

A third of population tend to corrupt. The rest have no money.

A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder. Your art feeds on you, your soul, and, yes, to a degree, your sanity. Writing novels worth reading will bugger up your mind, jeopardize your relationships, and distend your life. You have been warned.

And the list of traitors?" said Dylan, eying the scroll with an unsavory gleam in his eyes. What did he plan on doing, hunting down each and every one of them? Somehow that didn't feel to far from the truth.

As soon as you say it about a record, you're like some little zombie in a funny dungeon.

As usual I was working the graveyard shift—an irony I reveled in—at an emergency call center. What other shift would a vampire feel comfortable working?

Been there, came back

Behind every successful woman is a hungry man.

Being a woman is worse than being a farmer there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturised, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if left to revert to nature — with a full beard and handlebar moustache on each shin Dennis Healey eyebrows face a graveyard of dead skin cells spots erupting long curly fingernails like Struwelpeter blind as bat and stupid runt of species as no contact lenses flabby body flobbering around. Ugh ugh. Is it any wonder girls have no confidence?

Big people never scare me. I am a little man. I can easily hide.