Se os mortos vão depressa, os velhos ainda vão mais depressa que os mortos… Viva a mocidade!

If heaven was hot and hell was chilly, tell me, why would you go to heaven?

What do you think the Order is going to do?” he asks. “Help us open a door to Hell, if we’re lucky,” I reply. Lucky. Ha ha. The irony.

So such is life that it writes itself, trying to right itself, but there’s nothing wrong with it.

Irony of the world is that it wants to simplify the complexity and complicate the simplicity.

Users are a double-edged sword. They can help you improve your language, but they can also deter you from improving. So choose your users carefully, and be slow to grow their number. Having users is...

All of which does not alter the fact that Pnin was on the wrong train.

The worst mistake a writer can make is to assume everyone has an imagination.

sometimes when everything seems atits worstwhen all conspiresand gnawsand the hours, days, weeksyearsseem wasted – stretched there upon my bedin the darklooking upward at the ceilingi get what many will consider anobnoxious thought:it’s still nice...

When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine’s Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was,...

The pages of history are red with the blood of illuminated “saints” who were murdered by their religions for actually achieving the advertised spiritual rewards.

When it comes to judging individuals, I do not like remarks such as ‘too good to be true.’ They speak as though one is rewarding the nature of evil. Yet, ironically, we still wonder where...

God, what a ghastly enterprise to be in, though–and what an odd way to achieve success. I’m an exhibitionist who wants to hide, but is unsuccessful at hiding; therefore, somehow I succeed.

It is a truth widely recognized that tyranny stems from the consent of the governed as much as democracy does.

There’s a lot of irony in that, isn’t there?

The next morning I had Twentieth-Century American Poetry at MCC. This old woman gave a lecture wherein she managed to talk for ninety minutes about Sylvia Plath without ever once quoting a single word of...

Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you...

Marcus and Ellie exchanged a worried look and examined the bag again. Sure enough, the gold was gone.

Imagine the wizened quality of a life blanched of contradiction and double standard.p 44

Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.

i do not give a sh*t, the toilet miss me now

We are at the tail end of a decline in infant mortality that began just over a century ago. Babies no longer wander into open hearths or are mauled by marauding pigs. We have vaccines,...

Honestly, I don’t understand why people get so worked up about a little murder!

I will never lie again.

I’m not sure how people drink out of skulls,” Jinx added. Calvin had too many holes in him to make a good cup.

There is nothing worse then being surrounded by a bunch of people telling you to do what is right, when they can’t define that definition, without a lot of hatred and judgment behind it.

Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,’ said Cleopatra, ‘with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything...

…it’s just another one of those things I don’t understand: everyone impresses upon you how unique you are, encouraging you to cultivate your individuality while at the same time trying to squish you and everyone...

Now that’s true poetic irony. I rush into battle to defend the fair name of Rose Larkin, and what does she do but fetch Robert to stop me.

Dream Song of Thunders:Sometimes I go about pitying Myself, While I am carried by the wind Across the sky.

I used the boos, and not the booze, as motivation. That led to applause, which I drank up like an alcoholic. I need a refill.

I can be humbler than anyone.

On construction sites. Is that coffee ready?

There’s a large strain of irony in our human affairs… Interwoven with our affairs is this wonderful spirit of irony which prevents us from ever being utterly and irretrievably serious, from being unaware of the...

We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” (Nytimes article, Sept. 10, 2014)

As learnèd commentators viewIn Homer more than Homer knew.

A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.

I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy

The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication – this “nerdification,” to put it bluntly – is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.

Comparisons are like rigid fingers—eager to point at a subject but unwilling to grasp it.

Diamond is the hardest substance, but the Irony, it is also brittle.

The cave floor rumbled. A large stone emerged from the dirt-a smooth, oval rock exactly the same size and weight as a baby god… She wrapped the stone in swaddling clothes and gave the real...

And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare...

I have associated myself with failed scientists in order to associate myself with failed irony. (“Metier: Why I Don’t Write Like Franz Kafka”)

Irony is a gift of the gods, the most subtle of all the modes of speech. It is an armour and a weapon; it is a philosophy and a perpetual entertainment; it is food for...

Y Doree se preguntó por qué tenía que importarle lo que Maggie pensara. Maggie era una extraña, ni siquiera se sentía a gusto con ella. Fue Lloyd quien lo dijo, y tenía razón.

She talks about how she can’t exercise because of the ailments-a bad back, sore knees, breathing difficulties-all caused by her weight gain.

War is always an adventure to those who’ve never seen it.

So this was the Ashram’s final joke on me? Once I had learned to accept my loud, chatty, social nature and fully embrace my inner Key Hostess – only then could I become The Quiet...