"Irony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ain't it?" said her guide, with boyish irony. "My dad says that's what we git fer votin' against the Gover'ment. The fire truck's in the front end, an' there's a cell with bars behind. Do you ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... tossed her pretty bead, saying, "Let me tell you, Caroline, that little girls are sometimes as wise as their elders, and I shall give you a proof of my superior wisdom, by not returning irony for irony. Perhaps it may be you who is to be married—perhaps it may be both of us. There are more crowns in Europe than one. But hark! there sounds the clock. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Gawtrey, with a singular mixture of irony and compassion in his voice; "and it was hunger, then, that terrified you at last ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... been good enough to ask me to share your fly," the man observed, with a rather aggressive touch of irony, "I may as well let you know who I am. My name is Henshaw, ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... his sickly pallor and the restless light in his eyes. We have only to listen to the sound of his voice and his excited speeches. At times he goes in for wild declamation, and immediately afterwards for cold irony and sarcasm. He is always talking of death. When he attempts to shoot himself he always misses, but when Adele d'Hervey resists him, at the time he has taken the name of Antony, he kills her. He is therefore ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... and harangues of his old teacher, who united in himself the contradictory attributes of high-priest and buffoon. He was great at telling a story, and though his tales were beyond the child's intelligence, they did not fail to leave behind a confused impression of recklessness, irony, and cynicism. Mademoiselle Servien alone never relaxed her attitude of uncompromising dislike and disdain. She said nothing against him, but her face was a rigid mask of disapproval, her eyes two flames of fire, in answer to the courteous greeting the ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... was left with only the one means of communication and explanation—the agony columns of the morning newspapers. "I was alone when you called. You heard me talking to the dog. PLEASE make appointment." In the last sentence there is just a hint of irony which I find very attractive. It seems to me to say, "Don't for heaven's sake come rushing back to Notting Hill (all love and remorse) without warning, or you might hear me talking to the cat or the canary. Make an appointment, and I'll take care that there's NOTHING in ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... feeling. But since you have done it of your own accord, without asking my advice, you will see how you will get through. Faust is so strange an individual that only few can sympathize with his internal condition. Then the character of Mephistopheles is, on account of his irony, and also because he is a living result of an extensive acquaintance with the world, also very difficult. But you will see what lights open upon you. Tasso, on the other hand, lies far nearer the common feelings of mankind, and the elaboration ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... strained ingenuity in the opening pages of the work, in making the white cap foreshadow the red, itself the symbol of liberty, and only indirectly connected with tragic events; and he would, I think, have emphasized the irony of circumstance in a manner more characteristic of himself, if he had laid his stress on the remoteness from 'the madding crowd', and repeated Miss Thackeray's title. There can, however, be no doubt that his poetic imagination, no less than his human insight, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of speech, his persuasive manner, and his scholastic acquirements were great advantages. He soon obtained considerable influence among the respectable old gentlemen who at that time sat as judges in the one court and magistrates in the other. His intense love of fun, and his powerful irony, made these courts, instead of dull and dreary places, lively and cheerful. Many droll stories are told of him, one of the best of which relates to his cross-examination of a pompous witness. Edmonds began by asking, "What are you, Mr. Jones?" "Hi har a skulemaster," ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... pretensions of the rich, who, after all, are out of the same mould as other men so obscure and wretched that the money spent for such a capricious ornament would support a family of them for six months. Perhaps the irony of it is that, no matter how much wealth may protect one from the others, it can never protect one from himself. And then—I ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... looked towards the letter as an apology for protracting his stay. She snatched it up, saying in a tone of irony and contempt, "I had forgotten—the dutiful slave waits an answer to his message. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... prevent in future the recurrence of that want of faith of which Mr. Hastings had been so notoriously guilty, and by which he had not only united all India against us, and had hindered us from making, for a long time, any peace at all, but had exposed the British character to the irony, scorn, derision, and insult of the whole ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... thy cheek, The youthful ardor in thy gait, Appear to him, so frail and weak, The bitter irony of Fate. ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... By an irony of fate, poor Nabendu Sekhar married the second daughter of this house. His sisters-in-law were well educated and handsome. Nabendu considered he had made a lucky bargain. But he lost no time in trying to impress on the family that it was a rare bargain on their side also. As if by mistake, he ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... Union-tinkers have really caught a 'nigger' at last! A very pretty and refreshing sight it must have been to Sabbath-going Christians yesterday—that chained court-house of yours. And Bunker Hill Monument looking down upon all! But the matter is too sad for irony. God forgive the miserable politicians who gamble for office with dice loaded with ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Madame Desvarennes with irony. "Oh, he is a youth who is not easily disturbed, and in his most passionate transports will not disarrange a fold of his cravat. You know he is a Prince? That is most flattering to the Desvarennes! We shall use his coat-of-arms as our trade-mark. The fortune ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... continue. Pao-y was in Tai y's apartments relating about the rat-elves, when Pao-ch'ai entered unannounced, and began to gibe Pao-y, with trenchant irony: how that on the fifteenth of the first moon, he had shown ignorance of the allusion to the green wax; and the three of them then indulged in that room in mutual poignant satire, for the sake of fun. Pao-y had been giving way to solicitude lest Tai-y should, by being bent upon napping ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to their plans. There were also two Jesuits sent out to win the new domain for the cross.[5] As ignorant as children of the hardships ahead, the other treasure-seekers kept up nonchalant boasting that roused the irony of such seasoned men as Radisson and Groseillers. "What fairer bastion than a good tongue," Radisson demands cynically, "especially when one sees his own chimney smoke? . . . It is different when food is wanting, work necessary day and ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... Lancaster—if you will excuse me, gentlemen—that I should suffer this for a mere rose? The day only just begun too! And why, sirs, was I seeking a rose? Ay, there's the rub." He folded his arms dramatically and nodded at the woman. "There's the gall and bitterness, the worm in the fruit, the peculiar irony—if you'll allow me to say so—of this distressing affair. Listen, madam! If I wanted a rose of you, 'twas for your whole sex's sake: your sex's, madam—every one of whom was, up to five or six months ago, the object with me of something ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... joker, and felt conceit in his powers as a satirist. In the present instance his irony was shaftless, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... Goldsmith, vol. ii. p. 205. Mr. Forster allows her the credit of discovering the lurking irony in Goldsmith's verses on Cumberland, vol. ii. ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... one else in the world is half as smart as you," replied the brother with fine irony, but without ill nature. "Ah, wasn't ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... manner, the most perfect humour and irony is generally quite unconscious. Examples of both are frequently given by men whom the world considers as deficient in humour; it is more probably true that these persons are unconscious of their own delightful power through the very mastery and perfection with which they hold ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... that was just a whimper. Oh, irony of fate! Oh, cynicism incredible in its malignancy! Oh, cumulative touch! To deliver him this his enemy to strike, and to present him for ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... act is announced as Helen of Troy in "Six Minutes of Beauty". Priscilla learns from the announcer that "this little lady is out of 'Irony' by Theodore Dreiser". ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... Gamard, for the formidable Abbe Troubert; Douai, Claes; Limoges, Madame Graslin; Besancon, Savarus and his misguided love; Angouleme, Rubempre; Sancerre, Madame de la Baudraye; Alencon, that touching, artless old maid to whom her uncle, the Abbe de Sponde, remarked with gentle irony: "You have too much wit. You don't need so much to ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... to himself as ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass. It is the homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... wittily), "I have no desire to exult over you, yet I should show a lamentable obtuseness to the irony of things were I not to dedicate this little work to you. For its inception was yours, and in your more ambitious days you thought to write the tale of the little white bird yourself. Why you so early deserted the nest is not for me to inquire. It now appears that you were ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... both of us," rejoined the minister with a touch of irony. "For you especially; you are such a violent fellow and at this moment need to be so calm. Look out for that, Jansoulet. Be on your guard against the traps, the fits of passion they would like to ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... means of eliminating this Spaniard from Claire's life; then Philip would come in, talk to him, seem so very normally friendly as man to man, that his reason mastered his fancies and he laughed at himself. He ridiculed his own thoughts with an irony that inwardly grew in bitterness with his growing love for Claire, and he would end by admitting that Philip was only doing what he ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... irony of this poem so bespatters the theologian's God with his own mud that we dread the image and recoil. From the unsparing vigor of these lines we turn for relief to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Prospice." In both of these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... real hard work, for which no emolument would be a fitting reward, is distilling sunshine. This new book is full of it—the sunshine of humour, the thin keen sunshine of irony, the ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... please her, and neglects her, and won't let her be mistress of her own household, and she can't forget that he once had the bad trick of beating her: she sees the marks. And you mayn't believe it, but the Captain's temper is to praise and exalt. It is. Irony in him is only eulogy standing on its head: a sort of an upside down; a perversion: that's our view of him at home. All he desires is to have us on the march, and he'd be perfectly happy marching, never mind the banner, though a bit of green in it would put him in tune, of course. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with an attempt to frighten him by a picture of the power of that God whom he was blaspheming; but Job cuts short his harangue, and ends it for him in a spirit of loftiness which Bildad could not have approached; and then proudly and calmly rebukes them all, no longer in scorn and irony, but in high tranquil self-possession. "God forbid that I should justify you," he says; "till I die I will not remove my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go. My heart shall not reproach me so long as ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... strength and freshness from the ideal. In the only remnant of the mock-heroic comedy of this period—the -Amphitruo- of Plautus—there breathes throughout a purer and more poetical atmosphere than in all the other remains of the contemporary stage. The good-natured gods treated with gentle irony, the noble forms from the heroic world, and the ludicrously cowardly slaves present the most wonderful mutual contrasts; and, after the comical course of the plot, the birth of the son of the gods amidst thunder and lightning forms an almost grand concluding effect But ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... but parts of it surpass all the rest in originality and profundity. We refer especially to the description of the pretended English Squire in Paris, who bubbles the great bubbler of the tale; to Count Fathom's address to Britain, when he reaches her shores,—a piece of exquisite mock-heroic irony; to the narrative of the seduction in the west of England; and to the matchless robber-scene in the forest,—a passage in which one knows not whether more to admire the thrilling interest of the incidents, or the eloquence ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... then, would not have been wide enough for such sin as that." This the Vicar said with intended irony; but irony was thrown ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... sparkling intensity in the pale blue eyes, that filled her with amazement. What, after all, did she know of this strange individuality from which her own being had taken its rise? The same flesh and blood—what an irony of nature! ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... serious. His money was at a low ebb. All his regular income was diverted to the support of the large household in the country. He was too proud to appeal to his wealthy uncle. He hated also to think of Mrs. Purp's mortification if she learned that her star boarder was out of work. By a curious irony, when he got home he found a letter ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... had listened in silence, suffered from the irony of Pascal, the full bitterness of which she divined. She, who usually took M. Bellombre's part, felt a protest rise up within her. Tears came to her eyes, and she answered simply ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... subservient to England and the States." It is grimly given to be understood that the despatch is an ultimatum, and a last chance is being offered for the recreant ally to fulfil her pledge. To make it more plain, the document goes on with a kind of bilious irony: "The two German war-ships now in Samoa are here for the protection of German property alone; and when the Olga shall have arrived" [she arrived on the morrow] "the German war-ships will continue to do against the insurgents precisely as little as they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "malice" rather in the French sense, which is more innocent than ours, but "irony" would be better if "malice" in any way suggests malignity. "Chaff" is unfortunately beneath the dignity of a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... seem that I am a creature so terrific, that thou need'st dread my presence," continued the gay mariner, with a smile that expressed as much of secret irony, as of that pensive character which had again taken possession of his countenance; "but ring, and bring your attendants to relieve fears that are natural to thy sex, and therefore seducing to mine. Shall I pull the cord?—for this pretty hand trembles ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... you go instead of me?" he asks with a gentle irony, stroking, the while, my plaits as delicately as if he were afraid that they would come off, which indeed, indeed, they ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... burial. Shall he make a libation of the poison? In the spirit he will, but not in the letter. One request he utters in the very act of death, which has been a puzzle to after ages. With a sort of irony he remembers that a trifling religious duty is still unfulfilled, just as above he desires before he departs to compose a few verses in order to satisfy a scruple about a dream—unless, indeed, we suppose him to mean, that he was now restored ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... heard my proposal to the gentleman who piques himself upon his military prudence." returned the youth, with bitter irony. ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... moving irony subsists in the very structure of the poem. Any other human transaction that ever was, tragic or comic or plain prosaic, may be looked at in a like spirit, As the world's talk bubbled around the dumb anguish of Pompilia, or the cruelty and hate of Guido, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... to Petronius, whose influence they were trying to undermine, but most likely they would disclose before Nero how dear Lygia was to Plautius, and then Nero would all the more resolve not to yield her to him. Here the old sage began to speak with a biting irony, which he turned against himself: "Thou hast been silent, Plautius, thou hast been silent for whole years, and Caesar does not like those who are silent. How couldst thou help being carried away by his ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... his long experience at times in sweeping and profound generalisations, which covered the whole field of Oriental thought and action, and at others in pithy epigrammatic sayings in which the racy humour, sometimes tinged with a shade of cynical irony, never obscured the deep feeling of sympathy he entertained for everything that was worthy ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... slow of movement, could come to its aid, and ultimately to dispose the victor to accept terms consistent with its continued existence. It was an existence, of course, of sufferance, but one which grew better assured the longer it lasted. By an irony of the Osmanli position, the worse the empire was administered, the stronger became its international guarantee. No better example can be cited than the effect of its financial follies. When national bankruptcy, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... of you to stay apart from her like this!" said Sue, her trembling lip and lumpy throat belying her irony. "You, such a religious man. How will the demi-gods in your Pantheon—I mean those legendary persons you call saints—intercede for you after this? Now if I had done such a thing it would have been different, and not remarkable, for I at least don't regard marriage ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... regency, broke the tie of vassalage which bound Judah to Israel, and by a singular irony of fate, Jerusalem offered an asylum to the last of the children of Ahab. The treachery of Jehu, in addition to his inexpiable cruelty, terrified the faithful, even while it served their ends. Dynastic crimes were common in those days, but the tragedy of Jezreel eclipsed in horror all others ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a sky without a cloud, completed the bitter irony of the spectacle. All this ruin, desolation, and wretchedness were the outward and visible signs of a series of revolutions. At St. Catherine the French travellers had been witnesses of the declaration of Brazilian ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... happen if the cork should suddenly pop off and let out all that bottled sense of ill usage. When Judge Swigart got up, he did n't mend matters by referring continually to Emmet as his 'distinguished antagonist,' in a tone that suggested irony rather than respect. He said he was pained and astonished to hear Mr. Emmet declare that there was class feeling in Warwick; he himself had never detected any; he objected to the setting off of aristocrat against democrat, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... fortune, destiny, the irony of Fate or Nemesis, is the greatest of all the Battle-gods that move on the waters. As I will show you later, knowledge of gunnery and a delicate instinct for what is in the enemy's minds may enable a destroyer to thread her way, slowing, speeding, and twisting between the heavy salvoes of ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... Saltello's garden. Unfortunately, at the angle of the fence stood a beautiful Madrono-tree, brilliant with its scarlet berries, and endeared to me as Consuelo's favorite haunt, under whose protecting shade I had more than once avowed my youthful passion. By the irony of fate Chu Chu caught sight of it, and with a succession of spirited bounds instantly made for it. In another moment I was beneath it, and Chu Chu shot like a rocket into the air. I had barely time to withdraw my feet from the ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... should so refrain was a matter of course. Naturally! He still kept a hold on common sense. He would not only refrain, but be civil. If Claude were in need of anything or were short of cash he would probably write him a check. It was the irony of this kind of rage that it was so impotent. It was impotent and absurd. It might shake him to the foundations of his being, but it would come to nothing in the end. It both relieved and embittered him to ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... he was not cynical—or cynical in a very tender way. He was thinking of the irony of friendship—so strong it is, and so fragile. We fly together, like straws in an eddy, to part in the open stream. Nature has no use for us: she has cut her stuff differently. Dutiful sons, loving husbands, responsible fathers these are what she wants, and if we are friends ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... attacks on the town on the third day after I had left, all successfully repulsed, and of a bombardment on the following Monday. The latter had been somewhat of a farce, and had done no damage, except to one or two buildings which, by an irony of fate, included the Dutch church and hotel and the convent. The shells were of such poor quality that they were incapable of any explosive force whatever.[26] After nine hours' bombardment, although some narrow escapes were recorded, the only casualties ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... would," she said, still without irony, without even the hint of a sneer. "And the truth is that the humdrum is created not by a way of living but by those who follow it. Your wife and the humdrum could never occupy the same house. I shall always regret that I didn't see something of her. Do give her ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... resolution that the years have blown away, a sentimental reminiscence of what the enigmatical gods have had their jest with, leaving only its gallant memory behind. The whole Conradean system sums itself up in the title of "Victory," an incomparable piece of irony. Imagine a better label for that tragic record of heroic and yet bootless effort, that matchless picture, in microcosm, of the relentlessly ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... thought not," said Sir Kasimir, with a shade of irony in his tone. "It would be a troublesome siege; but the League numbers 1,500 horse, and 9,000 foot, and, with Schlangenwald's concurrence, you ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! As for the others, the irony of facts shall take it out of their hands, and make fools of them in downright earnest, ere the farce be over. There shall be such a mopping and a mowing at the last day, and such blushing and confusion of countenance for all those who have been wise in their own esteem, and have not learnt the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her literary style and her liking for champagne abundantly demonstrate it!" His acute sense of humour did not enable him to detect the irony of my observation. I doubt if it extended much beyond oyster shells. He handed me the letter. I read it through with equal amusement and gratification. If Miss Sissie had written it on purpose in order to open Cecil Holsworthy's ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... "Oh, the irony of fate!" cried Mitya, and, quite losing his head, he fell again to rousing the tipsy peasant. He roused him with a sort of ferocity, pulled at him, pushed him, even beat him; but after five minutes ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite—— Nay, rather, Plant divine of rarest virtue: Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. 'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee; None e'er prospered who defamed thee; Irony all, and feigned abuse, Such as perplex'd lovers use, At a need, when in despair, To paint forth their fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... door ajar with scant hospitality. Mademoiselle pushed it open and went into the narrow passage. She had not too much respect for a priest, and none whatever for a priest's housekeeper, who kept a house so badly. She looked at the dirty floor, and with a subtle feminine irony, sought the mat which was lying in the road outside the house. She folded her hands at her waist, and still grasping her cheap cotton umbrella, waited to ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... as she approached the house. But to her surprise, her coming had evidently been anticipated by them, and they were actually—and unexpectedly—awaiting her behind the low whitewashed garden palings! As she neared them they burst into a shrill, discordant laugh, so full of irony, gratified malice, and mean exaltation that Cissy was for a moment startled. But only for a moment; she had her father's reckless audacity, and bore them down with a display of such pink cheeks and flashing eyes that their laughter was ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... swift application he makes of the parable of the vineyard, v. 5-7, or the scathing retort he makes to those who complain of the monotony and repetition of his message (xxviii. 11).[1] [Footnote 1: The real irony of this passage, xxviii. 10-13, can only be ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... most grotesque and significant figures upon the page of modern history. His personal worth, his inadequacy to the needs of the age, and his incompetence to control the tempest loosed by Della Roveres, Borgias, and Medici around him, give the man a tragic irony. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... was a weak attempt at irony, and went on with his investigations. He came to the last of the papers Mr. Caryll had handed him, glanced at it, swore ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... at his office the following day, and the explicitness of his statement that he was not anxious for her advice concerning his domestic affairs, proved unavailing before Persis' matter-of-fact bluntness. Anger availed him little since she remained cool. His irony rebounded harmless from her absolute certainty of being in the right. Forced to retreat step by step, he ended by conceding all that she demanded for the lovers. If he had an air when he bade her good ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... between the Gargantuan hopes with which the Kaiser and his Junker army embarked on the War, and the exiguous and shadowy fruits of their boasted victories up to the present. They foretold a triumphal entry into the conquered capital of France within a month of the opening of hostilities. Yet the irony of Fate has, slowly but surely, cooled the early fever of anticipation. The only captured town where the All-Highest has found an opportunity of lifting his voice in exultant paean is Nish, a secondary city of the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... nicer shades of meaning, and slurred over his ignorance of a difficulty by some piece of sonorous nonsense, made him peculiarly the object of the young man's disgust. But though Mr Serjeant wounded his vanity, the irony of "a musty old don," as Bruce contemptuously called him, was amply atoned for by the compliments of the fast young admirers whom Bruce soon gathered round him, and some of whom were always to be ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... declared, taking the sting from her emphasis by his prompt adoption of it. Dick had always had a wholesome way of thus appropriating to his own use such small shafts of maternal irony as were now and then ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... pardon, grandfather! I beg your pardon, ladies," said Sylvanus, assuming so sudden and profound a gravity as to inspire a suspicion of irony in the minds of the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... he showed it in that feeble reply. Sydney felt the implied insult offered to her in another way. It roused her to the exercise of self-control as nothing had roused her yet. She ignored Mrs. Presty's irony with a composure worthy of Mrs. Presty herself. "Where is the woman," she said, "who would not wish to be as beautiful as Mrs. ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... myself a super-man. I had only to go on storing up wisdom until the day should come when all knowledge of the world was mine, and then I could command the world. I had no need for hurry. O vast life! How I gloried in my eternity! And how little good it has ever done me, by the irony of God. ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker
... demanding that Malta should be placed under the protection of the King of Naples,—that is to say, under the protection of a power entirely at their command, and to which they might dictate what they pleased. This was really too cool a piece of irony! ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... more so. Meantime Hope had gone round from the lobby, and now entered by the small office, and stood watching a part of this business, viz., the search of the bag and the overcoat, with a bitter look of irony. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... smiled at the irony of the situation. In spite of everything he had done to prevent it, Nyjord had dropped the bombs. And this act alone may have destroyed their own planet. Brion had it within his power now to stop the launching in the cavern. Should he? Should he ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... you the same compliment, sir," answered the old mate, with a slight touch of irony in his tone, for Mr Thorn had just shot off the rim of his cap. "You very nearly spoilt my beauty ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... the most part, weary of itself, without rest, and without escape. This is Yvette Guilbert's domain; she sings it, as no one has ever sung it before, with a tragic realism, touched with a sort of grotesque irony, which is a new thing on any stage. The rouleuse of the Quartier Breda, praying to the one saint in her calendar, "Sainte Galette"; the soularde, whom the urchins follow and throw stones at in the street; the whole life of the slums and the gutter: these are her subjects, and she ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... alone when he received the latter of these letters. At first, a look divided between irony and melancholy passed over his face, as he read his sister's preface and her hearsay evidence, but, as he went farther, his upper lip curled, and a sudden gleam, as of exultation in a verified prophecy, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... allows itself to be apologetically understood; whilst in succession the lower taste for animal sentiment is sorcerized by vivid flashes of captivating contrast, forked, as lightning, and left, as embers smouldering to glow in the crucible of memory's recesses. Specious instances of irony playing the manliest part: flashes of meteoric, mesmeric eloquence, fitfully flecking the embossed page, as one tier or set of ideas, in rhetoric orchestration, symphonizes with or eclipses another. Connection, an element ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... think what a terrible irony it would have been if Jesus had said that just to encourage us, knowing that it could never be true? We are tolerant of the unconscious cruelty of the small boy who teases a dog by holding a bone just out of his reach, encouraging him to jump for it, ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... purity of her feelings, that active virtue which is the basis of her self-respect, make her indignant at the sentimental speeches intended for her amusement. She does not receive them with open anger, but with a disconcerting irony or an unexpected iciness. If a fair Apollo displays his charms, and makes use of his wit in the praise of her wit, her beauty, and her grace; at the risk of offending him she is quite capable of saying politely, "Sir, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... new crusade, and Henry seems to have been the one European monarch who took the idea seriously. It is true that when Alexander VI. appealed in 1500 for funds to that end, the English King preferred to be excused; but the polite irony of his refusal was more than justified by his confidence that if the Pope got the money it would not be expended for the benefit of Christendom; moreover, he did actually hand over four thousand pounds. In fact, he took ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Virginia, with quiet but cutting irony, "the most chivalrous people in the world! among whom the innocent and defenceless are more secure than any where else on ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... of irony which Nina had thrown into her voice when she spoke of what was due to her lover even though he was a Jew was not lost upon her father. "Of course you would take his part against a ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... the title, when he conferred the dignity of a baronetcy on my great-grandfather! Now I come to think of it the Prince Regent was that sovereign, and my ancestor did things for him at Brighton. Perhaps after all there is a savage irony of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... incarnation, an expansion of the Nicene formula with reference to perversions of the faith by various heretics, and in conclusion a statement of Pelagius's own opinions regarding free will, grace, and sin. It is due to the irony of history that it should have been found among the works of both Jerome and Augustine, long passed current as a composition of Augustine, Sermo CCXXXVI, and should have been actually quoted by the Sorbonne, in 1521, in its articles against Luther. It also appears ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Study Discord in Childhood Virgin Youth Monologue of a Mother In a Boat Week-night Service Irony Dreams Old Dreams Nascent A Winter's Tale Epilogue A Baby Running Barefoot Discipline Scent of Irises The Prophet Last Words to Miriam Mystery Patience Ballad of Another Ophelia Restlessness A Baby Asleep After Pain Anxiety The Punisher The End The Bride The Virgin Mother At the Window Drunk ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... to bed with my mind full of sad stories of the deaths of kings. Magnificence in tatters has always affected my pity more deeply than tatters with no such antecedent, and a monarch out at elbows stood for me as the last irony of our mortal life. Here was a king whose misfortunes could find no parallel. He had been in his youth the hero of a high adventure, and his middle age had been spent in fleeting among the courts of Europe, and waiting as pensioner on the whims ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... really suppose," Count Paul spoke with a touch of sharp irony in his voice, "that your friend would have taken my advice? Do you think that Madame Wolsky would look either to the right or the left when the Goddess of Chance beckoned?"—and he waved his hand in the direction ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... I am a descendant of Jacob, whose sons sold their brother Joseph into Egypt, I do not deserve your irony. We are poor people, but the child is our most ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... calm. His only confidant was Robert Wilberforce, to whom, for the next two years, he poured forth in a series of letters, headed 'UNDER THE SEAL' to indicate that they contained the secrets of the confessional— the whole history of his spiritual perturbations. The irony of his position was singular; for, during the whole of this time, Manning was himself holding back from the Church of Rome a host of hesitating penitents by means of arguments which he was at the very ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Wu after this from any source, he is hardly likely to have survived his patron or to have taken part in the death-struggle with Yueh, which began with the disaster at Tsui- li. If these inferences are approximately correct, there is a certain irony in the fate which decreed that China's most illustrious man of peace should be contemporary with her ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... most generous," went on Ida in the same bitter tone, the irony of which made her father wince, for he understood her mood better than did her lover. "I only regret that I cannot appreciate such generosity more than I do. But it is at least in my power to give you the return which you ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... irony in the Prince's tone but no trace of offensiveness. Nevertheless, Mr. Blithers turned a shade more purple than before, and not from the violence of exercise. He was having some difficulty in controlling his temper. What manner ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... lawful wife, had, by some retributive turn of justice, endowed him wholly with her own qualities. Gard could almost find it in his breast to like the big, large-hearted, gentle boy, but for a final irony of fate—the son's blind adoration of his father, and that father's obvious but helpless dislike of the impending romance. Every element of contradiction seemed to be present in the tangle and to bind the older watchers ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... single end of imaginative interpretation, for the sake of giving with the original melody all the harmonies of subtle association and profound meaning the ages have added, is, indeed, a great undertaking. But is it as valuable as it is vast? M. Brunetiere has poured out his irony upon the critics who believe that their own reactions upon literature are anything to us in the presence of the works to which they have thrilled. May it not also be asked of the interpreter if its function is a necessary one? Do we require so much enlightenment, only to enjoy? Appreciative criticism ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... be bitter irony, which means saying the exact opposite of what you mean in order to make yourself disagreeable; as when you happen to have a dirty face, and someone says, 'How nice and ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... the extraordinary charm of Japanese character, the infinite goodness of the common people, their instinctive politeness, and the absence among them of any tendencies to indulge in criticism, ridicule, irony, or sarcasm. No one endeavours to expand his own individuality by belittling his fellow; no one tries to make himself appear a superior being: any such attempt would be vain in a community where the weaknesses of each are known to all, where nothing can be concealed or disguised, and where affectation ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Madame Cheron, with a smile of irony, 'and I shall no doubt consent to this, since I see how necessary tranquillity and retirement are to restore your spirits. I did not think you capable of so much duplicity, niece; when you pleaded this excuse for remaining here, I foolishly believed it to be a just one, nor expected to have ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... eyes of the heavens searched down upon the infinitesimal moving figure. Their cold smile was steely, perhaps with the irony the sight inspired. Their world was so ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... seeking a situation for Florent, but in a very extraordinary and most mysterious fashion. He would have liked to find some employment of a dramatic character, or in which there should be a touch of bitter irony, as was suitable for an outlaw. Gavard was a man who was always in opposition. He had just completed his fiftieth year, and he boasted that he had already passed judgment on four Governments. He still contemptuously shrugged his shoulders at the thought ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... pleasantries, so accentuated by ridicule, that the silent and stodgy men, who are apt to represent a nation's real strength, hardly know where to turn for a little saving dulness. A deep vein of irony runs through every grade of society, making it possible for us to laugh at our own bitter discomfiture, and to scoff with startling distinctness at the evils which we passively permit. Just as the French monarchy under ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... thus brought his speech to its proper, and what would have been a perfect close, he suddenly changed his tone, and, in a strain of consummate and powerful irony, began to rally his antagonist. He assented to the gentleman's eulogium upon Lord Mansfield. It was deserved. He acknowledged the justice of his remarks in relation to himself (Hamilton) and his ephemeral fame; but he did not see why the gentleman should have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... vols. I. L'Art des Mines, II. Trait de la formation des mtaux, III. Essai d'une histoire naturelle des couches de la terre. In his preface to the third volume Holbach has some interesting remarks about the deluge, the irony of which seems to have escaped the royal ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... After all, he was English, and to some extent reticent, but he felt that his comrade's dramatic utterance was more or less warranted, for the irony and pathos of the situation was clear to him. Grenfell had found the mine at last, but the gold he had sought so persistently was not for him. Men great in the mining world had smiled compassionately ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... being imaginative, as in its employing the fittest words in the fittest places. Its general level is that of the best epistolary or oratorical compositions, according to the elevation of the subject. He loves not to soar into the empyrean, but often checks Pegasus by a strong curb, or by a touch of irony or an incongruous allusion prevents himself or his reader being carried away. [58] This mingling of irony and earnest is thoroughly characteristic of his genius. To men of realistic minds it forms one of the greatest ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Present, and the essay on Chartism, that Carlyle achieves the work he was chosen by gods and men to achieve; which possibly might not have been achieved by a happier or more healthy-minded man. He never rose to more deadly irony than in such macabre descriptions as that of the poor woman proving her sisterhood with the rich by giving them all typhoid fever; or that perfect piece of badinage about "Overproduction of Shirts"; in which he imagines the aristocrats ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... you some work, lads," observed the captain, with a touch of grave irony as he pointed to the portion of the bank on which they had been engaged. He was right. The flood had not only overleaped this, but had hollowed it out and swept it clean away into the river— thus accomplishing ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... the banker. "In fact, I like the idea of staying here much better. It is more private, you know." He grinned significantly, but the woman's smile of faint derision changed merely to irony, which held steadily, making Braman's ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... not taking, but he is unscrupulous about adequate service. He makes no virtue of frankness, but much of kindly helpfulness and charity to the weak. He has no sense of duty in planning or economising. He is polite and soft-spoken, and disposed to irony rather than denunciation, ready to admire cuteness and condone deception. Not so the rebel. That tradition is working in us also. It has been the lot of vast masses of population in every age to be ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... his word of honor, sides with the primitive lover. The tragedy seems foreordained, for Innocencia makes spirited resistance, while Manacao avenges himself by killing the doctor. A comic figure of a German scientist adds humor and a certain poignant irony to the tale. Such a bare outline conveys nothing of the mysterious charm of the original, nor of its poetic atmosphere. Comparing Innocencia with what has been termed its sister work, Maria, I believe ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... Lena thought a little of the irony of it—that all her life she had pined to be set in luxury, and yet now and here the very rugs and chairs and soft lights, the pictures of unrecognized subjects, the unfamiliar delicacies before her at the table, all seemed to loom up and crush her into insignificance by their ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... probably William Beeston's grandfather, also William Beeston, to whom the satirical Elizabethan, Thomas Nash, dedicated in 1593, with good-humoured irony, one of his insolent libels on Gabriel Harvey, a scholar who had defamed the memory of a dead friend. Nash laughed at his patron's struggles with syntax in his efforts to write poetry, and at his indulgence in drink, which betrayed itself in his red ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... suis gueuse, il est vrai," she writes to Madame de Noailles on first going to Spain, "mais je suis encore plus fiere." Detailing to Madame de Maintenon somewhat later the indignities they both had to put up with from accusations of a like nature, she speaks of them in a tone of lofty irony and sovereign contempt which appears to exclude ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... passions on the one side, and to pockets on the other, the debates can hardly be anything but stormy; and if one recollects that most of these encounters take place between the present and the past lower orders, is it astonishing if irony and ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... the army, both conceived in a strain of the most poignant and sarcastic irony, it proceeds to discuss the three questions: Whether the lord-protector be a tyrant? Whether it be lawful to do justice on him by killing him? and, Whether this, if it be lawful, will prove of benefit to the commonwealth? ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... to blow up?" he inquired, with a tinge of irony. "Well, it isn't." He turned to me. "Here's where we shall stay for a while. You and the men are to cut a number of these pine trees for a house. Better pick out the little ones, about three or four inches through: they're easier handled. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... aspect of the case for the time being did not concern her. The death of her mother had been a stunning shock, and when she crossed over to the hotel—what irony, by the bye, to think she had been born there thirty-nine years ago, in the old inn that had preceded the twice rebuilt hotel!—when she crossed the street with Minna, it had been with blazing, tearless eyes and the desire to take the hotel manager and his minions by the coat collar, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... returned Sinclair, maintaining his irony. "I have apologized, and Mr. McCloud and I understand one another ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... also in German script, "Good people—they give everything!" and on several were orders to leave those within alone. And there was a curious and touching irony in that phrase: "Gute Leute— Schoenen!" chalked in stiff script by those now fighting for their lives to the north of us and likely never to ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... the manner with which she was regarded in the great shop, her lavish liberality, her beautiful carriage, and all the fine things about her, had brought Ursula to this very thought, that it was extremely fine to marry a rich man. Sophy's irony was lost upon her simple-minded cousin, and so indeed was Mrs. Copperhead's pathos. That she was very kind, and that she was not very happy, were both apparent, but Ursula did not connect the unhappiness with the fact that she was a rich man's wife. ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... coiled low at the base of her beautiful curved head. Her pearls were the only jewels she had brought to France and she always wore them. She sighed as she looked at the vision in the mirror. For Kirkpatrick! But she was used to the irony of life. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... blasphemy. Great peoples formed themselves on both sides of the sea round a sovereign who bent the whole force of his mind to hold together an Empire which the growth of nationality must inevitably destroy. There is throughout a tragic grandeur in the irony of Henry's position, that of a Sforza of the fifteenth century set in the midst of the twelfth, building up by patience and policy and craft a dominion alien to the deepest sympathies of his age ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... true that she had brought up her son with unconventional ideas; that she had unconventional ideas herself on family and marriage. All the same, her mind at this moment was in a most conventional state of shock. She knew it, perceiving quite clearly the irony of the situation. Who were the Penfolds? A little artist girl?—earning her living—with humble, perhaps hardly presentable relations—to mate with her glorious, golden Harry?—Harry whom half the ambitious mothers of England courted ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a monocle chain. You can get them both for three dollars," Honey added sweetly, affecting not to notice Skinner's reproachful irony. ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... guardian, and ruler. In the capacity of ruler he was assisted by his wife, a hideous, horrible, old witch with "crooked, copper-fingers iron-pointed," with deformed head and distorted features, and uniformly spoken of in irony in the Kalevala as "hyva emanta," the good hostess; she feasted her guests on lizards, worms, toads, and writhing serpents. Tuouen Poika, "The God of the Red Cheeks," so called because of his bloodthirstiness and constant cruelties, is the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... scarcely call the wonderful series of historical cartoons which he executed at sixteen caricatures, even in the modern sense of the word. Whatever humour they possess is neutralized by the grim irony which, even at this early ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt |
