"Irony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mine," he said without the slightest irony or bitterness, but added with conviction: "That shows you what life ashore is. Much better be out ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... here 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, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... turned a brick red. Shame and mortification surged within him. He was cruelly conscious of an undercurrent of irony in the Premier's courteous request. For an instant he was sorely crushed. A low laugh from the opposite side of the room sent a shaft to his soul. He looked up. Vos Engo was still smiling. In an instant the American's blood boiled; his manner changed like a flash; blind, unreasoning ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... impossible to read those lines now without a sense of irony, different from that which ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... pincers, gridirons, lighted fagots, and the words Justice, Charity, Mercy.* "It is necessary," said they, "to make an example of these impious wretches, and burn them for the glory of God." They began even to prepare the pile, when a Mussulman answered in a strain of irony: ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... The slight touch 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 Christian," ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... friends, as you would have me, who despised my table for being furnished with fish, and not with the heads of governors of provinces." For in fact it is related as true, that Anaxarchus seeing a present of small fishes, which the king sent to Hephaestion, had used this expression, in a sort of irony, and disparagement of those who undergo vast labors and encounter great hazards in pursuit of magnificent objects, which after all bring them little more pleasure or enjoyment than what others have. From what I have said upon this subject, it is apparent that Alexander ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... dismal failure—is a Might-have-been. In a luckless moment he discovered men Rise to high position through a ready pen. Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore—"I, With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high." Only he did not possess when he made the trial, Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... the irony of things. A knight had come to the rescue—but the wrong knight. Why could it not have been Geoffrey who waited in ambush outside the castle, and not a pleasant but negligible stranger? Whether, deep down in her consciousness, she was aware of a fleeting sense of disappointment ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... pretty irony; "well, then, of co'se, sisteh or no sisteh, you muz' instan'ly go!" The steady tinkle of the sister's laughter as she passed with a chair provoked her own: "Yes, go! Me, I'll rimmain with her till ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... West has benefited China by teaching her the use of force. That this should be the main contribution of Christian to Pagan civilisation is one of the ironies of history. But it is part of the greater irony which gave the Christian faith to precisely those nations whose fundamental instincts and convictions were and are in radical ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... while Woloda, who was dozing on a settee in the drawing-room, kept addressing no one in particular as he muttered, "Lord! how she murders it! WHAT a musician! WHAT a Beethoven!" (he always pronounced the composer's name with especial irony). "Wrong again! Now—a second time! That's it!" and so on. Meanwhile Katenka and I were sitting by the tea-table, and somehow she began to talk about her favourite subject—love. I was in the right frame of mind to philosophise, and began ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... as their counsellor, 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 ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... the yogi two rupees for food, though, viewing the animated skeleton, it seemed a touch of irony. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... 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 ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... entered into any resolution; this, I think, he should have explained, and not insinuated so gross a reflection on a great majority of the House of Commons, who first passed this law, and have ever since opposed all attempts to repeal it; these are the gentleman whom, in sarcasm and irony, he is pleased to call the "worthy," that is, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... But his opponents in the Corinthian Church had forced this upon him; and now he asks that he may be borne with a little in "his folly." He is pleased to speak of his conduct in this way, with that touch of humorous irony not unfamiliar to him when writing under some excitement. He pleads with his old converts for so much indulgence, because he is "jealous over them with a godly jealousy." He had won them to the Lord. "I have espoused you," he says, ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... Lilies," repeated the cavalier, emerging from his revery. "How abundant beautiful names are in these unattractive localities! Since I have been travelling in this part of the country the terrible irony of the names is a constant surprise to me. Some place that is remarkable for its barren aspect and the desolate sadness of the landscape is called Valleameno (Pleasant Valley). Some wretched mud-walled village stretched on a barren plain and proclaiming its poverty ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... dilate with keen irony on the fate of the first half of Israel's sin—the calf. It was thought a god, but its worshippers shall be in a fright for it. 'Calves,' says Hosea, though there was but one at Beth-el; and he uses the feminine, as some think, depreciatingly. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... indeed, she was. I sometimes thought that she held herself at a like value, for though there was about her a constant crowd of suitors, none of them, seemingly, could win an atom of encouragement. She was waiting, I told myself, waiting; and I had even pictured to myself the grim irony of a situation in which our junior might be called upon ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... that this cave, too, had sprung a leak; not with any premonitory drip, but all at once, as though someone had turned on a faucet. In ten seconds a very competent streamlet six inches wide had eroded a course down through the guano, past the fire and to the outer slope. And by the irony of fate that one—and only one—leak in all the roof expanse of a big cave was directly over one end of our tiny ledge. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... some of his official visitations, used to cry out, "Fellow-citizens, I'm coming among you;" and the anecdote never recurs to my mind, without bringing Marble back to my recollection. When in spirits, he had much of this bitter irony in his manner; and his own early experience had rendered him somewhat insensible to professional suffering; but, on the whole, I always ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... comprehended by, and agreed to between both parties, that the party of the first part interferes with, molests, makes the subject of remark, indirectly or directly, impugns or maligns, the party of the second party in the pursuit of lawful proceedings neither by appeal, nor by entreaty, nor by satire, irony, libel, gossip, hinted evidence or such other expressions of mental feeling which are unseemly and tend to weaken man's power or involve in confusion a settled purpose. Said agreement to take effect at once on the signing of this ...
— A Christmas Story - Man in His Element: or, A New Way to Keep House • Samuel W. Francis
... 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 very ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... upon them (if necessary) and convert them into customers! Individually we say: "We will send you our religion." Nationally: "We will send you goods, and we'll make you take them—we need the money!" Think of the bitter irony of a boat leaving a Christian port loaded with missionaries upstairs and rum below, both bound for the same place and for the same people—both for the heathen ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... Palais-Royal, however, have been devastated. The picture gallery of the Palais-Royal, a pretty poor one by the by, has practically been destroyed. Only a single picture remains perfectly intact, and that is the Portrait of Philippe Egalite. Was it purposely respected by the riot or is its preservation an irony of chance? The National Guards amused, and still amuse, themselves by cutting out of the canvases that were not entirely destroyed by fire faces to ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... irony). Oh, yes, quite a romance. He was serving in the very battery I so unprofessionally charged. Being a thorough soldier, he ran away like the rest of them, with our cavalry at his heels. To escape ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... the newspapers, and for a subject to talk of— this is a sort of sophistry that it might be difficult to disprove on the bare scheme of contingent utility; but on the ground that we have stated, it must pass for a mere irony. What the proportion between the good and the evil will really be found in any of the supposed cases, may be a question to the understanding; but to the imagination and the heart, that is, to the natural feelings of mankind, it admits ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... 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 ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... Anita's earnest naive personality. Or was he a very clever scoundrel, with irony lurking in his soft voice, and a chuckle that he could so ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... stupendous uplift which has raised the Sierra Nevada to heights of over 14,000 feet a few miles to the west. Along the fault line at the base of the mountains there runs for over 9.50 miles the world's longest aqueduct, which was built to relieve Los Angeles from the danger of drought. It is a strange irony of fate that so delicate and so vital an artery of civilization should be forced to lie where a renewal of earthquake movements may break it at any time. Yet there was no other place to put it, for in spite ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... HOLD. Short for 'to hold'—but it is a licentious construction, so also, in next line, 'themselves' for 'they themselves.' The stanza is on the whole the worst in the poem, its irony and essential force being much dimmed by obscure expression, and even slightly staggering continuity of thought. The Rooks may be properly supposed to have taught men to dispute, but not to write. The Swallow teaches building, literally, and the Owl moping, literally; ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... warriors, as Nicias and Laches; some statesmen, as Critias and Critobulus; some were politicians, in the worst sense of that word, as Glaucon; and some were young men of fashion, as Euthydemus and Alcibiades. These were all alike delighted with his inimitable irony, his versatility of genius, his charming modes of conversation, his adroitness of reply; and they were compelled to confess the wisdom and justness of his opinions, and to admire the purity and goodness of his ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... General Hunter. When a deputation of ministers of religion from Chicago urged on him the desirability of immediate action against Slavery, he met them with a reply the opening passage of which is one of the world's masterpieces of irony. When Horace Greeley backed the same appeal with his "Prayer of Twenty Millions," Lincoln in a brief letter summarized his policy with his usual lucidity ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... 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
... "she cares for me, or she would never have wished me to stay. Even the Deacon helped me—" The irony of the fact shocked him. He would not think of it. He might get a letter from her by two o'clock. With pleasure thrilling through every nerve, he imagined how she would word her confession. For she had ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... diverse imports in one and the same sentence; they depend on the building that they compose for the very chemistry of the stuff that composes them. The same epithet is used in the phrases "a fine day" and "fine irony," in "fair trade" and "a fair goddess." Were different symbols to be invented for these sundry meanings the art of literature would perish. For words carry with them all the meanings they have worn, and the writer shall be judged by those that he selects for prominence in the train of his thought. ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... pretty decent sort yourself," returned Myner, with more than his usual flippancy of manner, but, as I was gratefully aware, not a trace of his occasional irony of meaning. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nor could hope to have any interest in. "Not one among many, many Romans," said he, "has a family altar or an ancestral tomb. They have fought to maintain the luxury of the great, and they are called in bitter irony the 'masters of the world' while they do not possess a clod of earth that ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... a wonderful author is Monsieur Voltaire! How lucidly he exposes the folly of this crazy plan for raising the entire revenue of the country from a single tax on land! how he withers it with his irony! how he makes you laugh whilst he is convincing you! how sure one feels that the proposal is killed by his wit and economic penetration: killed never to be mentioned again among ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... actually is. The mere thought of these protagonists of the century working in harmony to one great purpose, without distrust of each other's motives, and with no necessity for anyone's dodging political foul play, summons the smile of irony. Mutual trust was never so much a suggestion to laugh down. The mere hint that it might be possible would make one a target for the wit ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... her sister had noticed before her, that he was efficient, well-groomed, smart of speech, passably good-looking, independent at least in bearing, hard, at least in appearance, and possessed of a certain gift of irony that ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... which I knew was ironically directed against myself, I did not care. So long as I was to be with my companions and of them, irony did not matter. I caught the twinkle in his eye and laughed. He was as joyous as Narcisse. The gladness of the July morning danced in his veins. He pulled the violin and bow out of the old baize bag and fiddled as we walked. It must ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... into a short grim laugh. The idea of Beatrice languishing for Owen Davies, indeed the irony of the whole position, was too much ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... considering happiness in all its bearings. "Hilda was here to-day," she suddenly resumed, as if they had never mentioned happiness. "She brought Bobbie—he's a fine boy now." Ralph observed, with an amusement that had a tinge of irony in it, that she was now going to sidle away quickly from this dangerous approach to intimacy on to topics of general and family interest. Nevertheless, he reflected, she was the only one of his family with whom ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... speech was irony, with which Athens was familiar. But it also displayed a conception, wholly new, that of maintaining at any cost the truth. The novelty must have charmed. When Peter and the apostles were arraigned before ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... to deliver Nichols; either because he really knew too much or because he had scruples. Nichols had certainly been faithful to him. And, with his fine irony, it was delightful to him to think that I should die a felon's death in England. For those reasons he had identified me with Nikola el Escoces, intending to give up whichever suited him at the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... another take her, and such a man as Dare! To have such a fool's manner that he was thought to be in earnest when he was least so; that now, when his whole future hung in the balance, retribution had overtaken him, and with bitter irony had mocked at his earnestness and made it of none effect. She had thought it was his natural manner to all! His cursed folly had lost her to him. If she had known, surely it would have been, it must have been different. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... secret, because Angela was unwilling to sever her connection with the theatre, neither did she wish to part with her professional name, that by which she was celebrated, nor to add to it the cacophonous "Krespel." With the most extravagant irony he described to me what a strange life of worry and torture Angela led him as soon as she became his wife. Krespel was of opinion that more capriciousness and waywardness were concentrated in Angela's little person than in all the rest of the prima donnas in the world put together. If he ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... dripped with irony. "He will be surprised certainly," I answered, "but as he never was my lover, I don't think it will be ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... a sea-faring man, your landlord?" queried he, and there was not a trace of suppressed irony in his voice; "I ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... particularly, recourse was had to an arm which scholars often wield rather clumsily. They joked about these free ions in solution, and they asked to see this chlorine and this sodium which swam about the water in a state of liberty. But in science, as elsewhere, irony is not argument, and it soon had to be acknowledged that the hypothesis of M. Arrhenius showed itself singularly fertile and had to be regarded, at all events, as a very expressive image, if not, indeed, entirely in ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... and capable of a steady and cool comprehension of them. He had wit at will. He had humor that, when he pleased, was delicate and delightful. He had a satire that was good-natured or caustic, Horace or Juvenal, Swift or Rabelais, at his pleasure. He had talents for irony, allegory, and fable, that he could adapt with great skill to the promotion of moral and political truth. He was master of that infantine simplicity which the French call naivete, which never fails to charm, in Phaedrus and La Fontaine, from ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... stands for France herself. It was a young soldier of Strasburg—not, however, Alsatian born—who, in April, 1792, composed a song that saved France from the fate of Poland and changed the current of civilization. By an irony of destiny the Tricolour no longer waves over ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... gambling, sycophancy to the rich, or "getting on in the world." This is a very important distinction and one which illuminates the connection between the drama and the mores. Socrates was an etholog, although not an actor. He spent sarcasm, irony, and humor on the ways of the Athenians of his time.[2037] Aristophanes was another, Rabelais was another, Erasmus was an inferior one. In his Colloquies and Praise of Folly he is more of a preacher, but his aim is to influence ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... said Nora with bitter irony; "I didn't know it was a general servant you wanted. You spend a dollar and a half on a marriage license and then you don't have to pay any wages. It's a ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... business-like manner in which they addressed themselves to their task, as he noticed the jaunty destroyers of his race succumbing one by one to fate, or ignominiously attempting to "get away," he would feel that the "irony of the situation" was complete. In a vague way he would grasp the fact—hitherto undreamt of in his dove's philosophy—that, if the pigeon is preyed upon by man, man in his turn is preyed upon by ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... ourselves, and to get a living, we find antagonisms and defensive tactics, occupying so much of our time and energy that loving one another is almost lost sight of. It has been found necessary even among those of the same nation to legislate for love. We call such laws, with dull contempt for irony, social legislation. In Germany, and now in England, the modern sacrament of loving one another consists in licking stamps; these stamps are then stuck on cards, which bind the brethren together in ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... and black looks at once; but you don't understand the type. I know now why you don't understand the Irish. Sometimes you think it's soft, and sometimes sly, and sometimes murderous, and sometimes uncivilized; and all the time it's only civilized; quivering with the sensitive irony of understanding all that you ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... Orgreave said, with irony. "And we're only at the second, it seems. Seven more to come; What do you think ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... commencing with "Sane, quia vero," in the original, are said by Phaedria not in answer to the words of Thais immediately preceding, but to her previous question, "Cur non recta introibas?" "Why didn't you come into the house at once?" and that they are spoken in bitter irony.] ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... an introduction to the Sophist. Long ago, in the Euthydemus, the vulgar application of the 'both and neither' Eristic had been subjected to a similar criticism, which there takes the form of banter and irony, ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... the pistol a bout portant with deliberation; the flint, in the familiar irony of fate, missed fire, and there was nothing more to do with the treacherous weapon but to throw it in the face of the Highlander. It struck full; the trigger-guard gashed the jaw and the metalled butt spoiled the sight of ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... five minutes, standing about in scattered group, and listening for some warning from the watch tower. It was the eve of the factor's wedding—a fact that I recalled with bitter irony as I noted him posted alertly in the pelting snow, musket in hand, expecting shortly to be plunged in the thick of a bloody fray. Far across in the distance a gleam of light twinkled in the window of Flora's room. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... immeasurable scorn. I should say it's a good safe laugh to indulge in, for I think it is based on ability to see himself and his own mistakes more clearly than anybody else can, and there is no note of defeat in it. But it is full of a cruel irony that brings to mind a vision of one of those old medieval flagellant priests reviewing his sins before thrashing his own body with a ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... also hit, and the only field gun taken. The retiring Boers were swiftly followed up by Thorneycroft's column, however, and the gun was retaken, together with twenty of Kritzinger's men. It must be confessed that there seems some irony in the fact that, within five days of the British ruling by which the Boers were no longer a military force, these non-belligerents had inflicted a loss of nearly six hundred men killed, wounded, or taken. Two small commandos, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... such charming people," said Garnett with mild irony; and, reverting to her first remark, he bethought himself to add: "I hope Miss Hermione ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... was dumb: but the appellant and the appellee were relieved by the less delicate intervention of one of the company; who declared, perhaps with malicious irony, he never heard his lordship to greater advantage. 'Do you think so,' said the peer, turning to his panegyrist. 'No. I believe you are mistaken. I never can satisfy myself! I am so fastidious in the choice of my phrases! ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... had all of happiness that he could want! Human perfection of existence. A savage laugh of irony was within Lee as he thought of it. No one had ever held out the offer of more than perfection to these people. But Franklin evidently had done it—playing upon the evil which must lie within every living thing, no matter how latent it may be. ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... it may be fairly termed—was swifter than that of the Reformation had been. "Facilis descensus Averni,"—this is the usual course. High mass was restored in Saint Paul's Cathedral, and in very few London churches were Gospel sermons yet preached. With bitter irony, liberty was granted to Bishop Ridley— to hear mass in the Tower Chapel. Liberty to commit idolatry was not likely to be used by Nicholas Ridley. The French Protestants were driven out, except a few named by the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... fabric of imposture, and laid it open even to the comprehension of Sir Edward Bromley and Master Thomas Potts. This was a case which well deserved Archbishop Harsnet for its historian. His vein of irony, which Swift or Echard never surpassed, and the scorching invective of which he was so consummate a master, would have been well employed in handing down to posterity a scene of villainy to which the frauds of Somers and the stratagems of Weston were mere child's play. We might then have ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... without attainments had been brought forward; the settled currents of years had been suddenly changed by the eddy and whirl of the moment; but never before had any eccentricity of political caprice gone so far as to suggest the bitterest antagonist of a party for its anointed chief. It was the irony of logic, and yet it came to pass by the progress of events ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of telling funny stories in private conversation, they disappeared more and more from his public discourse. He would still now and then point his argument with expressions of inimitable quaintness, and flash out rays of kindly humor and witty irony; but his general tone was serious, and rose sometimes to genuine solemnity. His masterly skill in dialectical thrust and parry, his wealth of knowledge, his power of reasoning and elevation of sentiment, disclosed ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... sublime pity in her eyes. 'I do not conceal from you,' she said, 'that I love you very much. I, too, have suffered, and I had thought for one moment that fate had vouchsafed me happiness; but, as you would say—the irony of life.' ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... a curious irony in the spectacle of the House of Lords standing out for the principle of fixity of tenure, and defending tooth and nail the tenant-right of a few hundred planters, when little more than thirty years ago this same body offered the most relentless opposition to any recognition of the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... my faith to that, miss, if I was you," says Ryan, respectfully, but with a touch of the fine irony which is bred and born with his class ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... by a wonderful chance the wife and daughter of that same Bellecour. And at Boisvert this briganding Captain was as much to-night the lord of life and death, and all besides, as had been the Marquis of Bellecour of old. But he pondered not these things, for all that the stern irony of the coincidence did not escape him. That evil look in Charlot's eyes, that sinister smile on Charlot's lips, more than suggested what manner of vengeance the Captain would exact—and that, for the time, was matter enough to absorb ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... between him and Aaron. Breakfast passed, and Aaron knew that he must leave. There was something in Lilly's bearing which just showed him the door. In some surprise and confusion, and in some anger, not unmingled with humorous irony, he put his things in his bag. He put on his hat and coat. Lilly was seated rather ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... blindly and distrust the white race generally, and so far as they agree on definite action, think that the Negro's only hope lies in emigration beyond the borders of the United States. And yet, by the irony of fate, nothing has more effectually made this programme seem hopeless than the recent course of the United States toward weaker and darker peoples in the West Indies, Hawaii, and the Philippines,—for where in the world may we go and be safe ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... room, and the host, rushing up, cried, "Welcome, my lord! What will your lordship please to eat?" The prince's answer was very expressive. Stretching out his foot, so that his slipper sparkled and glittered, he took his golden robe in his hand, and said with bitter irony, "Welcome, my lord coat! welcome, most excellent robe! What will your lordship please to eat? For," said he, turning to his surprised host, "I ought to ask my coat what it will eat, since the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... of the strict followers of Pythagoras. So far, however, as we can form a picture of him for ourselves, he was not the sort of man to become the disciple of any one. He was a genuine Athenian in respect of what is called his 'irony', which implies a certain humorous reserve which kept him from all extravagances, however interested he might be in the extravagances of others. Nevertheless, while still quite a young man, he had ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... conference—where they should send their wives and children. And one of these Frenchmen, the one who had been most ferocious in his condemnation of the German barbarian, said quite naively and with no sense of irony or paradox: "Of course, if we could find an absolutely open town which would not be defended at all the women folk and children would be all right." His instinct, of course, was perfectly just. The German "savage" had had three quarters of a million people in his absolute power in Brussels, and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... (changing his tone from irony to kindness) Come, my dear Clara, I will not torment you any more. You deserve to have done a great deal of mischief by your precipitation; but I believe this time you have done little or none, at least none that is irremediable; and you have ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... office, little scraps of paper containing quips and puns and jokes in prose or verse, or acrostics from his prolific pen. One clever acrostic upon the office boy, which has always remained in my memory, I should like for its delicate irony (worthy of Swift himself) to reproduce; but as that promising youth may still be in the service I feel I had better not, as irony sometimes wounds. For some time we had in the office an Apollo—a very Belvidere. He was a glory introduced ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... serious faith, or there may be a slight touch of irony in the word, with a glance at the gloomy faith of early puritanism and its "lifeless ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... light irony. "One regrets one is at present unable to offer better social standing. To-morrow, it may ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the most perspicacious beholder will believe that it is absolutely necessary that she should twist, or refix, or push aside the ringlet or curl she plays with. If she has some dignity of profile, you will be persuaded that she is giving irony or grace to what she says to her neighbor, sitting in such a position as to produce the magical effect of the 'lost profile,' so dear to great painters, by which the cheek catches the high light, the nose is shown in clear ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... she have been really inspired?" he queried, with grave irony, keeping his back to the room, as if entranced by the contemplation of the town's colossal forms half lost in the night. He did not even look round when he heard the mutter of the word "Providential" from the principal subordinate of his department, whose name, printed sometimes ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the brook, among the flowers, they ate their breakfast under improvised canopies. The space was filled with music while the smoke from the fires curled up in slender wreaths. The water bubbled cheerfully in the hot dishes as though uttering sounds of consolation, or perchance of sarcasm and irony, to the dead fishes. The body of the cayman writhed about, sometimes showing its torn white belly and again its speckled greenish back, while man, Nature's favorite, went on his way undisturbed by what the Brahmins and vegetarians would call so many ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... little, nevertheless, this confidence diminished, and irony gave place to astonishment; astonishment changed to stupor. Those who have passed through that extraordinary minute will not forget it. It was evident that there was something underlying all this. But what? Profound obscurity. Can one imagine Paris in a cellar? People ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... exactly," she replied in a tone of irony. Rising, she went over to the wall and touched one of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Fair, he had looked curiously down at the feverish whirl, the gilded shams, the maddening, murderous conflict for place,—the empty mocking pageantry of the victorious, the sickening despair and savage irony of the legions of the defeated; and after the roar and shout and moan of the social maelstrom, as presented in the great city where his studies had been pursued, it was pleasant this afternoon to watch the fluttering white creatures that surrounded that calm beautiful child, and to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... with bitter irony. "Oh, no! Hossish ain't frightened! On'y ran away four timesh comin' here. Oh, no! Nobody's frightened. Every thin's all ri'. Ain't it, Bill?" he said, addressing the driver. "On'y been overboard twish; knocked down a hatchway once. Thash nothin'! On'y two men unner doctor's han's at Stockton. Thash ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... 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
... than half dead already, don't I?' she said with a grim outburst of irony. 'Give me ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... curious irony of fate, the troopship that bore him to South Africa had Bellair also on board, but owing to Elwyn's secret decision—he was far the cleverer man of the two—he and his friend were no longer bound together by that wordless intimacy which is the basis of any close tie among men. By ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... surest way to do this is to force you to give me in death that respect and veneration which you refused me while I lived. You see that, in spite of my boasted repentance, I still have left a spark of satanic irony, and I do not expect you to believe me when I tell you that I have planned this for your own good. But it seems to me that if you can exhibit respect for the one who is directly responsible for your cursed passions ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... government of the world seems, indeed, to be penetrated by a good-natured irony; it is as if the Power controlling us saw that, like children, we must be tenderly wooed into doing things which we should otherwise neglect, by a sense of high importance, as a kindly father who is doing accounts keeps his children quiet by letting one hold the blotting-paper and another ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Monsieur Duplessis, have mostly disappeared. I have a hundred thousand livres at my disposal,—that is to say, at yours,—and in a month at latest I shall be able to pay off my debt. You ask me to be sincere," he continued, with a tinge of reproachful irony; "be sincere in your turn, madame, and acknowledge that you and your husband have both felt uneasy, and that the delays I have been obliged to ask for have not seemed very encouraging ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... could dance forever. That's the irony of it—that I cannot make you. But if I had Drake's ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... road-side images. In front of the shrine several candles were burning, the offerings of some people who were having prayers said for them, and the whole was lighted by two lamps burning low. On a step of the altar a much-contorted devil was crouching uneasily, for he was subjugated and, by a grim irony, made to carry a massive incense-burner on his shoulders. In this temple there were more than a hundred idols standing in rows, many of them life-size, some of them trampling devils under their feet, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... was not a thing she could use—not a stanchion to the window, not a rod to the bed. And even if there had been, how futile in her puny grip! She glanced at her tiny white fingers with their carefully trimmed and polished nails, and smiled—a grim smile of irony. Then she placed her ear against the panels of the door and listened—and from the other side came the sound of heavy panting and the stealthy movement of hands. Suddenly a scream rang out, so clear and vibrating, so ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... supposed to be an extravagant lie made up on the spur of the moment. It is a dream within a dream, and to accuse it of improbability is like accusing the sky of being blue. But Mr. Baildon, whether from hasty reading or natural difference of taste, cannot in the least comprehend that rich and romantic irony of Stevenson's London stories. He actually says of that portentous monument of humour, Prince Florizel of Bohemia, that, "though evidently admired by his creator, he is to me on the whole rather an irritating presence." From this we are almost driven to believe (though desperately ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... a mineral fountain—warm, cold, irony, and sulfurous; for the tourist, it is a place for redouts and concerts; for the pilgrim, the place of relics, where the gown of the Virgin Mary, the blood of Jesus, the cloth which enveloped the head ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... honour, Kenelm, you ask very odd questions. But you cannot learn too early this fact, that irony is to the high-bred what Billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank: he implies it in the politest terms he can invent. Lord Hautfort denies my right of free warren over a ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... meant to say that. She had meant to say that it was impossible, out of the question. But her heart was running away with her, goaded on by the irony of it all. A veil seemed to have fallen from before her eyes, and she knew now why she had been drawn to Jimmy from the very first. They were mates, and she had ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... reception of false opinions, and the projection of vain designs, they easily fill with idle notions, till, in time, they make their plaything an author; their first diversion commonly begins with an ode or an epistle, then rises, perhaps, to a political irony, and is, at last, brought to its height, by a treatise of philosophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle himself in sophisms, and flounder in absurdity, to talk confidently of the scale of being, and to give solutions which himself confesses impossible ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... a half-smile at the irony of her own position, which, until to-day, she had accepted without after-thought, and which of a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... literary academies. Tiraboschi, in his History of Italian Literature, has given a list of 171; and Jarkius, in his Specimen Historiae Academiarum Conditarum, enumerates nearly 700. Many of these, with a sort of Socratic irony, gave themselves ludicrous names, or names expressive of ignorance. Such were the Lunatici of Naples, the Estravaganti, the Fulminales, the Trapessati, the Drowsy, the Sleepers, the Anxious, the Confused, the Unstable, the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I must begin with the uppermost of them, the Heroic Epistle. I have read it so very often, that I have got it by heart; and now I am master of all its beauties, I confess I like it infinitely better than I did, though I liked it infinitely before. There is more wit, ten times more delicacy of irony, as much poetry, and greater facility than and as in the Dunciad. But what Signifies what I think? All the world thinks the same. No soul has, I have heard, guessed within an hundred miles. I catched at Anstey's name, and have, contributed to spread that notion. It has since been called Temple Luttrell's, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... female Moloch, devastating, all-sacrificing, beyond restraint.... As for Miss HOLDING, the publishers turned out to be within the mark in claiming for her "a new voice." I don't, indeed, for the moment recall any voice in the least like it, or any such method; too honest for irony, too detached for sentiment and, as I said above, entirely merciless. Towards the end I found myself falling back on the old frightened protest, "People don't do these things." I still cling to this belief, but the fact remains that Miss HOLDING ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... not a subjunctive for an imperative. [294] 'Assuredly this clemency of yours will end in misery.' Respecting nae, see Zumpt, S 360; and on the transitive sense of vertere, S 145. [295] The sentence beginning with scilicet is again ironical. The sense, without the irony, is: 'Nor can it be supposed that you consider the matter indeed difficult, but that you are without fear. You are, on the contrary, full of fear, but you hesitate.' [296] Immo vero, 'oh no; on the ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... emotions. The situation at Kofn guard-house was one of these. The point at issue between these two men pierced to the bed-rock of national loyalty. Perhaps Blivinski was right. Love of country was part of their physical equipment, yet by the irony of circumstances they ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... presence of an English cabinet minister, relinquished the half-disdainful reserve with which he had entered, and took pains. He drew the man in question, en silhouette, with a hostile touch so sure, an irony so light, that his success was instant ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had 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 included himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... set proudly on his shoulders, his stiff hair of dark blonde thrown back from the forehead without a parting, and cut in a straight line, his aplomb, his magnificent and courtly bearing, his ready tongue, his flashing wit and fine irony, his genial bonhomie and irresistibly winning smile; and Chopin, also, with dark blonde hair, but soft as silk, parted on one side, to use Liszt's own words, "An angel of fair countenance, with brown eyes from which intellect beamed rather than burned; a gentle, refined smile, slightly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... with a heavy irony, so heavy, indeed, that it was coarse. It grated upon Harsanyi because he felt that it was not sincere, an ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... good company, and walk hand in hand with so much compassion and generosity; adulation so loathsome, that you would spit in the man's face who dared offer it to you in a private company, unless you interpreted it as insulting irony, you appropriate with infinite satisfaction, when you share the garbage with the whole stye, and gobble it out of a common trough. No Caesar must pace your boards—no Antony, no royal ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... failed to restore the power of the Crown, it broke the power which impeded the advance of the people itself to political supremacy. Whilst labouring to convert the aristocratic monarchy of which he found himself the head into a personal sovereignty, the irony of fate doomed him to take the first step in an organic change which has converted that aristocratic monarchy into a democratic ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... Abigail, Henry Gauder, Master, with full powers to act for the Company. The new Dorchester was founded, and soon afterwards four "prudent and honest men" went out from it and founded Salem. John White procured a patent and royal charter for them also, which was sealed on March 4th, 1629. It seemed the irony of fate that on the same day 147 years afterwards Washington should open fire upon Boston from the Dorchester heights in the American ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... first parts) one of the most popular of children's classics; and second, a bitter satire against mankind. The intensity of the satire increases as the work proceeds. In the first voyage, that to the Lilliputians, the tone is one mainly of humorous irony; but in such passages as the hideous description of the Struldbrugs in the third voyage the cynical contempt is unspeakably painful, and from the distorted libel on mankind in the Yahoos of the fourth voyage a ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Fortunately the zeal of the city praetor frustrated the scheme. But the doctrines of philosophy, which thus failed to enter by the door of religion, found the door of literature wide open for them. As the irony of fate would have it, Cato, the stalwart enemy of Greek influence, had brought back from Sardinia with him the poet Ennius, and at about the time when the false books of Numa were burning in the Comitium Ennius was giving ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... philosopher than a preacher of virtue. Self-ordained as a censor and reformer, he directed his invective and irony principally against the Sophists, whose chief characteristic as to philosophy seems to have been the denial of objective truth, and thus, of absolute and determinate right. Socrates, in contrast with them, seeks to elicit duty from the occasions for its exercise, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... at that moment a being that singularly resembled this description appeared before him, offering the reality of the imaginary picture he was drawing with so much irony and art. ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... neighbors seemed to regard it rather as a joke that I, a scientist of no mean ability (if I do say it myself), should have fallen victim to the commonest and most vicious of all destroyers of human happiness. The amount of badinage, sarcasm, and irony indulged in by these unfeeling folk at the expense of "Farmer" Baker (as they now jocosely dubbed me) would fill a royal octavo volume. I assure you that I regarded this species of humor as impertinent to ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... in fiction. On both occasions he was punished for assuming a character for purposes of mystification. In the latest instance, it is seen, the pamphlet called 'What if the Pretender Comes?' was written in such obvious irony, that the mistake of his intentions must have been wilful. The other and better-known performance, 'The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,' seems really to have imposed upon some of his readers. It is difficult in these days of toleration ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Macaulay does, and it is commonly supposed to be no heavy fault in him or any other writer for the common public. Man cannot live by analysis alone, nor nourish himself on the secret delights of irony. And if Macaulay had only reflected the more generous of the prejudices of mankind, it would have been well enough. Burke, for instance, was a writer who revered the prejudices of a modern society as deeply as Macaulay did; he ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... at this; and then, "Well," he began, "between you, with your genial irony, and Audubon and Leslie with their heaven-defying rhetoric, I scarcely know whether I stand on my head or my heels. But, the fact is, I think I made a slip in stating my view; or perhaps there was really a latent contradiction in my mind. At any rate, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... were always uttered with a wan, lack-lustre irony, as if he were burlesquing the conventional Western brag and enjoying the mystifications of his listener, whose feeble sense of humor often failed to seize his intention, and to whom any depreciation of New England was naturally unintelligible. She had not come to her final liking for him without ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... grew darker on Count Conrad's forehead; he moved restlessly under the irony, and drank down a draught of red fiery Roussillon without tasting it more than if it had been water. Then he laughed; the same careless musical laughter with which he had made the requiem over a violet—a laugh which belonged at once to the most careless ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... 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, I am afraid I know ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... womanly,' said the Egyptian, in a tone too grave for irony. 'Yet more, fair maiden; wilt thou confide to me the name of thy lover? Can he be Pompeian, and despise wealth, even if blind ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... them—I am not speaking of their purely literary merits, incontestable and universally acknowledged—the one by the spirit of resistance that breathes through all his creations; the other by the spirit of sceptical irony that pervades his works, and by the independent sovereignty attributed to art over all social relations- -greatly aided the cause of intellectual emancipation, and awakened in men's minds the sentiment of liberty. Both of them—the one, directly, by the implacable war he waged against ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... where men have learned to be at once courteous and incisive, to admire urbanity, and therefore really good feeling, and to take a true estimate of the real values of life, a high comedy which can produce irony without coarseness, expose shams without advocating brutality, becomes for the first time possible. It must be admitted that the condition ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... that was sufficiently known to the parties. When they met on the present occasion, therefore, the bows they exchanged were haughty and distant, and the glances cast at each other might have been termed hostile, were it not that a sinister irony was blended with that of Tom Wychecombe. Still, the feelings that were uppermost did not prevent the latter from speaking ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and the characterisation, the remaining important features of the poem are its marked practical irony and its episodes. Marmion, despite his many excellences, is throughout- -and for obvious reasons—the victim of a persistent Nemesis. Scott is much interested in his hero; one fancies that if it were only possible he would in the end extend ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... Stevens, "that is only my emphatic way of speaking." "Of course, you meant figuratively," said Mr. Balch, in a tone of irony; mentally adding, "as I hope you may be ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Be ready for anything—that perhaps is wisdom. Give ourselves up, according to the hour, to confidence, to skepticism, to optimism, to irony and we may be sure that at certain moments at least we shall be with the truth.... Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile. We owe it to ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... to have been driven, by the long suppression of free thought and belief, added to the miseries brought about by the old regime, to take refuge in unrealities, and this has resulted in a kind of deformity of the national soul. It was a strange irony that even the aristocracy should end by falling victim to its own environment. Exploited by miracle-mongers, thrown off its balance by paroxysms of so-called mysticism, it disappeared from view in a welter of practices and beliefs that were perverse and ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... nature as makes them seem like living beings; but, the action being so slight, this is brought out and made manifest by means of a subtile analysis, and by the language chosen to express the emotions, both which may in the translation be lost. There is, besides, in my novel a certain irony, good-humored and frank, and a certain humor, resembling rather the humor of the English than the esprit of the French, which qualities, although happily they do not depend upon puns, or a play upon words, but are in the subject itself, require, in order that they may appear in the ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... Nell, for it was none other, with humorous irony of lip. "How can you so belie the Duchess?" She ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... out laughing. "Hee-hee-hee! Thank you, sir, for a sermon as well as a sovereign. You have been most kind, indeed!" She changed suddenly from irony to anger. "I never was called a heathen before! Considering what I have done for you, I think you might at least have been civil. Good afternoon, sir." She lifted her saucy little snub-nose, and walked with ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... these "exaggerations." It is the same sort of instinct as shows itself in our love of certain kinds of fiction. We know that some of the happy endings in the plays and in the novels are often far-fetched; but we like to have the happy endings, or the "poetic justice" endings, or the "irony of fate" endings, just the same. When the child makes up his endings to fit his sense of justice or beauty, we must not condemn him, as we are often tempted to do, by calling his fabrication a "lie," for that ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... does not denote everybody who fails to conform. 'Unwise' is not equivalent to 'not-wise,' but means 'rather foolish'; a very foolish action is not-wise, but can only be called unwise by meiosis or irony. Still, negatives formed by 'in' or 'un' or 'non' are sometimes really contradictory of their positives; as ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... crush a man who was guilty of no crime save that, having a colored skin, he was supposed to be about to marry a lady a few shades lighter than himself. O, the length and breadth, the height and depth, the cruelty and the irony of a prejudice which can ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... the life of a man as little as a farthing, you said," replied Simon Turchi, with bitter irony; "and now you allege the most puerile reasons as excuses. You ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... Hellenic and Xenophontine religiousness. The incalculableness of human life: God fulfils himself in many unforeseen ways. N.B.—Irony also of the situation, since Cyrus doesn't intend the Armenian to triumph over the Chaldaean in the way ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... instituteur would have said I deserved to be shot. Pray allow me to make it a little more graceful." But the Prussian's ignorance of French syntax was only equalled by his suspicion of it. The maire's irony merely irritated him and his coolness puzzled him. "I give you thirty seconds to sign," he said, as he took out his watch and the inevitable revolver. The maire took up a needle-like pen, dipped it in the ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... to know where he is going," said he, and he set out to follow them at a distance. Two things were left on his hands, an irony in the shape of the paper signed Fantine, and a consolation, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... grown up with a kind of twist in it, like a tree that has had to force its way up surrounded by awkward environments. Fundamentally, the man is a thinking humorist; but his mode of expression is strange. The perpetual inversions, the habitual irony, the mingled tenderness and mockery, give a kind of gnarled surface to the style, which is pleasant when you get familiar with it, but which repels the stranger, and to some people even remains permanently disagreeable. I think it was his continual irony which at last brought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... either flattery or irony, but whatever it is I'll let it pass. I'll own that I'm sleepy enough and you two can arrange the ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as the protector of AEneas, and in the battle of the Trojans, Ares appears in a disadvantageous light; the weakness of the goddess, and the brutal confidence of the god are described with evident irony. In like manner Diana and the river-god Scamander sometimes play a very undignified part. Apollo alone ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... she, the mother-queen, proud Isabel Bavaria's haughty princess—may be seen, Arrayed in armor, riding through the camp; With poisonous words of irony she fires The hostile troops to fury 'gainst her son, Whom she hath clasped ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Paslew, with a grin of cruel and malicious irony. "There be some slight preliminaries to adjust,—something to season thy haunch and whet thine appetite." He stamped with his foot, and the two attendants entered, bearing instruments of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... her child be hard? If he saw the poor little mortal, how would the sight affect him? At moments he felt a longing perhaps definable as the instinct of paternity; but he was not the man to grow sentimental over babies, his own or other people's. Irony and sarcasm—very agreeable to a certain class of newspaper readers—were just now his stock-in-trade, and he could not afford to indulge ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... a realist as St. Anselm. In Berkeley, on the other hand, we have as complete a representative of the nominalists and conceptualists—an intellectual descendant of Roscellinus and of Abelard. And by a curious irony of fate, it is the nominalist who is, this time, the champion of orthodoxy, and the realist ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... itself in so mocking a shape. It was the very irony of abundance—substantial ghostliness and a Barmecide's ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... went to the hospital, and out with the ambulance, hoping that the soldier might not be dead. But the wholesome irony of life reckons beyond our calculations; and the unreproachful, sunny face of his Sergeant evoked in Duane's memory many marches through long heat and cold, back in the ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... King, her sarcasm for his courtiers. Perhaps little of this latter quality appears in the pages bequeathed to us, written, as they are, in a somewhat cold, formal style, and we may assume that her much-dreaded irony resided in her tongue rather than in her pen. Yet we are glad to possess these pages, if only as a reliable record of Court life during the brightest period of the reign of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was a valorous one (No irony, but honest truth), Yet down from his brain cold drops distilled, Making stalactites in his heart— A conscientious soul, forsooth; And with a formal hate was filled Of Mosby's ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... for. American letters, American journalism, and American speech are so coloured by 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 Louis the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... decree of fate," replied Drishna. "And it is fitting to the universal irony of existence that a blind man should be the instrument. I don't imagine, Mr. Carlyle," he added maliciously, "that you, with your eyes, would ever ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... on the bare head, while bullets the next moment pattered on the water where it had been. Then, with a few powerful strokes, the stranger reclaimed the land, sprang upon the shore, and darted into the woods with more vain bullets flying about him. But he sent back a shout of irony and triumph that made the chiefs and Tories standing on the bank ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler |
