Quotes About Irony

Critics who perceive the first level of Mann's irony recognize that the second voice is giving us reasons to be dubious about various aspects of Aschenbach's life and work. But many of them don't appreciate the second level of irony, the one exemplified in setting this narrative voice alongside the more sympathetic one, and inviting us to choose.

Irony dissolves sentiment, but occasionally a sentiment is strong enough to dissolve irony.

A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope?

Don’t underestimate the value of irony—it is extremely valuable.

What happens when we're dead? The irony is that all our questions wil be answered after we die. We spend our whole life trying to figure out the truth and the only way we'll find out what it is, is to get hit by a bus. And the only comfort that religion offers is that God is driving that bus.

Billy was fascinated by the television. At its most basic level, it occupied his time and shut out the demons of isolation. This was another irony because, for so long, he had shunned the tube for a similar purpose-to prevent it from bombarding his brain with demons of banality. However, each time he turned the machine on, he began to discover a world of assorted delights, as well as gain insight into the insidious manner in which this medium was shaping the mass psyche. If nothing else, he learned there was nothing innocuous about it.

Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.

There's a lot of situations where I feel irony involved when R&B and hip-hop is expressed in the indie worlds. There's a lot of times when I feel like the juxtaposition becomes a thing.

Irony is the word I forget the meaning of immediately after I look it up, but I kind of feel like I live in a constant state of it.

The show is not a history lesson or intellectual exploration. It is entertainment based on tension, irony and storytelling that is closely related to today’s life.

The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.

The condition of the United States in the post-postmodern, or post-post-irony period. It's what the country will become when there is nothing left but mediated images of its substance.

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.

Humanity, perhaps, that quality of benevolence that humans have, without irony, named after themselves.

Whoop-de-do," said Ram. "What?" "I'm celebrating." "Was that irony or loss of mental function?" asked the expendable. "Was that a rhetorical questions, a bit of humor, or a sign that you are losing confidence in me?" "I have no confidence in you, Ram," said the expendable. "Well, thanks." "You're welcome.

I think people under age 55 come to Vegas with a certain sense of irony.

I think there's something in common with the OSS 117 movies. The big difference is there's no irony in this one. It's not parody. I tried to make it very simple. It's a simple story, but to be simple, it's very complex in the way it's done.

You just have to get out of the bubble and you have to quit listening to yourself. People are really hurt. The irony of this is, though, had Ms.[Hillary] Clinton listened to her husband instead of her boss, she might could have stopped this Rust Belt redneck revolt.

A sharp sense of the ironic can be the equivalent of the faith that moves mountains. Far more quicky than reason or logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity.

A good friend, who knows whereof he speaks, has observed of trials, ‘If it’s fair, it is not a true trial!’ That is, without the added presence of some inexplicableness and some irony and injustice, the experience may not stretch us or lift us sufficiently. The crucifixion of Christ was clearly the greatest injustice in human history, but the Savior bore up under it with majesty and indescribable valor.

I don't think readers of Mann have overlooked the fact that he was a great ironist, but they have tended to see the irony in particular parts of the novella, and to miss it in others.

I feel that there's hardly any irony in my work; if there's anything, there'll be sincerity, which people sometimes find hard to deal with.

I love meeting people who have absolutely no sense of irony. It's really fascinating to imagine what it would be like to go through life without understanding even the most basic of ironies.

Irony is wasted on the stupid

The irony here is that the Latino left had criticized the conservative movement for years that they were not doing outreach to the Latino community. Now that the conservative movement is doing outreach and engaging in the Latino community on a national scale, they're criticizing us for that too. You can't have it both ways.

Hollywood is a place of great irony at all times.

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.

The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a box already built for us to fit inside. Our umbilical cord never seems to be severed; we only find new needs to fill. If we disconnected and severed our attachments, would we shatter our confinements and expand beyond our shell? Would the world look different? Would we recognize ourselves? Are we the box that we are inside, and to be authentically 'un-contained' would we still be able to exist? This is the irony of containment. As long as we don't push on the walls of our surroundings, we may never know how strong we really are.

In the history of photography, one process has always replaced another. The tumultuous realignment that's going on in the photography now is really just a natural evolution. The irony is that none of the processes that have been replaced have disappeared. More people than ever are practicing every approach to shooting and printing.

The irony is that science has served only to show how small human knowledge is.

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

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.

There is an irony that the most active anti-gay groups are Al-Qaeda and the American Right wing.

My two souls, the socially conscious one and the lighthearted one, are always in my movies because they find a perfect habitat in my grotesque style, which combines tragedy and humor, irony and sarcasm, comedy and drama. I also feel that rules are made to be broken, especially in art! I prefer creative disorder to strict rules.

I think in everything we did, there's a sense of tension and a sense of things pulling in a different way. It's interesting calling it "beat music". That's quite true, the rhythm is up to the fore, it's got a slap bass, and it's got "funk" in the title. But I think there's always a level of irony when we did those kind of things.

Irony gives us, at little expense, the impression that we are experienced psychologists.

In hindsight, I must have been looking for a way to write about Jewishness that somehow managed to minimize irony and self-deprecation.

The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance.

Okay, so maybe I'm romantic... but somebody is supposed to be romantic. Some warrior is supposed to go to war against the imperial forces of cynicism and irony. I am a sentimental soldier.

I never thought about whether film is inherently more sincere, because certainly I think if Guy Maddin had directed A Series Of Unfortunate Events, there probably could have been more of the stage-y irony that is in the books. But I was just interested to see what people would do with it, and worrying that Brad Silberling wouldn't do what I had in mind.

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.