Top 100 The Irony Quotes
#1. The gods speak to us, and irony is their language.
Tim W. Burke
#2. I really think [the Bush Administration]'s foreign policy agenda is to spread irony through the world.
Jon Stewart
#3. Yes, well, irony is no protection when you can feel the breeze from his scythe on your skin and hear the rustle of his wings.
Michael Gruber
#4. The tragic irony in all of this is that when we focus so strongly on our need to get better, we actually get worse.
Tullian Tchividjian
#5. 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
#6. Melodrama is one of the most stunning art forms. These are stories where the emotions are big, and the situations are big, and the artists believe in the situation dramatically. There's no irony or distance.
James Gray
#7. But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn't believe in it?
Umberto Eco
#8. The irony is that if we make every imperative into a command to believe the gospel more fully, we turn the gospel into one more thing we have to get right, and faith becomes the one thing we need to be better at.
Kevin DeYoung
#9. Society tells me to follow my own truth, but I don't let society tell me what to do. If you need someone to tell you that, chances are you're part of the crowd that will move on to the next fashion that comes around.
Criss Jami
#10. As the ironist does not have the new within his power, it might be asked how he destroys the old, and to this it must be answered: he destroys the given actuality by the given actuality itself.
Soren Kierkegaard
#11. But one place ain't no different from no place else. People try and make it like everything's new only to find the devil done followed you wherever you moved and all you can do is hold him off whiles you catch your breath
Amina Gautier
#12. The irony of talking to animals and an imaginary girlfriend, who keep me sane, even though I know I look like a raving lunatic, isn't lost on me.
Elyse Draper
#14. There are a million ways to make money in the markets. The irony is that they are all very difficult to find.
Jack D. Schwager
#15. The irony is palpable - technical access has never been greater, cultural access never weaker.
Beeban Kidron
#16. If one cannot learn from the mistakes of others, one might as well become a Democrat.
Esther M. Friesner
#17. In them was not the savage blankness of the reptile species. Instead there was something far worse - burning, unquenchable rage mixed with the self-mocking irony of great intelligence.
Whitley Strieber
#18. Everything I love: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression.
Christopher Hitchens
#19. Psychologists have shown the irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#21. You know perfectly well that if ever you really want to, you can come back to me, he said without the slightest trace of irony and cynicism, and left.
Ama Ata Aidoo
#22. The irony is, nothing is more frightening than being frightened.
Neel Burton
#23. I thought about the irony of dying just after learning I wasn't dying. I thought, you don't need cancer to die. It could come just like that, from a moment of carelessness.
Anonymous
#24. It is an irony that the more possessive you are, the more love you demand, the less you receive, while the more freedom you give, the less you demand, the more love you will receive.
Harold H. Bloomfield
#25. We didn't need light & shade, irony or humor. An iconic Daltrey bellow could convey an extrodinary range of human emotion; withering sadness, self pity, loneliness, abandonment, spiritual desperation, the loss of childhood, as well as the more obvious rage & frustration, joy & triumph.
Pete Townshend
#26. Liberty," he continued, wrinkling his nose at the used condom that lay on the bottom flight of steps, toeing it to the side of the stairs with distaste. "Someone could slip on that. Break their necks," he muttered, interrupting himself. "Like a banana peel, only with bad taste and irony thrown in.
Neil Gaiman
#27. The unhappy irony is that, while 'Glee' is hitting the heights, school arts funding is being slashed across the country due to the steep recession and declining tax revenues.
James Wolcott
#28. Irony is a treacherous servant; unless it's very carefully watched over, it has a tendency to expose the foolishness of its apparent master.
Mark O'Connell
#29. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn.
Joss Whedon
#30. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' ...
Christopher Hitchens
#31. He said he wants variety. The irony is that I wanted variety too. But I wanted variety in a solid, stable committed relationship where I would wake up each morning asking "What are we going to do today?" not asking "Who are you going to do today?
Aimee Lane
#32. Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Mark Twain
#33. It's an irony that growing inequality could mean more money for philanthropy. In the U.S., quite a few of the ultra-rich have taken to heart the 19th century industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie's comment that it's a disgrace to die wealthy.
Geoff Mulgan
#34. Behold, my friends, I am justice.
And when at last we meet, you will not like it.
And if irony awakens in you at the end, see me weep with these tears of jade, and answer with a smile.
If you've the courage.
Have you, my friends, the courage?
Steven Erikson
#35. These are the best things I've ever had in my mouth!
Mora Early
#36. Give the People what they want - and they'll get what they deserve.
The Kinks
#37. Beautiful irony. Fall in love with yourself. Let your love express itself and the world will beat a path to your door to fall in love with you.
Kamal Ravikant
#38. But the irony is that because the band isn't the focus any more, it allows me the chance to enjoy being a member of Def Leppard much more.
Rick Allen
#39. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#40. I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions ... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.
Colin Firth
#41. In these night recitations we create a space between things as we felt them at the time and as we speak them now. This is the space reserved for irony, sympathy and fond amusement, the means by which we rescue ourselves from the past.
Don DeLillo
#42. Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence.
Paul Fussell
#43. It is the central irony of my life that when I want something and end up getting it, it makes me profoundly uncomfortable.
Jennifer Armintrout
#44. The irony is that when we're standing across from someone who is hidden or shielded by masks and armor, we feel frustrated and disconnected. That's the paradox here: Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you. If
Brene Brown
#45. Some two thousand stone-throwing protesters gathered in the street outside the school. They chanted, "We want fairness. There is no fairness if you don't let us cheat." It sounds like a joke, but they were absolutely serious.
Cathy O'Neil
#46. How'd you sleep?"
"Like an angel."
"Oh, the irony.
Alivia Anders
#47. It wasn't long after the discovery of modern anesthesia that people began to die of it.
Wolf Pascoe
#48. And after night comes day, or more night, depending on the particular time-frame you choose to apply to your perspective.
Adam Roberts
#49. All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.
Paul Fussell
#50. People are complex, and I think it's a huge element of what I do, because you have to balance out the fact that you talk about quite serious things with a sense of irony and tongue-in-cheek humor. That's my personality as well.
Marina And The Diamonds
#51. Life is surreal. When you step back and really take a look at it, the irony is absolute.
Julieanne O'Connor
#52. 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
#53. Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#54. When people affected by epilepsy are reluctant to expose their condition, the public remains in the dark about it - a tragic irony that has made patient care and raising funds for research more than challenging.
Lynda Resnick
#55. Every atom in your body spins and dances
like a bee around the queen,
like a whirling dervish,
like the stars spiraling in a galaxy.
Yet why do you sit motionlessly watching Dancing With the Stars?
Khang Kijarro Nguyen
#56. It seemed that, after contact with a few human generations, sand hogs would begin to understand human speech. The irony was that after coming to understand their riders fully, the beasts often ended up abandoning them and heading off into the wilderness.
Neal Asher
#57. Pessimism is a funny thing, isn't it? Madison thought as she looked at Judith's furrowed face. I like a bit of pessimism as much as the next man, but when I'm bombarded with it I suddenly became an eternal optimist.
Melissa Kite
#58. Although my life is far from perfect, the irony is that in a divorced parent's custody schedule - with days on and days off - instead of like it was before, when I felt ragged and still oddly guilty all the time, now I feel guilty but not ragged.
Sandra Tsing Loh
#59. The machine captured that old sense of irony in death: you can know how it's going to happen, but you'll still be surprised when it does.
Ryan North
#60. It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money.
G.K. Chesterton
#61. ... Miss Marjoribanks was of the numerous class of religionists who keep up civilities with heaven, and pay all the proper attentions, and show their respect for the divine government in a manner befitting persons who know the value of their own approbation.
Mrs. Oliphant
#62. My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.
Maurice Sendak
#63. The greatest irony in the world is that you are so blessed and don't know it.
Esther Hicks
#64. How bold we are. We shy from a flame that licks the tip of our finger for a fraction of a second, and from which we are allowed the luxury of escape. But most of humankind flaunt their disobedience in the face of an eternal fire that engulfs all, and from which there is no escape. Ever.
Laurence B. Brown
#65. When it was over, she gathered him in her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life.
That she had wanted to be dead all those years while her brother had been alive. That had been her sin.
And this was her penance.
Wanting to live when everyone else seemed dead.
Melina Marchetta
#66. That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm.
Christopher Moore
#67. In the works of Duchamp, space begins to walk and take on form; it becomes a machine that spins arguments and philosophizes; it resists movement with delay and delay with irony.
Octavio Paz
#68. Last September 16th, I was walking in downtown Seattle when this pick-up truck pulls up in front of me. Guy leans out the window and yells, "Go back to your own country," and I was laughing so hard because it wasn't so much a hate crime as a crime of irony.
Sherman Alexie
#69. Don't you love fall?" Stacey asked. "All the little festivals, the changing leaves, kids in Halloween costumes, the dead spewing up out of their graves to haunt the living ...
J.L. Bryan
#70. It's tough, man. Unless it's a tentpole, sequel, remake, or over-the-top comedy, that's all the studios are even doing. They've kind of admitted they're not in the business of doing anything else. The slightest level of irony or intelligence and, boom, you're out of the league, you're done.
Richard Linklater
#71. And yet the irony was that she soon placed herself in the margins voluntarily, giving up work for family, because she imagined that when she eventually arrived at her deathbed, she would feel more regret about unborn children than unwritten books.
Matt Haig
#72. Irony of the day: arthritis medication with a cap that old people can't get off, because of their arthritis.
Kelli Jae Baeli
#73. And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over
V.S. Naipaul
#74. It's funny how a person can be right all the time and still be wrong.
Louis Sachar
#75. The New or Future Eve is emptied of all inner life and turned into a shell. The bitter irony in this is that her perfection recalls nothing so much as a corpse.
Asti Hustvedt
#76. Most of you, therefore, spend the bulk of your adult life searching for the "right" way to worship, to obey, and to serve God. The irony of all this is that I do not want your worship, I do not need your obedience, and it is not necessary for you to serve Me.
Neale Donald Walsch
#77. Oooh, intrigue?' Sylvie said playfully. 'Want to know a secret? I am someone else. Nobody knows the real me.'
Jess opened the door, sick of being toyed with, wanting to get away. Her voice was flat. 'You're a girl. It's the same for all of us.
Kirsty Eagar
#78. King Abdullah has died. A divisive figure in the Middle East. The sad irony is that the USA preached democracy in the face of absolute rule.
Immortal Technique
#79. Fate is a fickle bitch who dotes on irony. The Black Company pg 447
Glen Cook
#80. I am waiting for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe for anarchy
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#81. Irony: When those who call others a 'threat to Christianity' reject the crucial tenets of their own faith themselves.
Christina Engela
#82. 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
#83. Just to keep the bad dreams at bay, she took a swig out of a bottle that smelled of apples and happy brain-death.
Terry Pratchett
#84. It's the irony of woman's life in that she tends to turn her assets to her own detriment in that while her psyche seeks to see her man strong; her instinct tries to weaken him.
BS Murthy
#85. Advertisers like that because they want you to feel their product isn't normal - this perfume isn't normal, this set of lingerie isn't normal. The irony is that they are appealing to normal people to buy the product because they want them to identify with an exotic life that they don't lead.
Cary Cooper
#87. It's just like an alcoholic to think he's doing the Zombie Apocalypse wrong.
Michele W. Miller
#88. Here's the irony in what I do: When I go out to eat, I like classic French food. I like amazing Japanese food that has such a history that it goes back hundreds of years. And I also like really innovative food as well.
Grant Achatz
#89. 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
#90. The irony of this is that while believers and non-believers are on opposite sides where religious ideas are concerned they may also find themselves on the same side in the struggle for freedom of belief.
Brian Whitaker
#92. In order to grow, I promise you'll have to let go of some habits. 10 times out of 10, they'll be the habits you're most in love with.
Brandi L. Bates
#93. I never take out clients. It's bad policy. He looked me straight in the eyes as he said it. Reaching across for the glove compartment, his arm accidentally brushed my leg.
Gabrielle Black
#94. Faith is a luxury for those who are able to ignore what the rest of us must see every day. Pessimism, distrust, and irony are the holy trinity of my religion, irony in particular.
Brando Skyhorse
#95. It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Voltaire
#96. Regent's Park was looking to the Met for an injection of integrity, it was in serious danger of an irony meltdown.
Mick Herron
#97. Hamet, Seid, and Abdallah were stung by the irony that on the wild desert, where people had virtually nothing, they shared freely, but here, where resources were comparatively abundant, no one would offer them so much as a drink.
Dean King
#98. Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?'
'For fun?'
'Fun!' He pounced on the word. 'Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.
John Fowles
#99. The South has more of a disproportionate amount of irony on T-shirts than any other region in the country.
David Cross
#100. Accept that there are things in this world we can never explain and life will be understandable. That is the irony of life. It is also the beauty of it.
Tan Twan Eng
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