concept

irony Quotes

43 of the best book quotes about irony
01
Share
“Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”
Cormac McCarthy
author
Blood Meridian
book
mystery
irony
irony of mystery
no mystery
concepts
02
Share
“CAMILLO The heavens continue their loves! ARCHIDAMUS I think there is not in the world either malice or matter to alter it.”
Camillo
Archidamus
characters
friendship
irony
malice
concepts
03
Share
“Whom I love? Think a moment. Think of me— Me, whom the plainest woman would despise— Me, with this nose of mine that marches on Before me by a quarter of an hour! Whom should I love? Why—of course—it must be The woman in the world most beautiful.”
04
Share
“No one plows the field just by thinking about it.”
05
Share
″‘To be struck down, Pierced by sword i’ the heart, from a hero’s hand!′ That I had dreamed. O mockery of Fate! —Killed, I! of all men—in an ambuscade! Struck from behind, and by a lackey’s hand! ‘Tis very well. I am foiled, foiled in all, Even in my death.”
06
Share
″‘Oh,’ sighed the duckling, ‘how thankful I am for being so ugly; even a dog will not bite me.’ And so he lay quite still, while the shot rattled through the rushes, and gun after gun was fired over him.”
07
Share
“Reaching the top of Everest is supposed to trigger a surge of intense elation; against long odds, after all, I had just attained a goal I’d coveted since childhood.”
08
Share
“Solitude was a rare commodity on Everest, and I was grateful to be granted a bit of it on this day, in such a remarkable setting.”
09
Share
“It’s a mean world...there’s nobody to take care of you out there.”
10
Share
“I do things like get in a taxi and say, ‘The library, and step on it.‘”
11
Share
“As I went downstairs I heard Bill singing, ‘Irony and Pity. When you’re feeling . . . Oh, Give them Irony and Give them Pity.‘”
12
Share
“Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.”
13
Share
“George: the one thing in this whole sinking world that I am sure of is my … chromosomological partnership in the…creation of our…blond-eyed, blue-haired…son.”
14
Share
How that stupid, dull Englishman ever came to be admitted within the intellectual circle which revolved round “the cleverest woman in Europe,” as her friends unanimously called her, no one ventured to guess—a golden key is said to open every door, asserted the more malignantly inclined.
15
Share
“Perhaps that was the beginning of it. Mafatu, the boy who had been christened Stout Heart by his proud father, was afraid of the sea.”
16
Share
″‘The thing I like,’ said Hazel, ‘is they all speak English and they’re all Christians. That makes things so much easier.‘”
17
Share
″‘I only wish I had such eyes,’ the King remarked in a fretful tone. ‘To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!‘”
18
Share
″‘Chinese people do many things,’ she said simply. ‘Chinese people do business, do medicine, do painting. Not lazy like American people. We do torture. Best torture.‘”
19
Share
″‘Well, in our country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran very fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.’ ‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!‘”
20
Share
“Anointest my head with conductant. Do I get a crown of thorns?”
21
Share
“Smith had begun that message with what now seemed like an anxious prophecy: ‘assuming we don’t die tonight.‘”
22
Share
“He is my fate. He’s my soul mate. He pervades my whole existence. So, of course, I often ignore him.”
23
Share
Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims—just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair.
24
Share
They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
25
Share
“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.” . . . “Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs.”
26
Share
“It was none the less a fact, however, that, in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun’s bosom.”
27
Share
“Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation.”
28
Share
“What I’m doing, what I’ve been doing over the feed for the last two days, is trying to create a customer profile that’s so screwed, no one can market to it. I’m not going to let them catalog me. I’m going to become invisible.”
29
Share
“One of the great ironies of life is that if you give up your life, you gain it. If you help others, you benefit. If you lose yourself, you find yourself.”
30
Share
“It’s funny how the darkest moments of your life can bring about the best ones.”
31
Share
“As the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said, ‘Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”
32
Share
“Got room for one more?”
33
Share
“All my dreams of leaving, but beneath them I was afraid to go. I had clung to them, to Rass, yes, even to my grandmother, afraid that if I loosened my fingers an iota, I would find myself once more cold and clean in a forgotten basket.”
34
Share
“Yes. Lyra has a part to play in all this, and a major one. The irony is that she must do it all without realizing what she’s doing. She can be helped, though, and if my plan with the Tokay had succeeded, she would have been safe for a little longer.”
35
Share
“Samson- one of the most powerful and feared figures in the Old Testament. It was rather a grand name for such a scruffy, nondescript dog.”
36
Share
″...when I paid you honor, I reaped no benefits, but now that I ill-treat you I am loaded with an abundance of riches.”
37
Share
“It was strange that we were called evil when humans were the ones who enjoyed watching us burn.”
38
Share
“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.”
39
Share
“To tell you the truth, Mildred was afraid of the dark, but don’t tell anyone. I mean, whoever heard of a witch who was scared of the dark?”
40
Share
″‘That’s Dizzy. A very sad case. He’s scared of heights?’ ‘Scared of heights?’ Pluck asked. ‘A squirrel who’s scared of heights?‘”
41
Share
“And even the children giggled and pushed closer to see this Wolf, who had sailed on every sea man knew, yet hated the very thought of water touching his tender skin.”
42
Share
“I’d always wanted to see the outside world, I’d always wanted adventure, and now I was going to get it with a vengeance.”
43
Share
“It’s a funny world! Here I am, a quiet little horse who only wants to serve his master and stay by his side, flung into the forest, tossed into a ditch, hurled over the roof! Who knows what will happen to me next?”

Recommended quote pages

View All Quotes

Bookroo

Book Clubs

Follow Bookroo