Irony Quotes

Irony: a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things, ~ Celeste Ng

Irony serves as an alibi for a fetish. ~ Nathaniel Wing

The irony didn't escape her, that after years of reading with fascination about swindlers and cheats caught by the authorities, she should be the victim of one. Crime lost a great deal of its appeal when it happened to you. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

So long as our parents are alive, we are children. Then we become childish. ~ Ljupka Cvetanova

Everyone is tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshiping the same god. ~ Ridley Scott

Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her
of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated
he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch. ~ Edith Wharton

it still amused me that criminals had laws. ~ Samantha Shannon

From the beginning it was never anything but chaos: it was a fluid which rnvcloped me, which I breathed in through the gills. In the substrata, where the moon shone steady and opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord. In everything I (plickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the unreal the irony, the paradox. I was my own worst enemy. There was nothing I wished to do which I could just as well not do. Even as a child, when I lacked for nothing, I wanted to die: I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had not asked for. Everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure, ridiculous. Especially the successful ones. The successful ones bored·me to tears. I was sympathetic to a fault, but it was not sympathy that made me so. It was a purely negative quality, a weakness which blossomed at the mere sight of human misery. I never helped anyone expecting that it would do any good; I helped because I was helpless to do otherwise. To want to change the condition of affairs seemed futile to me; nothing would be altered, I was convinced, except by a change of heart, and who could change the hearts of men? ~ Henry Miller

Sexcastle is a perfect mix of homage and comedy, action and irony, loving tribute and hilarious send-up of the great, good, and ungodly-bad action movies of the '80s. I don't remember the last time a debut book hit me this hard. Literally, this book punched me in the face. It's THAT mean. ~ Matt Fraction

Skype is a wonderful thing. The irony is that you never Skype when you're in the same country as someone. ~ Richard Fleeshman

Acceptable hypocrisy is often called politeness. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him. ~ John Barrymore

Logic has rid us of the absurdity of our clothes. That's progress, no irony, only now we are cold. Hale and ill trade bodies with unusual willingness, while in midair souls tangle. The young start out disgusted and Poetry is left to the memo-writers. ~ Odysseus Elytis

The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony. ~ Susan Sontag

Then Carrot said, "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, captain. That's what they say."
"What?" Vimes sudden rage was like a thunderclap. "Who says that? When has that ever been true? It's never been true! It's the kind of thing people without power say to make it all seem less bloody awful, but it's just words, it never makes any difference - ~ Terry Pratchett

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

Either help or give up. Right now devil's advocate is just another name for asshole. ~ James S.A. Corey

I have always believed that the chemistry of fate includes a strong measure of irony. ~ E.R. Mason

Irony ... may be defined as what people miss. ~ Julian Barnes

What a tragic irony, that the more we understand of biology, the less we have of it to learn from and enjoy. What will be the legacy of this new century - to cherish and to protect Nature or to see butterflies and zebras and much more vanish into legend like the thylacine, moa and dodo? ~ Sean B. Carroll

Often we withhold our affections, waiting first for love to be extended to us. The irony is that we are loved for loving. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I'd love to see the Iron Jackal's face when he finds out I'm already dead," he said with half a grin. "Now that's irony." "No it ain't, Cap'n. It's just some shit that happened. ~ Chris Wooding

I had drunk so deeply of grief and innocently gambled so hard with fate and irony that a special kind of vision was gathering in my eyes, not entirely clear just yet. This was the same look people saw in your eyes when you have died for beauty and come to live accepting nature as life with no promise of paradise, and mad at people who couldn't see that. ~ Martin Prechtel

A vast percentage of the human race is literally not wired neurologically to get irony. Well more than half of humanity takes life at face value, which is to me terrifying. ~ Douglas Coupland

That is why all romantics are anti-Voltairean, even Michelet, whose political fervor ought to have made him stand aligned with Voltaire; and that is why, on the other hand, all the minds which accept the world and recognize its irony and indifference are Voltairean. ~ Voltaire

And with alphabetical irony Nigeria follows New Zealand ~ David Coleman

The show is not a history lesson or intellectual exploration. It is entertainment based on tension, irony and storytelling that is closely related to today's life. ~ Matthew Weiner

But who is ever fair in an argument? ~ A.B. Shepherd

Honestly, I don't understand why people get so worked up about a little murder! ~ Patricia Highsmith

There is not much irony when people are being happy on screen. ~ Carter Burwell

It looked like pieces of bread pudding that had been soaked in raspberry syrup. ~ Diana Rowland

The things that don't happen to us that we'll never know didn't happen to us. The nonstories. The extra minute to find the briefcase that makes you late to the spot where a tractor trailer mauled another car instead of yours. The woman you didn't meet because she couldn't get a taxi to the party you had to leave early from. All of life is a series of nonstories if you look at it that way. We just don't know what they are. ~ Anita Shreve

Love: the sickest of Irony's sick jokes. The place where logic and order go to die. ~ Christopher Moore

Irony is the disparity between what you expect will happen, and what does happen. So raining on your wedding day isn't ironic, it's just crappy. It would have been ironic if she had lived in a place like Seattle, and traveled to the desert of Mexico for a wedding and it ended up raining there, but not in Seattle. Alanis always gets the last laugh though. We all sit here, saying her song isn't ironic, but in fact, that's pretty ironic that she wrote a song called Ironic that wasn't really ironic. Those Canadians are pretty crafty. ~ Mo Rocca

The irony is that musical artists have enormous public voices, but behind the scenes we're voiceless, actually. ~ Sinead O'Connor

Reporters also tend to love trials. It may be that we are transfixed by a process in which the person being asked a question actually has to answer it. He cannot say he would rather not comment. He cannot tell an anecdote on a different subject. He has to answer the question - under oath that he is telling the truth. ~ Calvin Trillin

It is an oversimplification to say that the opposite of irony is oversimplification. ~ Jedediah Purdy

WE do try to eat," Raoul called back to her [Kel]. I go all faint if I don't get fed regularly. Only think of the disgrace to the King's Own if I fell from the saddle."
"But there was that time in Fanwood," a voice behind them said.
"That wedding in Tameran," added the blonde Sergeant Osbern, riding a horse-length behind Kel.
"Don't forget when what's-his-name, with the army, retired," yelled a third.
"Silence, insubordinate curs!" cried Raoul. "Do not sully my new squire's ears with your profane tales!"
"Even if they're TRUE?" That was Dom. It seemed Neal wasn't the only family member versed in irony. ~ Tamora Pierce

It's not necrophilia if she still has a pulse... ~ Scott Jonathan Nixon

He sure put things into words good. ~ S.E. Hinton

It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power. ~ John Stuart Mill

No men were allowed, and a nurse who smuggled one in would be dismissed if she was caught. Student nurses could not marry. All this was to repress our sexuality, yet we were dressed up like sex kittens. With exquisite irony, in today's permissive society, when anything goes and nurses can do whatever they like sexually, the uniform has changed beyond all recognition, and the average nurse now looks like a sack of potatoes tied in the middle, often wearing trousers rather than sexy black stockings. ~ Jennifer Worth

You love her," Teddy observed quietly. Henry replied with an uncharacteristic lack of irony: "Yes."
Teddy's eyes shifted to the plaster interlacing that decorated the ceiling in curlicues. "Lord, you never make it easy, do you."
"No. ~ Anna Godbersen

You might as well laugh at yourself,
everyone else is. ~ B.J. Neblett

I think here is the irony of American history. We don't have an established church. When you have an established church nobody takes religion as seriously as we do here. We have a free market in religion. The religious groups are competing with each other. ~ Eric Foner

Part of the terrible irony of war is that it enlists the best in human nature for purposes of mutual destruction. ~ Lesslie Newbigin

The terrible irony is that when our current job turns out to provide neither much money nor much fun, we think we can solve the problem by getting a better job. So it goes on: an endless cycle, a miserable set-up, as satirized brilliantly in the UK sitcom The Office. ~ Tom Hodgkinson

The greatest irony is that people with Rolodexes are no longer LinkedIn. And if that pun doesn't make sense, don't ask anyone in your Rolodex to explain it. ~ Ryan Lilly

There are things that happen in our life but we dont want them to happen. Irony is they happen in front of our eyes and all we could do is let them happen ~ Lovely Goyal

Hope is forgivable when you're young, isn't it? With no suspicion of irony, without a soupçon of cynicism, hope lures with its siren song. ~ Rabih Alameddine

You yourself are participating in the evil, or you are not alive. Whatever you do is evil for somebody. This is one of the ironies of the whole creation. ~ Joseph Campbell

The accident was a horrible thing - but that horrible thing made Chris, at the end of his life, Superman. It's a happy irony if there is such a thing. I'm proud to have known him. ~ Morgan Freeman

But she's the Pastor's wife ... Do you not understand the irony of this whole situation?" he said clearly enjoying himself. "One evil being at your door, kissing the hand of your adopted mother who's married to the Pastor with whom you live. You, the sweet, innocent, unscathed mate of my twin brother who renounces what he is, but is also ... an evil being. I mean, you can't write this stuff. ~ Shelly Crane

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. ~ Jason Medina

I like the irony in my work. ~ Miuccia Prada

Is that all we mortals are? The victims of tortured irony to amuse an insane murder of gods?

A murder of crows, a murder of gods-I like that, lass. ~ Steven Erikson

I regard everything with irony, including the face I see in the mirror when I wake up in the morning. ~ Sam Peckinpah

Making a show is also economics. Because the irony is, or the shame of it is, you cannot create a show instantaneously. It needs to be massaged. You need to see who is relating to who. How is it working with the audience? You need to give it a chance for the audience to find it, because there are so many outlets. And the audience doesn't know where to go. ~ Henry Winkler

Irony alone is damning.
The flesh will be bland and you will believe you are forever reading the same book. ~ Anne Garréta

If there is a main problem in American art today," says critic Tom Piazza, "it is not that we need the new to unshackle us from a suffocating and outmoded tradition. The new is constantly pumped out, by the ton and 24 hours a day, into the esthetic rivers, reservoirs and gullies of our culture, and nobody needs to go looking for it. With all the economic force of corporate profit and advertising behind it, pop culture, with its Billy the Kid ethos, has in fact become the new establishment. In a truly Orwellian irony, the new is the status quo."36 ~ James Bau Graves

Humor, together with irony,forms a safeguard against idolatry. ~ Krister Stendahl

With every mistake, we must surely be learning. ~ George Harrison

It is one of history's ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions. ~ Henry Kissinger

As learnèd commentators view
In Homer more than Homer knew. ~ Jonathan Swift

What can I tell them? Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can't see the desert if you can't smell it. Dusty? Of course it's dusty - this is Utah! But it's good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that peice of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk - yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it'll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over rocks hunting for rattle ~ Edward Abbey

But in truth,' said Bull, 'we are going nowhere. That my friend, is the irony of our constant movement. ~ Kate DiCamillo

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. ~ John Green

None other than the Skeptic's Dictionary points out an obvious and troubling irony: "When spoken by schizophrenics, glossolalia is recognized as gibberish. In charismatic Christian communities glossolalia is sacred and referred to as 'speaking in tongues' or having 'the gift of tongues. ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

Would you really have ... ?" said Julien.
"Almost certainly," I said. "I have deep-seated problems with authority figures."
"But you are one!"
"I know! I can only assume the universe has a really mean sense of humour. ~ Simon R. Green

I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently. ~ Werner Herzog

The green prehuman earth is the mystery we were chosen to solve, a guide to the birthplace of our spirit, but it is slipping away. The way back seems harder every year. If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding, through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations. And thus humanity closes the door on its past. ~ E. O. Wilson

I suppose that's one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment. ~ Charlie Chaplin

There's no use in talking about the plan, because of course nothing went the way it was supposed to. Even the passage of time was horribly distorted. At first the ride to the hill seemed endless, with me sneaking looks at my brother, who was increasingly unsteady in his saddle.
The Marquis insisted on riding in front of us the last little distance, where we saw a row of four horse riders waiting--the outer two bearing banners, dripping from the rain, but the flags' green and gold still brilliant, and the inner two riders brawny and cruel faced and very much at ease, wearing the plumed helms of command.
"I just wanted to see if you traitors would dare to face me," Galdran said, his caustic voice making me feel sick inside. Sick--and angry.
The Marquis bowed low over his horse's withers, every line of his body indicative of irony.
Galdran's face flushed dark purple.
"I confess," Shevraeth drawled, "we had a small wager on whether you would have the courage to face us. ~ Sherwood Smith

Only in war does the madman become sane. ~ Anthony Ryan

And, conversely, she went on to herself, sneering at the Grand Duke's palace, poverty is wasted on the poor, who never know how to make the best of things, are only the rich without money, are just as useless at looking after themselves, can't handle their cash just like the rich can't, always squandering it on bright, pretty, useless things in just the same way. ~ Angela Carter

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

Everyone has a supremely low moment somewhere along the AT, usually when the urge to quit the trail becomes almost overpowering. The irony of my moment was that I wanted to get back on the trail and didn't know how. I hadn't lost just Katz, my boon companion, but my whole sense of connectedness to the trail. I had lost my momentum, my feeling of purpose. In the most literal way I needed to find my feet again. ~ Bill Bryson

I was reminded ... the way that wood crumbles into dissolution.'
'The release of energy. Perhaps a better way of seeing it.'
'Such release is ever fatal.'
'Among plants, yes,' said Caladan Brood.
Among plants ... 'I think of the breath we give them - our gift.'
'And the breath they give back,' said the warlord, 'that burns if touched. I am fortunate, I think,' he continued, 'that I have no appreciation for irony. ~ Steven Erikson

Do not pollute my perfectly acceptable figurative speech with irrelevant facts! ~ Courtney Milan

The surest sign that two people no longer speak the same language is that both say ironic things to one another but that neither senses the irony. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Haven't you picked up on the irony of life by now? Things only just happen when you're not ready. When you're ready, you start trying, and gadamn I feel like trying right now. ~ Elizabeth Reyes

Finding unscented candles was another challenge he never thought he'd have to face. Colors were fine, colors could be useful as elements in various spells. But since meeting Amelia, he'd spent way too much time standing in front of walls of candles labeled with names like "Cranberry Spice" and "Warm Honey." Christian bookstores and other religious supply shops became their go-to spots to find simple, unadorned, non-scented votive candles. Another deep irony, he observed. If only those kind, wide-eyed women at the cash registers knew what those candles were being used for. ~ Carrie Vaughn

Maybe it mattered so much because it was only bound to be temporary. Sometimes the irony of life is bittersweet like that, over before it started yet never really had a chance to begin.
We spend far too long trying to find reason, clarity or whatever comfort one is needing to understand chaos without appreciating the beauty in the arrival of something that ignited a growth in you.
In a world filled with billions, what a miracle to have shared something so deep, even if it was never meant to stay. ~ Nikki Rowe

We will respond, even in the face of irony and slander, with the sweetness of love. We can afford to take this attitude because good anvils do not fear the blows of many hammers. ~ Richard Wurmbrand

The irony is that what was supposed to be a great vulnerability of Hillary Clinton , which the Iraq war vote which she has acknowledged was a terrible mistake, has lent an aura of strength in a funny way. ~ Joe Conason

The arrival of the Barbary pirates radically changed English attitudes. Instead of patriotic pirates plundering foreign cargoes and bringing them homes to enrich their countrymen, the 'Turks' were in the usual Mediterranean business of slave-raiding - and now the English were the victims. The West Country men suffered the heaviest, and did not appreciate the irony. The Newfoundland fishery, dominated by Devon ports, lost at least 20 ships in 1611 alone. ~ Nicholas Rodger

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. ~ Caitlyn Paige

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

In order to do the unthinkable, do not think about it. ~ J.R. Rim

I pound on the glass, screaming my head off. Everyone ignores me except for some Capitol attendant who appears behind me and offers me a beverage. ~ Suzanne Collins

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. ~ Richard Rohr

I think that lesson was the most important: that none of us actually grow up. We get bigger, and older, but put of us always retains that small rabbit heart, trembling furiously, secretively, with wonder and fear. There's no irony in it. No semantics or subtext. Only red blood and green grass and silver stars ~ Leah Raeder

One of the roles of man is to shut his eyes and keep them shut to see if he can continue into the night of his old age the dream curtailed in the night of his youth. ~ Machado De Assis

The irony of seeking a shrink: they are successful in shrinking your brain but unfortunately they also make your wallet shrink. ~ Mico Monsalve

My mother had not acted for ten years. Not since a reviewer wrote that her portrayal of Lady Macbeth put him in mind of an exasperated society hostess burdened with unmannerly guests who had lost the new tennis balls, left the bathrooms in a mess, and finished the gin. ~ Victoria Clayton

Narayan's novels did not prepare me for the distress of India. As a writer he had succeeded almost too well. His comedies were of the sort that requires a restricted social setting with well-defined rules; and he was so direct, his touch so light, that, though he wrote in English of Indian manners, he had succeeded in making those exotic manners quite ordinary. I did not lose my admiration for Narayan; but I felt that his comedy and irony were not quite what they had appeared to be, were part of a Hindu response to the world, a response I could no longer share. Narayan's novels are less the purely social comedies I had once taken them to be than religious books, at times religious fables, and intensely Hindu. ~ V.S. Naipaul

While appreciating the beauty around her, Eden considered the darkness that lay ahead. ~ Linda Lee Chaikin

A whirl of thick flakes emerged from an irony-grey infinity, almost obscuring Granta House. ~ Jojo Moyes

There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying in to Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands saying that they're going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses. There's a message there. ~ Gary Ackerman

VLADIMIR: Moron!
ESTRAGON: Vermin!
VLADIMIR: Abortion!
ESTRAGON: Morpion!
VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!
ESTRAGON: Curate!
VLADIMIR: Cretin!
ESTRAGON: (with finality). Crritic!
VLADIMIR: Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away. ~ Samuel Beckett