Irony Quotes - Page 20

• But it seems an irony of creation that man's mind knows how to handle things the better the farther removed they are from the center of his existence. Thus we are cleverest where knowledge matters least.

  Hermann Weyl

  Men, Mind, Matter

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.192, Courier Corporation

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• Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her-of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated-he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch.

  Edith Wharton

  Taken, Community, Tolerance

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.2130, Delphi Classics

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• It is an irony of medical history that even as Freud's later work would make him the progenitor of modern psychodynamic psychotherapy, which is generally premised on the idea that mental illness arises from unconscious psychological conflicts, his papers on cocaine make him one of the fathers of biological psychiatry, which is governed by the notion that mental distress is partly caused by a physical or chemical malfunction that can be treated with drugs.

  Scott Stossel

  Father, Ideas, Drug

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• We had no irony when it came to girls, though. There was just no time to develop it. One moment they weren't there, not in any form that interested us, anyway, and the next you couldn't miss them; they were everywhere, all over the place. One moment you wanted to clonk them on the head for being your sister, or someone else's sister, and the next you wanted to....actually, we didn't know what we wanted next, but it was something. Almost overnight, all these sisters (there was no other kind of girl, not yet)had become interesting, disturbing, even.

  Nick Hornby

  Girl, Interesting, Missing

  Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.16, Penguin

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• We think craft is important, and the irony has always been that horror may be disregarded by critics, but often they are the best-made movies you're going to find in terms of craft. You can't scare people if they see the seams.

  James Wan

  Thinking, People, Scare

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The real irony is that the view of infinity as some forbidden zone or road to insanity - which view was very old and powerful and haunted math for 2000+ years - is precisely what Cantor's own work overturned. Saying that infinity drove Cantor mad is sort of like mourning St. George's loss to the dragon: it's not only wrong but insulting.

  David Foster Wallace

  Powerful, Real, Math

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• The more repression there is, the more need there is for irreverence toward those who are responsible for that repression. But too often sarcasm passes for irony, name-calling passes for insight, bleeped-out four-letter words pass for wit, and lowest-common-denominator jokes pass for analysis. Satire should have a point of view. It doesn't have to get a belly laugh. It does have to present criticism.

  Paul Krassner

  Humor, Sarcasm, Views

  "In The Jester's Court". Interview with David Kupfer, thesunmagazine.org. February 2009.

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• There are ... two kinds of people in this world, those who long to be understood and those who long to be misunderstood. It is the irony of life that neither is gratified.

  Carl Van Vechten

  Two, Long, People

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• All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel

  Paul Fussell

  Travel, Leaving, Around The World

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• The principle tragedy of my life is, like all tragedies, an irony of Destiny. I reject real life as if it were a condemnation; I reject dreams as if they were an ignoble liberation. [...]After the end of the stars uselessly whitened in the morning sky and the breeze became less cold in the barely orange tinged in the yellow of the light on the scattered low clouds, I, who hadn't slept, could finally, slowly raise my body, exhausted from nothing from the bed from which I had thought the universe.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Morning, Stars

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• Avatar is the most high tech film in terms of its execution, dealing with essentially a very low tech subject; which is our relationship with nature...and in fact the irony is that the film is about our relationship with nature and how our technological civilization has taken us several removes away from a truly natural existence and the consequences of that to us.

  James Cameron

  Taken, Civilization, Facts

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• It is the cruelest of all ironies that moderns imagine themselves to be (abstractly understood) "individuals," because in actuality moderns are "types," abstracted and self-abstractive victims of a process of stereotyping that afflicts even would-be rebels and anarchists.

  Kenny Smith

  Self, Rebel, Would Be

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• Sexcastle is a perfect mix of homage and comedy, action and irony, loving tribute and hilarious send-up of the great, good, and ungodly-bad action movies of the '80s. I don't remember the last time a debut book hit me this hard. Literally, this book punched me in the face. It's THAT mean.

  Matt Fraction

  Book, Mean, Perfect

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• The modern way with God is to set him at a distance, if not to deny him altogether; and the irony is that modern Christians, preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligous world, have themselves allowed God to become remote...for churchmen who look at God through the wrong end of the telescope, so reducing him to pigmy proportions, cannot hope to end up as more than pigmy Christians.

  J. I. Packer

  Christian, Religious, Distance

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• It is the whole modern concept of love which should be re-examined, such as is commonly but transparently expressed in phrases like 'love at first sight' and 'honeymoon'. All this shoddy terminology is on top of that tainted with the most reactionary irony.

  Andre Breton

  Love, Sight, Phrases

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• Haven't you picked up on the irony of life by now? Things only just happen when you're not ready. When you're ready, you start trying, and gadamn I feel like trying right now.

  Elizabeth Reyes

  Trying, Ready, Feels

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• The irony of love is that it guarantees some degree of anger, fear and criticism.

  Harold H. Bloomfield

  Love Is, Criticism, Degrees

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• There was a sort of irony in the fact that these [superhero] characters - many of whom in that period, the Golden Age, had been evolved to fight the Nazis - were themselves very much in the Nazi ideal. The idea that you can solve problems through physical strength, by being stronger and more dominant and more powerful - that is fascism. I mean, that's it, that's the essence of fascism. I don't think the creators of the superheroes or the kids who were reading them at the time were the slightest bit aware of it.

  Michael Chabon

  Powerful, Reading, Kids

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• Here's the irony of this moment on Smackdown: Jimmy crack corn and I DO care.

  Todd Grisham

  Wwe, Cracks, Care

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• We did not choose to believe that personal choice is the highest human virtue. Rather, we were taught, formed, forced to believe nothing is important in life other than that which we have personally chosen. The irony is that the belief that nothing is important in life other than that which we have personally chosen is a belief that we have not personally chosen! The supermarket and shopping mall have been our school.

  William Henry Willimon

  Believe, School, Shopping

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• 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.

  Harold Bloom

  Jesus, Repetition, Riddle

  Harold Bloom (2005). “Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine”, Riverhead Books (Hardcover)

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• Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.

  Paul Fussell

  War, Mean, Ironic

  Paul Fussell (2013). “The Great War and Modern Memory”, p.23, Oxford University Press

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• No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.

  Don DeLillo

  Animal, Earth, Form

  "White Noise". Book by Don DeLillo, 1985.

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• Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. But that is the irony of honesty.

  Patrick White

  Honesty, Littles

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• Woodrow Wilson is reported to have told a Princeton colleague, shortly after the 1912 election, "It would be an irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign problems, for all my preparation has been in domestic matters." In the event, Wilson's early months were marked by substantial domestic legislative accomplishment. Unfortunately, after Europe plunged into the Great War in August 1914, Wilson's leadership was uncertain.

  James M Strock

  War, Fate, Accomplishment

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