Irony Quotes - page 2

And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don't really mean what I'm saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it's impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it's too bad it's impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today's irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean." (David Foster Wallace)
The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. View quote
David Foster Wallace
Hamlet, Kierkegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates. View quote
Harold Bloom
If sub specie aeternitatis [from eternity's point of view] there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair. View quote
Thomas Nagel
The South has more of a disproportionate amount of irony on T-shirts than any other region in the country. View quote
David Cross
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. View quote
Werner Herzog
Irony is the glory of slaves. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I've devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
I love irony in pictures. There's one photograph from Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths that shows a very large GI having his pocket picked by a tiny Vietnamese woman. It told the whole story of the clash of two cultures and how the invader could never win. View quote
John Pilger
Steal music from napster while you have the chance. find free porn on the internet. sneak across the border into mexico just for the irony. how come every one on the internet is "hot"? tell your parents the truth. start your own army. adopt a dog. tell your children the truth. stop complaining and go out and do something about it. jump out of a fucking plane. stop reading this crap right now. don't listen to me. i don't have any answers and i stole the questions from someone else. read a good book. dont beat yourself up. question authority but don't forget to do what your told. turn off your computer right now and go outside and let people into your life. View quote
Jared Leto
Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. (Charles Baudelaire)
Irony is the hygiene of the mind. View quote
Elizabeth Bibesco
When irony first makes itself known in a young man's life, it can be like his first experience of getting drunk; he has met with a powerful thing which he does not know how to handle. View quote
Robertson Davies
On the other hand, I view the whole matter from a cosmic perspective. I don't take a position. I believe that there are no more positions to take, no certainties, no facts. Many people find this confusing about my films; they say I am hiding out behind irony. But from a cosmic viewpoint, it is eternally unimportant whether one lives or not. View quote
Peter Greenaway
And we'll call you... hmmm. Pudge." "Huh?" "Pudge," the Colonel said. "Because you're skinny. It's called irony, Pudge. Heard of it? Now, let's go get some cigarettes and start this year off right. View quote
John Green (author)
Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency. View quote
Søren Kierkegaard
Irony is a qualification of subjectivity. View quote
Søren Kierkegaard
Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, - and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle? View quote
James Branch Cabell
But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me. View quote
Mark Twain
That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm. View quote
Christopher Moore (author)
The irony is that in our decades, the combination of rationalism, asceticism, and individualism (the so-called Protestant Ethic) has produced precisely the system of boondoggling, luxury-consumption, and status. (Paul Goodman)
Some of Mr. Gregory's poems have merely appeared in The New Yorker; others are New Yorker poems: the inclusive topicality, the informed and casual smartness, the flat fashionable irony, meaningless because it proceeds from a frame of reference whose amorphous superiority is the most definite thing about it-they are the trademark not simply of a magazine but of a class. View quote
Randall Jarrell
The irony is, the advertising industry knows everyone hates what they produce. This is why they keep looking for new ways to force people to stay tuned. View quote
Simon Sinek
guess they forgot to program us with any respect for authority." "well, I have a highly developed sense of irony. View quote
James Patterson
Does anything on you work properly?" Asked ter Borcht. "Well, I do have a highly developed sense of irony." Replied Iggy. View quote
James Patterson