Irony Quotes - Page 9

• I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.

  Bruce Grocott, Baron Grocott

  Inspirational, Work, Long

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• He's turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he's miserable and depressed.

  Harry Kalas

  Funny, Life, Change

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• The irony of good customer service is that over time it will bring in more new customers than promotions and price slashing ever did!

  Susan Ward

  Educational, Promotion, Good Customer Service

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• The irony is palpable - technical access has never been greater, cultural access never weaker.

  Beeban Kidron

  Technology, Greater, Access

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• The irony is this: Our bodies react to stress in exactly the same way whether or not we have a good reason for being stressed. The body doesn't care if we're right or wrong. Even in those times when we feel perfectly justified in getting angry - when we tell ourselves it's the healthy response - we pay for it just the same

  Howard Martin

  Stress, Healthy, Way

  17 Copy quote

• Irony gives us, at little expense, the impression that we are experienced psychologists.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Giving, Littles, Psychologist

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• The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.

  Albert Camus

  Distance, Men, Voice

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• Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Philosophical, Civilization, Play

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1956). “The Modern Temper”

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• It may well be that we shall by a process of sublime irony have reached a state in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

  Winston Churchill

  Brother, Children, War

  Winston Churchill (1961). “The Unwritten Alliance: Speeches 1953 to 1959”

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• If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.

  Barry Lopez

  Inspirational Life, Responsibility, Adults

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Arctic Dreams”, p.529, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Thinking, Able, Defects

  "Herzog on Herzog". Book by Werner Herzog, 2002.

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• I went to university for a couple of years and I didn't enjoy university. The studying and the accountancy, economics, I just hated that stuff. Now the irony is here I am lawyer, accountant, I do it all day every day and sit at a desk. So I've never ended up where I wanted to be in many ways. I always wanted to be a farmer.

  Gerry Harvey

  Couple, Years, Here I Am

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• Steiner has here transformed the vaporous conceptions of his life, the vapors of what never was and never will be, from their aeriform state to a fine and ethereal substantiality. My Unwritten Books is a gathering of shades, an elegant and eloquent gathering of mind, feeling, and autumnal passion. (...) And that is the lovely irony of this unique little book. None of these unwritten books should have been written. They are better here, as they are, untamed and errant phantoms of a brilliance whose emanations no one mortal lifetime could ever accommodate in full.

  Nick Tosches

  Book, Passion, Unique

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• You know, sometimes I swear the whole universe runs on irony.

  Simon R. Green

  Running, Sometimes, Swear

  Simon R. Green (2007). “The Man With the Golden Torc”, p.196, Penguin

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• In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Sunset, Ironic, Style

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere”, p.180, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.

  Carl L. Becker

  Men, Ironic, Belief

  Progress and Power Lecture 3 (1935)

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• Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and fancy women.

  Lord Kelvin

  Horse, Race, Ironic

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• Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was the belief in facts.

  John Gunther

  Ironic, Superstitions, Facts

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• Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Writing, Advice, Ironic

  "Unkempt Thoughts". Book by Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, 1962.

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• There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech

  Flannery O'Connor

  Two, Southern, Quality

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• The Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930's, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it - the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Faith, Men, Thinking

  "The Ascent of Man" (Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"), 1973.

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• I never used to believe in fate. I used to think you make your own life and then you call it fate. That's why I call it irony.

  Gene Wilder

  Life, Believe, Fate

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• There's a certain amount of what I wear that I wear for irony.

  Lily Allen

  Certain, Amount

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• It is one of the great ironies of corporate control that the corporate state needs the abilities of intellectuals to maintain power, yet outside of this role it refuses to permit intellectuals to think or function independently.

  Chris Hedges

  Thinking, Needs, Roles

  Chris Hedges (2011). “Death of the Liberal Class”, p.16, Nation Books

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• The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgarity. The Americans have none of the irony of the English, none of their cool poise, none of their manner. But they do have friendliness. Where an Englishman would give you his card, an American would very likely give you his shirt.

  Raymond Chandler

  War, Civilization, America

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