Irony Quotes - Page 22

• It makes me sad, the way human beings talk smack. It's why I don't like irony. People are too gleeful to put some teeth into something.

  Ian MacKaye

  People, Teeth, Way

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

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• In acting, you have a writer, a director, a character - you're working through being another person - and the irony I always tell people is when I acted early on as a teenager, it actually kept me out of trouble.

  Juliette Lewis

  Teenager, Character, People

  "The Hard Lovin' Ways of Juliette Lewis". Interview with Haley Weiss, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 25, 2016.

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• Solemnity and a complete absence of irony also mark kitsch.

  Denis Dutton

  Kitsch, Absence, Solemnity

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• So, I'm on Sesame Street, walking around with all these monsters, Elmo and his buddies, a whole bunch of chickens, a whole bunch of penguins and a number four dancing about. It was just pure joy, simple, ridiculous fun, stupid joy. There's no irony. Sesame Street is just a crazy great place to be.

  Feist

  Fun, Stupid, Crazy

  "Headed for the top". Interview with Alexis Petridis, www.theguardian.com. April 25, 2008.

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• He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Home, Humility, Doe

  J. M. Coetzee (1999). “Disgrâce”, Random House (UK)

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• That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm.

  Christopher Moore

  Sarcasm, Differences, Spontaneous

  Christopher Moore (2009). “Lamb: A Novel”, p.149, Hachette UK

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• The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.

  Ernest Becker

  Inspirational Life, Men, Anxiety

  Ernest Becker (2007). “The Denial of Death”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

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• There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact - in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself - of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were.

  David Foster Wallace

  Reform, Dialect, Facts

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• The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, I love you madly, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.

  Umberto Eco

  Love, Attitude, Past

  Umberto Eco (1984). “Postscript to The name of the rose”, Harcourt

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• Suppose we took a thousand negatives...
  combining the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength, the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city - that would be my favorite picture.

  Berenice Abbott

  Past, Cities, Curiosity

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

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Class, Communism, Proportion

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• The mystery of life--its inexplicability, beauty, cruelty, tenderness, folly . . . has occupied the greater part of my waking thoughts; and in reverence or rage or irony, as the moment or situation might dictate, I have pondered and even demanded of cosmic energy to know Why.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Energy, Might, Waking

  Theodore Dreiser (1977). “Theodore Dreiser: a selection of uncollected prose”, Wayne State Univ Pr

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• 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

  Country, Attitude, Home

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• Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.

  Mark Twain

  Humble, Air, Hands

  Mark Twain, John S. Tuckey (1972). “Mark Twain's Fables of Man”, p.115, Univ of California Press

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• When I was young I had no means or time, and now I have the means and time, I have no youth.

  Bess Streeter Aldrich

  Mean, Youth, Young

  Bess Streeter Aldrich (1994). “A Lantern in Her Hand”, p.241, U of Nebraska Press

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• What would we do without irony? Check out your own daily reliance on it, the foul-weather friend who's there for you when nothing else is.

  Robin Morgan

  Weather, Checks, Foul

  Robin Morgan (2014). “Saturday's Child: A Memoir”, p.334, Open Road Media

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• Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.

  Erica Jong

  Doe, Journalism, Translate

  Erica Jong (2013). “Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice”, p.27, Open Road Media

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• 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.

  Agnes Repplier

  Humor, Fate, Effort

  Agnes Repplier (1893). “Essays in Idleness”, Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin

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• irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Vision, Decay, Ingredients

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1938). “Works”

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• It would appear, from the best examples, that the proper way of beginning a preface to one's work is with a humble apology for having written at all.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Humble, Apology, Example

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1938). “Works”

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• Among the Diaries beginning with the second quarter of our century, there is frequent mention of a lady then becoming famous for her beauty and her wit: "an unusual combination," in the deliberate syllables of one of the writers, who is, however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her.

  George Meredith

  Book, Becoming, Diaries

  George Meredith (1897). “Diana of the Crossways: A Novel”, p.51, Wayne State University Press

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• One can never be too rich or too thin' is an aphorism attributed to the Duchess of Windsor. Being both rich and thin is a difficult enterprise, indeed almost unprecedented as an ideal. Into the paradoxical gap between the capacity to spend money and the need to eat less steps a brilliant solution: 'light' food. In buying 'light' food we can pay more for what costs less to produce in the first place.

  Margaret Visser

  Light, Needs, Cost

  Margaret Visser (2010). “Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea”, p.109, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Most people think leadership is about being in charge. Most people think leadership is about having all the answers and being the most intelligent person or the most qualified person in the room. The irony is that it is the complete opposite. Leadership is about empowering others to achieve things they did not think possible. Leadership is about pointing in the direction, articulating a vision of the world that does not yet exist. Then asking help from others to insure that vision happens.

  Simon Sinek

  Intelligent, Thinking, Opposites

  "Why Leaders Should Always Eat Last – Simon Sinek Interview". Interview With Dan Schawbel, www.quickbase.com. February 19, 2014.

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• The irony is that the best thing we can do is, well one option, is to quit job we don't like. You don't always have to quit, and quite frankly, option two is to try to help others solve the problem that you are struggling with.

  Simon Sinek

  Jobs, Struggle, Helping Others

  "Why Leaders Should Always Eat Last – Simon Sinek Interview". Interview With Dan Schawbel, www.quickbase.com. February 19, 2014.

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• I wonder if Bettie Page original gay cult had something to do with the ironies inherent in her image, as well as her innate fabulousness as an image.

  Mary Harron

  Gay, Pages, Wonder

  Source: susiebright.blogs.com

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