Sardonic Quotes

• The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.

  Frank Herbert

  Strong, Moving, Greatness

  Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.116, Penguin

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• [Money] is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Destiny, Puppets, Strings

  "Somerset Maugham". Book by Ted Morgan, 1980.

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• God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Laughter, Men, Feelings

  A letter to his wife Polly in October 1938. "Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard" by Russell Miller, p. 81, 1987.

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• A family is like medicine." She twisted her lips into a sardonic smile. "Best in small doses.

  Alexandra Ivy

  Medicine, Lips, Twisted

  Alexandra Ivy, Angie Fox, Tami Dane, Jess Haines (2014). “The Real Werewives of Vampire County”, p.12, Zebra Books

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• It must have meant something, though, that at this turn of my life I grabbed up a book. Because it was in books that I would find, for the next few years, my lovers. They were men, not boys. They were self-possessed and sardonic, with a ferocious streak in them, reserves of gloom.

  Alice Munro

  Book, Boys, Men

  Alice Munro (2010). “The View From Castle Rock”, p.226, Random House

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• If I have any claim to originality, I do it by investing my own personality into it, so it's coming from a slightly more sardonic, English point of view.

  James Hunter

  Views, Personality, Investing

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I enjoy darker sardonic wit more than knock-knock jokes. I spent the first healthy chunk of my career playing all-American, pleasant, average, nice people, so it's fun to have some complications there.

  Neil Patrick Harris

  Fun, Nice, Average

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• I just play to progressive audiences. You know, if they're watching Discovery Channel, History Channel, that kind of thing, "Monty Python" have already laid the groundwork. They're known around the world. People like that kind of surrealist, left-field humor, and that's what I do. And "Saturday Night Live," a lot of American humor. "The Simpsons," above all, the weird, left-field humor, which I love. And sardonic. So that's all I'm doing. I find that audience, and they're in every developed country around the world.

  Eddie Izzard

  Country, Night, Python

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• I see contemporary violence as a kind of sardonic response to the promise of consumer fulfilment in America.

  Don DeLillo

  America, Promise, Violence

  Don DeLillo, Mark Osteen (1998). “White Noise: Text and Criticism”, Penguin Group USA

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• Freud, Jung thought, had been a great discoverer of facts about the mind, but far too inclined to leave the solid ground of "critical reason and common sense." Freud for his part criticized Jung for being gullible about occult phenomena and infatuated with Oriental religions; he viewed with sardonic and unmitigated skepticism Jung's defense of religious feelings as an integral element in mental health. For Freud, religion was a psychological need projected onto culture, the child's feeling of helplessness surviving in adults, to be analyzed rather than admired.

  Peter Gay

  Religious, Children, Psychological Needs

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• Because when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart - have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face, or better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Heart, Eye, Hands

  Charlotte Bronte (2014). “Jane Eyre: Englische Originalausgabe”, p.199, Edition Lempertz

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• When Christopher finished, there was a moment of silence. Leo looked at Cam expectantly. “Well?” “Well what?” “Now is the time when you dredge up one of your blasted Romany sayings. Something about roosters laying eggs, or pigs dancing in the orchard. It’s what you always do. Let’s have it.” Cam gave him a sardonic glance. “I can’t think of one right now.” “By God, I’ve had to listen to hundreds of them. And Phelan doesn’t have to hear even one?

  Lisa Kleypas

  Thinking, Pigs, Eggs

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• To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (“The Medusa”)

  Thomas Ligotti

  Memories, Dark, Hysteria

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• Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he or she is in. That person must reflect what is projected upon him or her.

  Frank Herbert

  Greatness, Imagination, Feelings

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• Most students of literature can pick apart a metaphor or spot an ethnic stereotype, but not many of them can say things like: 'The poem's sardonic tone is curiously at odds with its plodding syntax.

  Terry Eagleton

  Odds, Syntax, Literature

  "A puritan at play" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 2008.

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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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• I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Running, Zoos, Sharks

  Wyndham Lewis (1967). “Blasting & Bombardiering”, p.12, Univ of California Press

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• Nine Inch Nails' sound is dominated by clanging synths and sardonic, shrieking vocals.

  Michael Azerrad

  Sound, Nails, Nine

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• Big dreams are risky business. The psyche can be fiendish, puckish, exalted, imperious, tender, sardonic, faithful, pestilential--whatever rivets our attention upon the task of psychic growth. It is not so hard to find at least a little sympathy for theologian Martin Luther, who prayed to God not to send him any dreams at all, fearful he could not distinguish between those of divine origin and those sent by the Devil.

  Marc Ian Barasch

  Dream, Psychics, Faithful

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• The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in.

  Frank Herbert

  Greatness, Feelings, Myth

  Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.116, Penguin

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• Nazi Literature in the Americas, a wicked invented encyclopedia of imaginary fascist writers and literary tastemakers, is Bolaño playing with sharp, twisting knives. As if he were Borges's wisecracking, sardonic son, Bolaño has meticulously created a tightly woven network of far-right litterateurs and purveyors of belles lettres for whom Hitler was beauty, truth, and the great lost hope.

  Stacey D'Erasmo

  Son, Knives, Wicked

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