Irony Quotes - Page 30

• Being accused of making money by selling sex in Hollywood, home of the casting couch and the gratuitous nude scene, is so rich with irony that it's a better subject for a comic novel than a column.... On one coast the cops are busting sex workers on Eighth Avenue, dragging them downtown to night court where they pay the fine and go right back to their corner; on another they're charging Heidi Fleiss with pandering in a town in which the verb is an art form.

  Anna Quindlen

  Art, Sex, Home

  6 Copy quote

• It has always been an irony to me that the 'religious right' has come under so much attack for being involved in politics when the black community has been doing it for hundreds of years. The Reverend Jesse Jackson is rarely, if ever, attacked for his involvement in politics.

  Kay Coles James

  Christian, Religious, Years

  6 Copy quote

• There may perhaps be a new generation of doctors horrified by lacerations, infections, women who have douched with kitchen cleanser. What an irony it would be if fanatics continued to kill and yet it was the apathy and silence of the medical profession that most wounded the ability to provide what is, after all, a medical procedure.

  Anna Quindlen

  Doctors, Rights, Medicine

  4 Copy quote

• To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Liberty, Temples

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Enhancement not only allows the possibilities of a healthy fullness and exuberance, but of a rather ominous extravagance, aberration, monstrosity ... This danger is built into the very nature of growth and life. Growth can become over-growth, life 'hyper-life' ... The paradox of an illness which can present as wellness - as a wonderful feeling of health and well-being, and only later reveal its malignant potentials - is one of the chimaeras, tricks and ironies of nature.

  Oliver Sacks

  Health, Feelings, Growth

  8 Copy quote

• I love the irony of movies. I really do. For whatever reason, I'm incredibly intrigued by the irony of reality in a motion picture.

  Zack Snyder

  Reality, Reason, Motion Pictures

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. September 22, 2010.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• And then he says, "The writer must be true to truth." And that's a killer, because the only way you can describe a human being truly is by describing his imperfections. The perfect human being is uninteresting - the Buddha who leaves the world, you know. It is the imperfections of life that are lovable. And when the writer sends a dart of the true word, it hurts. But it goes with love. This is what Mann called "erotic irony," the love for that which you are killing with your cruel, analytical word.

  Joseph Campbell

  Hurt, Writing, Perfect

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.3, Anchor

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• One cannot fail to observe a crushing irony: the gospel of relativistic tolerance is perhaps the most “evangelistic” movement in Western culture at the moment, demanding assent and brooking no rivals.

  D. A. Carson

  Crush, Tolerance, Western Culture

  D. A. Carson (2009). “The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism”, p.38, Harper Collins

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's not a lot of room for un-ironic emotion in contemporary culture. I think that irony is an important tool in dealing with the world as we find it. It's a tool of protection, but it can also be a tool of incision to get to some truth. But along the way maybe we've lost some of what I think of as the power of straightforward emotion and earnestness and seriousness.

  John Green

  Thinking, Ironic, Important

  "Q&A: John Green & Nat Wolff on ‘Paper Towns’ Themes, Inside Jokes, Nicknames". Interview with Seth Kelley, variety.com. July 19, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Teenagers are extremely funny, and extremely clever and intellectually curious. But they're also willing to ask questions about the meaning of life without disguising them around irony, and ask questions about what are our responsibilities to other people without having to couch it in irony.

  John Green

  Clever, Teenager, Responsibility

  "Q&A: John Green & Nat Wolff on ‘Paper Towns’ Themes, Inside Jokes, Nicknames". Interview with Seth Kelley, variety.com. July 19, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's no more delicious irony on the face of the Earth than environmental protesters being led away in plastic handcuffs that have a biodegradability horizon line of, like, 40,000 years.

  Dennis Miller

  Years, Environmental, Horizon

  Source: www.foxnews.com

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The only way to win a power struggle is to give it up.

  Robert Mandel

  Struggle, Winning, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• Being great involves luck, and unique circumstances, and a lot of other forces beyond your control. You can’t just make it happen by working more or trying harder.
  There is an irony here, of course. The less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen. And if it doesn’t, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being solid.

  Charles Wheelan

  Unique, Thinking, Luck

  6 Copy quote

• English audiences of working people are like an instrument that responds to the player. Thought ripples up and down them, and if in some heart the speaker strikes a dissonance there is a swift answer. Always the voice speaks from gallery or pit, the terrible voice which detaches itself in every English crowd, full of caustic wit, full of irony or, maybe, approval.

  Mary Heaton Vorse

  Heart, Player, Voice

  8 Copy quote

• Cats of all kinds weave in and out of the text; Burroughs has clearly taken to them in a big way in his old age and seems torn between a fear they will betray him into sentimentality and a resigned acceptance that a man can't be ironic all the time.

  Angela Carter

  Taken, Cat, Acceptance

  Angela Carter (1993). “Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings”, Vintage Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.

  Susan Sontag

  Two, Minorities, Moral

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poemsthere lives a real transcendental buffoonery. Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet's own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Art, Real, Italian

  4 Copy quote

• Irony is the birth-pangs of the objective mind (based upon the misrelationship, discovered by the I , between existence and the idea of existence). Humor is the birth -pangs of the absolute mind (based upon the misrelationship, discovered by the I , between the I and the idea of the I .

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Ideas, Mind, Birth

  "Journals and Papers". Book by Søren Kierkegaard, 1967.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Trent Lott has regained a position of leadership. He was the former majority leader who lost his post for racially insensitive commentary. I believe he mentioned that Strom Thurmond in 1948, who ran as a segregationist candidate, should have won. ... But now, sound the irony alarm. He has recaptured a position and his position -- I kid you not -- in the Senate will be minority whip. So, my guess is he takes to that job like, let's say, white on rice.

  Jon Stewart

  Jobs, Believe, Kids

  4 Copy quote

• In Maureen Owen's perfectly titled Erosion's Pull, words and lines map, unmap, and revamp our everyday postcontemporary geographies: ironies and ambiguities, surrealistic conundrums, kaleidoscopic comedies, puzzlements, certain and uncertain loves and losses.

  Susan Howe

  Loss, Erosion, Everyday

  4 Copy quote

• Hollywood is a place of great irony at all times.

  Mark Canton

  Hollywood, All Time

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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Henry Blodget does occasionally have a new idea. If you're making a point about aggregation or the emptiness of modern journalism, he's far from the best target. Try Huffpo - or Gawker writers whose souls have been corroded by irony.

  Nick Denton

  Ideas, Modern Journalism, Soul

  7 Copy quote

• Skype is a wonderful thing. The irony is that you never Skype when you're in the same country as someone.

  Richard Fleeshman

  Country, Skype, Wonderful

  4 Copy quote

• I think the irony ... is that I actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government.

  Barack Obama

  Thinking, Light, Government

  "Strategy Memo: Late Night in the House". www.realclearpolitics.com. June 17, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• That's the irony in the work: the best stories are the worst things that happen. My best times were somebody else's worst.

  Michael Connelly

  Stories, Worst, Happens

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source