"Irony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Assyrian Prince; through life he retained his somewhat Asiatic appearance. His eyes were slightly narrowed, his black hair curled lightly over an extremely broad forehead. He spoke little and often in brusque phrase. For this reason he was frequently misunderstood, as the irony and sarcasm with which he sometimes spoke did not tend to make friends. But this attitude was only turned toward those who did not comprehend him and his ideals, or who endeavored to falsify what he believed in ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... up. The irony of the thing gripped him, and brought a wry smile to his tight lips. The body of Inaros, her dead lover, lay at her side; and Shabako's still figure was but feet away. Once again they were all together in death. The Kundrenaline had pierced the black veil of their silent tryst ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... mistake. He knew who it was. His mates did not see the smile of irony, of sly ridicule, which stirred his lips as he bowed to the passer. Immediately his rather handsome effeminate ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... in Boston in 1809—a stroke of purest irony on the part of fate, for he was in no respect a Bostonian, and it was to Bostonians especially that he was anathema. His parents were actors, travelling from place to place, and his birth at Boston was purely accidental. They had no home and no fortune, but lived from hand to mouth, in the most ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... saying. "It accounts for the strange feeling I had toward him when he asked me to help him do that infernal deed. I could not understand it then, but it is plain enough now. He is my son! And I have not only transmitted a tainted life to him, but helped to damn him in its possession! God! what irony! Of course the quack never knew that I, too, am living under a false name! I wonder if it is too late to stop him? Yes—it's done, and he is miles away! It's almost daybreak ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... mentioned Esther's name. Rather he was thinking with a gratitude which shook his very soul that fate had at least spared the innocent. Esther was safe. She did not love him. He felt sure of that now. Strange irony, that his deepest thankfulness should be that ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... who in those days at Moscow would have ecstatically licked the dust off my feet, and kissed the hem of my cloak.... I did not even allow myself to believe that I was enjoying the bitter satisfaction of irony.... What sort of irony, indeed, can a man enjoy in solitude? Well, so I have behaved for some years on end, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... "you won't forget them. I shouldn't wonder if you prayed for them even. I am sure you are one of the faithful." There was more of suppressed misery than irony in his voice. "But is that likely to help when you don't so much as know what to ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... successor, on the other hand, did really initiate the reform of the clergy, but so drastic and unwise were his methods that the result was terrible and disconcerting—the development of a situation of which only the Catholic idealist could discern the full irony; no less than Schism, the rending of the ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... I wonder?" inquired the proprietor of the arm-chair, with cutting irony. "Whiney piney, whiney piney. I wish there were no such ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... 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 life. The magic power which he wielded, even over men of dissolute character, is ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... beams to light the pyre. So Elijah's taunts came just when they were most biting, and none can say that they were undeserved. His fiery zeal and his naturally stern character broke out in the bitter irony with which he imagines a variety of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fair-mindedness is called irony. Now irony is seriousness without solemnity. It assumes that man is a serio-comic animal, and that no treatment of his affairs can be appropriate which gives him a consistency and dignity which he does not possess. He is always a child and a savage. He is the victim of conflicting desires and ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... 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 independence; on the opposite side of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... with a singular mixture of irony and compassion in his voice; "and it was hunger, then, that terrified you at last even more ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Nonkreem is a great place for iron; this is found in coarse red sandstone, or it may be fine granite, forming precipices; this is scraped or pushed down by iron rods, it is then washed by a stream turned off on to it: the stream is dammed up, and the irony particles by their weight fall to the bottom: they are very heavy, of a dull blackish appearance. All the streams are of a whitish colour, and the rocks are ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... an interrogative point, but the height of our affirmation is taken with it. It is a figure of speech and intensifies the affirmative with its irony. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... insolence, the chorus close their ode and announce the arrival of a messenger from Troy. Talthybius, the herald, enters as spokesman of the army and king, describing the hardships they have suffered and the joy of the triumphant issue. To him Clytemnestra announces, in words of which the irony is patent to the audience, her sufferings in the absence of her husband and her delight at the prospect of his return. He will find her, she says, as he left her, a faithful watcher of the home, her loyalty sure, her honour undefiled. Then ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... accomplished its purpose, and science, especially the science of medicine, was strangled, almost to the death. Even the people of the time recognized the shortcomings of the physicians. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), writing in 1530, said with pleasant irony that physic was "a certaine Arte of manslaughter," and that "well neare alwaies there is more daunger in the Physition and the Medicine than in the sicknesse itselfe." He also gives the following picture of a fashionable doctor ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... indeed of the sage's multifariousness will be portrayed in a simple narrative like the present. This casual private intercourse with Israel, but served to manifest him in his far lesser lights; thrifty, domestic, dietarian, and, it may be, didactically waggish. There was much benevolent irony, innocent mischievousness, in the wise man. Seeking here to depict him in his less exalted habitudes, the narrator feels more as if he were playing with one of the sage's worsted hose, than reverentially handling the honored hat which ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... many counters are to be brought together, Zuviel (too many), but says Zuviel wrongly for Zuwenig (too little) when there is too little butter on his bread. In this case the Zuviel (too much) sounds almost like irony, which, of course, is out of the question at his age. "Too much" and "too little" are confounded in the same way as 5 and 2. Yet, in another respect the memory has made a considerable gain. Expressions long since forgotten by those about ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... the latter part of your assertion; but their satisfaction will be nothing to equal mine," he said with cutting irony. "But you'll not 'dump' me ashore anywhere. I am going to land at ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... effect of some strong chemical, as nitrate of silver. In a figurative sense, as applied to language or character, these words are very closely allied. We say a sour face, sharp words, bitter complaints, caustic wit, cutting irony, biting sarcasm, a stinging taunt, harsh judgment, a tart reply. Harsh carries the idea of intentional and severe unkindness, bitter of a severity that arises from real or supposed ill treatment. The bitter speech springs from the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... 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
... perceived that 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, swore coarsely, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... it necessary to appeal to his friends in a very touching way. The friends of the divine are requested to return "Colenso on the Pentateuch," and another volume which they have borrowed. The advertisement has none of that irony which finds play in the notice, "The Gentleman who took a brown silk umbrella, with gold crutch handle, and left a blue cotton article, is asked to restore the former." The advertiser seems to speak more in sorrow and in hope than in anger, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... is going 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
... shadow through the hills now, and Hale watched it sweep toward him with grim satisfaction at the fulfilment of his own prophecy and with disgust that, by the irony of fate, it should come from the very quarters where years before he had played the maddening part of lunatic at large. The avalanche was sweeping southward; Pennsylvania was creeping down the Alleghanies, emissaries of New York capital were pouring into the hills, the tide-water of Virginia ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... attacking Christianity has always approved itself to French Freethinkers. They regard the statement that he treated religious questions in a spirit of levity as the weak defence of those who know that irony and sarcasm are the deadliest enemies of their faith. Superstition dislikes argument, but it hates laughter. Nimble and far-flashing wit is more potent against error than the slow dull logic of the schools; and the great ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... words unspoken which he has come here to say—when he knows that the act may make me a public scandal, and that the words may send me to the scaffold!" Her color rose, and she smiled with a terrible irony as she looked for the first time at the door of the Room. "I shall be your widow," she said, "in half ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... irony of the argument, and their laugh did much to do away with the constraint, the tension of their mood. More gayly she ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... whistle scream victory! When the "returning board" had sufficiently weighed this complicated electoral contest, it gravely decided that keeping the polls open for three days was "an unheard of irregularity." (J. N. Holloway, "History of Kansas," pp. 192-4.) This was exquisite irony; but a local court on appeal seriously giving a final verdict for Delaware, the transaction became a perennial burlesque on ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... French in my exercises at the Lycee my 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 ink, and with a sigh wrote in ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... high degree, beautiful, accomplished. She thought that her first moment's consideration of the outrage—it was nothing less in her eyes—had given her the full material for thought. But every instant after threw new and varied lights on the affront. Her indignation was too great for passion; only irony or satire would meet the situation. Her cold, cruel nature helped, and she did not shrink to subject this ignorant savage to the merciless ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... silence that followed, Lenox looked blankly round the empty room:—the room where they should have spent their first evening together. Then the irony, the finality of it all, overwhelmed him, and he sank upon the nearest chair. "What have I done? . . . My God, what have I done?" he breathed aloud. And it is characteristic of the man that, for all his grinding sense of injury, he blamed himself more ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... living! Why, even living in the country has, it appears, no terrors for you. We hear of your walking about in the moonlight-you make your very trees talk, they tell us, in Italian—in Latin; you actually pass whole hours alone with the hamadryads!" There was just a suspicion of irony in Madame de Kerman's tone, in spite of its caressing softness; it was so impossible to conceive of anyone really finding nature endurable, much less pretending to discover in trees and flowers anything amusing ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... 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
... would rather have been shut up in a den with a hungry tigress. "I am quite at your service," he said with a bitter irony. "I suppose you have some very important communication to make, considering the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... 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
... as little of me as I do of them. The thought hit him suddenly and his broad face creased in a smile at the irony. Then the music started. ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... far from correct, for on the very next night Vertua presented himself at the Chevalier's bank again, and staked and lost much more heavily than on the night preceding. But he preserved a calm demeanour through it all; he even smiled at times with a sort of bitter irony, as though foreseeing how soon things would be totally changed. But during each of the succeeding nights the old man's losses increased like a glacier at a greater and greater rate, till at last it was ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and second officers, eh?" exclaimed the stranger in a fine tone of irony. "My, but you air puttin' on style, Cap'n, and no mistake! I'm plain Abner Slocum, cap'n and owner of the schooner Kingfisher, sailin' out o' Nantucket; and my first, second, third, and fourth mate is all rolled ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... tempest, or a tornado; but his corruption is a monsoon; a trade-wind, blowing uniformly from one point of the compass, and wafting the wealth of India to the same port, in one certain direction." In his speech, however, in indulging his wit and irony, Sheridan gave vent to some sallies, which showed that he was convinced that Hastings had not received the presents for himself, but for his employers. Describing the accommodating morality of the court of directors, and their correspondence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hands. The old feeling of callousness and indifference to my fate was once more upon me, and as I gazed at the crazy-looking raft which I had constructed with such a lavish expenditure of painful toil, I smiled in grim irony of myself that I should have done so much to preserve that life which now seemed of such little worth, and which promised soon to become an unendurable burden to me. A reaction from the excitement that had sustained me during my labours had set in, and I am persuaded ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... philosophy, usually in ironical form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and fancies of Wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful of them around one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens. But irony was not for those people; their mental vision was not focused for it. They read those playful trifles in the solidest terms, and decided without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that Dave Wilson was a pudd'nhead—which there hadn't—this revelation removed that doubt for good and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... constantly in mind that, as Lassalle said, "the sword is never right," and to shudder with him at the fact that "the Lie is a European Power"? In no previous war have we struck that top note of keen irony, the closing of the Stock Exchange and not of the Church. The pagans were more logical: they closed the Temple of Peace when they drew the sword. We turn our Temples of Peace promptly into temples of war, and exhibit our parsons as the most pugnacious characters in the community. I venture to affirm ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... with a few strokes of chalk so well hit the great violinist's head that one is at the same time amused and terrified at the truth of the drawing. "The devil guided my hand," the deaf painter said to me, chuckling mysteriously, and nodding his head with a good-natured irony in the way he generally accompanied his genial witticisms. This painter was, however, a wonderful old fellow; in spite of his deafness he was enthusiastically fond of music, and he knew how, when near enough to the orchestra, to read the music in the musicians' faces, and to judge the more ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Fairholme; it was stranger still in view of what must soon be. The announcement of the engagement seemed to assume to write Finis to Harry as a factor in Blentmouth society. In that point of view the moment chosen for it was full of an unconscious irony. Janie would not have gone back to him now, and Neeld did not suspect her of any feeling which could have made that possible. It was merely odd that she should be putting an appropriate finish to a thing which in the meantime had been ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... 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
... from door to door, he could have foreseen the great army of admirers who three centuries later should outbid each other at auctions, and make war in print over his experimental plates, his failures and his trial-proofs—now often exalted into "states"—the very irony of the thing would surely have brought him genuine satisfaction ...
— Rembrandt and His Etchings • Louis Arthur Holman
... shocked" and to "soothe the mind of the Empress with explanations," but he did not mend his infidelity. At Oto's request he built a residence for her at Chinu in the neighbouring province of Kawachi, and thereafter the compilers of the Chronicles, with fine irony, confine their record of three consecutive years' events to a repetition of the single phrase, "the Emperor ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... 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
... with his volubility, for the news of his good-fortune had fired the man with a reckless disregard for money, and he turned to gaming as the one natural recourse of his ilk. As the irony of fate would have it, he won what the Canadian lost, together with the stakes of various others who played for a time with him and then gave up, wagging their heads or swearing softly ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... Meanwhile, so the irony of the fates ordered it, the two mates, each in charge of one of the Flamingo's lifeboats, were commanding crews made up entirely of Germans and Scandinavians, and pluckier and more careful sailormen could not have been wished for. The work was dangerous, and required more than ordinary ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... powerful horror, but it would have lacked the ethical beauty which Hawthorne gave it and which makes it significant beyond a mere feat of verbal legerdemain. And the subtile simplicity of "The Great Stone Face" is as far from Poe as the pathetic irony of "The Ambitious Guest." In all his most daring fantasies Hawthorne is natural, and, though he may project his vision far beyond the boundaries of fact, nowhere does he violate the laws of nature. He had at all times a wholesome ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the value of all this work in industry. The Prime Minister, speaking last year on this subject, said, "It is a strange irony, but no small compensation, that the making of weapons of destruction should afford the occasion to humanize industry. Yet such is the case. Old prejudices have vanished, new ideas are abroad; employers and workers, the public ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... attention to sturgeon fishing. The roe they prepared and shipped abroad for the Russians' piquant table delicacy. The grim irony of it—half ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... 33 (which, because it exhibits an ancient text of a type like B, has been styled [with grim irony] 'the Queen of the Cursives') is more brilliant here than usual; exhibiting St. Mark's clause (4) thus,—[Greek: kai gar he lalia sou ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... 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 in language of rare precision, strength, and beauty, not seldom astonished ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... of the 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
... reason—perhaps he wants to pay up part of his debt to me, or maybe he has some scheme with money in it to unfold. He'll certainly try to overreach me again; but then once bitten twice shy. I'll be on my guard." Then with an attempt at irony ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... were not so beautiful!" she moaned as the first pale streaks of light in the east told her that day had finally dawned, and she crept stealthily back to bed again. Of course Jack, the wretch, was sleeping peacefully—that was the irony of fate! What did he know of suffering? But ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... for getting probate, I believe,' said Lady Le Breton, in a slight tone of irony; for to her mind any departure from the laws or language she was herself accustomed to use, assumed at once the guise of a rank and offensive provincialism. 'Your poor Aunt WOULD go and marry a Scotchman, and he a Scotch business man too; so of course we must expect to put ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... with that look, mingled of feeling and irony, which was very perplexing. The tone in which he spoke was really so full of tenderness for the girl, that Hope, who heard every word and felt every tone, was sure that Lawrence Newt pitied ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... faith—a proof of love to him that hath redeemed us, but not to recommend us to his favour. The picture of such a feast drawn by John Bunyan must make upon every reader a deep, a lasting, an indelible impression. How bitter and how true is the irony, when the Pharisee is represented as saying, "I came to thy feast out of civility, but for thy dainties I need them not, I have enough of my own; I thank thee for thy kindness, but I am not as those that stand in need of thy provisions, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Trirodov. "There appears to be a great resemblance at the first glance; but actually these two systems are as opposite as the poles. They are the affirmation and the denial of life, its Yes and its No, its irony and its lyricism. The affirmation, Yes, is Christianity; the denial, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... so many and varied, language affords so rich a continuity of themes and the comic is here capable of passing through so great a number of stages, from the most insipid buffoonery up to the loftiest forms of humour and irony, that we shall forego the attempt to make out a complete list. Having stated the rule, we will simply, here and there, ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... a low laugh. "What irony! Well, that will last till Friday. But you must try and get more then. I will be here at the same time; no, the tide will not suit—at 8 a.m. We can come inside then. Did you ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... woman, one would have said, who could act as nobly as she could speak, yet who would prefer both to live and to express herself in a minor key. And Egremont was not unlike her in some essential points. The turn for irony was more pronounced on his features, yet he had the eyes of an idealist. He, too, would choose restraint in preference to outbreak of emotion: he too could be forcible if occasion of sufficient pressure lay upon him. And the probability remained, that ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... imaginary, imaginative impending, approaching imperious, imperial imply, infer in, into inability, disability ingenious, ingenuous intelligent, intellectual insinuation, innuendo instinct, intuition involve, implicate irony, sarcasm ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... drag his weary limbs across the pebbles of his Harmas; but he bore his eighty-seven years with a fine disdain for age and its failings, and although the fire of his glance and that whole, eager countenance still expressed his passion for the truth, his abrupt gestures, touched with irony, his simple bearing, and the extreme modesty of his whole person, spoke sufficiently of his profound indifference toward outside contingencies, for the baubles of fame and all the ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... Lion. She was a pr-r-retty wife for John Gourlay! The sight of her feebleness would have roused pity in some: Gourlay it moved to a steady and seething rage. As she stood helpless before him he stung her with crude, brief irony. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... though willing on all right occasions to forget it. "Once," records Mr. Irwin, "when I remarked on the omission of his name in an article on 'Minor Poets' in one of the magazines, he said, with a smile, 'Perhaps I am among the major!'" That smile had just sufficient irony—no more. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... most durable, and it so happens that these brilliant red sandstones are often composed of exceedingly rounded grains. Also some of the very red sandstone has an interfilling of a loose argillaceous irony matter detrimental to the stone as a building stone. The most durable of the red sandstones are those having a paler or grayer hue, like those of Woolton, Everton, and Runcorn. This distinction of color was ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... and disappointment, following on a season of overstrained and violent hopes, were the sharpest trial through which Wordsworth ever passed. The course of affairs in France, indeed, was such as seemed by an irony of fate to drive the noblest and firmest hearts into the worst aberrations. For first of all in that Revolution, Reason had appeared as it were in visible shape, and hand in hand with Pity and Virtue; ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... 13. IRONY is expressing ourselves in a manner contrary to our thoughts; not with a view to deceive, but to add force to our remarks. We can reprove one for his negligence, by saying, "You have ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... my word—you don't mean to say so—do you, Queen Amelia?' Miss Hartney returned in cold irony. 'Well then, my dear, you had better be wider awake to your own interests,' she went on, 'for your first attempt is going sadly against you already, poor child. I'm glad your choice pleases you, you are not fastidious—but to all appearances your regard is ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... you would have known better than to suggest the possibility of friendship between us. You are a poor judge of human nature, and conceited past my understanding, to imagine that it is a matter which is entirely optional with you." With the slow one-sided smile of irony which her face sometimes wore, she bowed slightly. Then, "You will excuse ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... It was the irony of fate that, on the one occasion when duty really summoned that champion popper-up-to-London to the Metropolis, he should be unable to answer ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... will be made clear to you, by a savage irony, that Play has yet spared you something, since your property is returned. For all that, if you bring a new hat with you, you will have to pay for the knowledge that a special costume is needed for ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... this was not to be, for Fate is fond of irony. The only man who ever braved the full dangers of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado was killed by a suburban train in Chicago while on his wedding-tour. Most bad men die in bed, tenderly cared for by trained nurses in white caps and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... irony of fate, this one Indian became the model warrior of the tribe. As the confusion and uproar grew in intensity, one after another joined the dancing circle, until it seemed that every brave in the camp was leaping around the fire. Blue-eyed Indians, ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... he had been subjected by turns to all the varied and cruel tortures of nature. He had conquered his isolation, conquered hunger, conquered thirst, conquered cold, conquered fever, conquered labour, conquered sleep. A dismal irony was then the end of all. Gilliatt climbed to the top of the rock and gazed wildly into space. He had no clothing. He stood naked in the midst of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... to-day be considered a harmless piece of irony, The Shortest Way with Dissenters, in which Defoe, who was himself a dissenter, advocated banishment or hanging, he suffered the mortification of exposure for three days in the pillory and of imprisonment in the pestilent ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... attack our national character, we have two well-known essays in our ethical and casuistical literature that may with perfect safety be pitted against anything that either France or Italy has produced. Even if they are but a master's irony, let all ambitious men keep Of Cunning and Of Wisdom for a Man's Self under their pillow. Let all young men who would toady a great man; let all young ministers who would tune their pulpit to king, or court, or society; let all tradesmen and merchants ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... abominable dogkennels called houses was the group known as the Cite des Kroumirs, in the 13th arrondissement, which, by a strange irony, was built on land belonging to the Department of Public Assistance, which was let out by that body to a rich tenant, who sublet it to these lodging-house owners. This veritable den of infection and misery has now been demolished; but there are plenty of others ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... my work, Martha!—God's work! Haven't I babbled in the pulpit long enough about fatherhood and brotherhood, that I should shirk His irony when He takes me at ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... The irony of the thing brought a hard smile to Kent's lips as he nodded for the cigars. "I'll try one of these on top of the pipe," he said, nipping off the end of the cigar with his teeth. "And you forget that I'm not going to hang, Bucky. Cardigan ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... letter written by a little girl to a mother who had, it seems, allowed her family to see that she was inclined to be satisfied with something of her own writing. The child has a full and gay sense of the sweetest kinds of irony. There was no need for her to write, she and her mother being both at home, but the words must have seemed to her worthy of a pen:—"My dear mother, I really wonder how you can be proud of that article, if it is worthy to be called ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... race. The arrow that is to fly far must be discharged from a well distended bow: if, therefore, anything is necessary for greatness, it is a fierce and tenacious opposition, an opposition either of open contempt, or of malicious irony, or of sly silence, or of gross stupidity, an opposition regardless of the wounds it inflicts and of the precious lives it sacrifices, an opposition that nobody would dare to attack who was not prepared, like the Spartan of old, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... effects his transitions with consummate skill: note, e.g., the 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 appreciated ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... by Jeanne in an agony of doubts and fears. Then one evening, Julien watched her all through dinner with an amused smile on his lips, and evinced towards her a gallantry which was faintly tinged with irony. After dinner they walked up and down the baroness's avenue, and he whispered ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... in a quiet, kindly tone, as if they had been friends for years, "this is the place where Warwick fell"; and pointed down the field. "There in the corner of that croft they piled the noble dead like corn upon a threshing-floor. Since then," said he, with quiet irony, "men have stopped making English kings as the Dutch make dolls, of a ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... financial 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 ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... say!" The voice of the heavy man cut in with jeering irony. The gleam of his jade eyes came through narrow-slitted lids. "Well, did you take him back to the ranch for a necktie party, or did you bury him ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... extraordinary to Lydia Meredith that the girl showed no sign of her night's adventure when she came in to breakfast on the following morning. She looked bright. Her eyes were clear and her delicate irony as pointed as though she had ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... to be sure!" exclaimed Sanine, in surprise. There was a slight shade of irony in ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... elemental force destroy all other 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 were ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... seem at first hearing to partake of the very same almost cruel irony as the condition of cure which had already proved hopelessly impracticable. He, too, says, 'Walk that you may be cured'; and He says it to a paralysed and impotent man. But the two things are very ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... appealed to rose to his feet. Turning toward the man who had called upon him, he gave him a look which ought to have made him sink to the floor with mortification, preliminary to saying with polished irony: ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... empty. I walked slowly to the quai, and then, turning to the left, approached the palace of the D'Orsays, which stood then, though to-day, in a fine irony, the broken walls alone remain, amid the new glory of republican Paris. I knew I was going in the wrong direction, and at length, with a queer feeling of shame, turned and crossed to the ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... who I am,' said Concha, in an irony which, under the circumstances, he alone could enjoy. Then he passed up the stairs and bade ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... strides up and down with a grim sense of the irony of fate. Once he was asked to marry Miss St. Vincent to save his fortune, now it is Miss Murray. He is a part of the business, to be bandied about and knocked down to the ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... events Montague followed day by day. He was passing through Wall Street that Thursday afternoon, and he heard the crowds singing. He turned away, bitter and sick at heart. Could a more tragic piece of irony have been imagined than this—that the man, who of all men had been responsible for this terrible calamity, should be heralded before the whole country as the one who averted it! Could there have been a more appalling illustration of the way in which the masters of the Metropolis ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... done his part well. His manner is bad. His selection, it seems to me, is open to grave censure, on broader grounds than the mere personally equational of which he speaks, and his choppings, and sub-titles, and so forth, are not commendable. The irony of literary history has apparently ordained that Mr. HENLEY should first patronise, and then "cut," both CAMPBELL and MACAULAY. Was the shade of MACAULAY disturbed when he learnt that Mr. HENLEY considered his "Battle of Naseby" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... said Tibble, in the tone of irony that was hard to understand. "He owneth the dean as a ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not tell whether the irony of her tone was self-directed or addressed to himself—perhaps it comprehended them both. At any rate, he chose to overlook his own share in it in replying earnestly: "So much so, that I can't see how you can have left me nothing to add to what ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... those anxieties, have food in abundance and need not struggle to obtain it. Such is the Gentle, who swims blissfully in the broth of the putrefying adder. Others—and, by a strange irony of fate, these are generally the most gifted—only manage to eat by ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... yer ter de calaboose, an' git some news fer ter print," said Uncle Remus, with a touch of irony in his tone. "Some new nigger mighter broke ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... a note of weariness and irony. The feet of the horses made a sucking sound on the oozy ground. "I am half white," she said after a moment, and as the horses' hoofs struck the rocky trail again, she whipped up her mount and we galloped up ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... laughing matter, and yet, despite the gravity of the situation, I keenly appreciated the humor and irony that it involved. Arsene Lupin seized and bound like a novice! robbed as if I were an unsophisticated rustic—for, you must understand, the scoundrel had deprived me of my purse and wallet! Arsene Lupin, a victim, duped, ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... is it that when I also deal in the tragi-comic irony of the conflict between real life and the romantic imagination, no critic ever affiliates me to my countryman and immediate forerunner, Charles Lever, whilst they confidently derive me from a Norwegian author of whose language I do not know three words, and of whom I knew ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... my gaze," replied Ming-shu, with downcast eyes, and he plainly recognized that his presumption had been too maintained. "Yet," he added, with polished irony, "there is a well-timed adage that rises to the lips: 'Do not despair; even Yuen Yan once cast a missile ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... irony in the prophet's description of the poor flickering spot of light in the black waste and of its swift dying out. The travellers without a watch-fire are defenceless from midnight prowlers. How full of solemn truth about godless lives the vivid ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... a hint of irony in the boatman's tone, and remembering the timidity he had shown when clutched by the squid, Colin felt that this was the chance ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... untroubled. Mrs. Kirke was a woman of marked beauty, whose sweet imperiousness, sympathy, humor, and tact made her the adored of the islanders. She not only spoke native well, but with a zest and sparkle, a silver ripple of irony, ridicule, and good-fellowship that carried everything before it. No kings ever bothered Mrs. Kirke. Even the redoubtable Tembinok, with forty boats full of armed savages, had been stemmed in his Napoleonic career and turned back by her from his projected invasion ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... control of legal skill. He cannot afford expert medical care, or proper hygienic conditions of life; he is lucky if he can get a measure of justice in the courts. To call such a situation one of equality is irony. It is certain that, far as we are yet from final solution of the problems of production, we are still farther from a solution of the problems of the distribution of wealth. "A new and fair division of the goods and rights ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... in the boy's face, and a pride came up in his eye. He put his hand to his cap, with a little irony of deference, and lifted it off with the grace of a grown man. "I know it's my place. But the young lady may keep it—now. I'd rather be ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... be given—whether to the man who conceived the idea, or to him who developed it, and whether or not Columbus intentionally appropriated the honor and glory exclusively—by the irony of fate, there stood a man at Toscanelli's elbow, as it were, when he wrote to the Genoese, who was destined to rob him of his great discovery's richest reward. This man was Amerigo Vespucci, after whom—though unsuggested ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... girl who had promised herself to him, and who, he now saw, loved him with her whole heart; but he was only an immaterial spirit, lighter even than the ether of space, and the unchangeable laws of the universe seemed to him but the irony of fate. As a spirit, he was intangible and invisible to those in the flesh, and likewise they were beyond his control. The tragedy of life then dawned upon him, and the awful results of death made themselves felt. He glanced at Sylvia. On ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... But, by the irony of progress, the orthodox churches are gradually coming around to the one much-despised Platonic conception of the naturally Immortal Immaterial Soul—the "pagan and heathen" idea, so much at variance with the opposing doctrine of the Resurrection ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... to change your mind and advise your mother," Lady Loring remarked with grave irony ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... 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
... in reply, with the sarcasm of a schoolboy's debating society, "there are many people in this country who think that the party to which he belongs should go immediately into a hospital of a different kind, and which I shall not mention." This refined irony was a very gentle specimen of the insult and contumely which was poured upon Cobden and Mr. Bright at ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... irony Harry congratulated himself on his decision. When first he came into the house he heard Alison singing. There was indeed (as he told himself clearly) nothing wonderful about her voice—it resembled the ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... however, I became known, and people used to say: "Oh, it is Rameau!" My resource was to throw out some words of irony to save my solitary applause from ridicule, by making them interpret it in an ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... the Irish Bar seems to infect even the officers of the Courts and the people who enter the witness-box. It is impossible, for example, not to admire the fine irony of the usher who, when he was told to clear the Court, called out: "All ye blaggards that are not lawyers ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... 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 ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... audacity or scorn, for they were full of tenderness and gentleness. The outline of that little head, . . . the delicate, fine features, the subtle curve of the lips, the mobile face itself, wore an expression of delicate discretion, a faint semblance of irony suggestive of craft and insolence. It would have been difficult to refuse forgiveness to those two feminine failings in her in thinking of her misfortunes, of the passion that had almost cost her her life. Was it not an imposing spectacle (still further magnified ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... only author to whom he could be compared in English, lost a bishopric for his wittiest performance." In later years Lord Murray[58] said, "After Pascal's Letters, it is the most instructive piece of wisdom in the form of Irony ever written." Macaulay declared that Sydney Smith was "universally admitted to have been a great reasoner, and the greatest master of ridicule that has appeared among us since Swift." Even now, after a century of publishing, Peter Plymley's Letters retain their preeminence. ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... Napoleon's Dalmatia into a province of the Habsburgs? And the list is endless. Jella[vc]i['c] was very probably deceived by Francis Joseph, who kept dangling before his eyes a vision of a "Greater Croatia." But, by an irony of history, this hope of union of the Southern Slavs was for the time flung very much into the background by the action of the Tzar, who rescued Austria when in 1849 she was again at variance with the Magyars. Kossuth had been furious at the Constitution promulgated in the spring of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... who talks about the "Sublime and Solacing Doctrine of Theocratic Equality,"—all these are passages where we wonder whether the author sneered or blushed when he wrote. Certainly what has since been known as the Disraelian irony stings ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... What a question, Chevalier! Most willingly I will aid you in anything proper for a lady to do!" added she, with a touch of irony. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 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 cruel revolutions ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... knew that, while she detained him, Clo had indeed dared the great adventure. For a moment Beverley thought of the pearls almost with distaste. That they should come to her to-day, when she cared for nothing in the world but the lost papers, was an irony of fate. She did not return to the boudoir. She forgot the mystery of the open door, and neglected to close it. She was nervously anxious to excuse herself to Sister Lake. Above all, it was her duty to defend Clo. She must confess ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... by the obnoxious or derided class; this tends to define the meaning. Or, again, the opposite result is produced, when the world refuses to allow some sect or body of men the possession of an honourable name which they have assumed, or applies it to them only in mockery or irony. ...
— Sophist • Plato
... said to her a dozen times a day? Now be a good little girl and have a good time. How could you be a good little girl and have a good time at the same time? The irony of it, when anybody with a grain of sense would know that the two do not go hand in hand! If she had stayed home that afternoon, she would have been good, but she would not have had a good time. As it was, she had ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore
... moment, so strange is the ordering of human affairs and so much irony is there in the lessons of life, we who were all ready to weep for the loss of our mainmast would have been only too glad to say good-bye to it. For while its fall augmented the shock, and made us in worse case that way, we were ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... something charming in a girl simply because she is a girl. It is in the ring of her laugh, in her irony, in her frankness or her coyness, in the way she does the commonest things,— puts on her scarf, or catches hold of your arm,—things that only too soon disappear in conventionalities, ceremonies, and proprieties. But there is no need of this change as concerns much ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... anxious indecision in Fabian's countenance, he added, with that bitter irony which formed a part of his character; "But after all, if this duty is so repugnant to you, I shall undertake it; for not having the least ill will against Cuchillo, I can bang him without a scruple. You will see, Fabian, that the knave will not ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid |
