If the empire had been afflicted by any recent calamity, by a plague, a famine, or an unsuccessful war; if the Tiber had, or if the Nile had not, risen beyond its banks; if the...

When people say there is no place like home, the first to agree are the homeless.

We named the bar The Bar. “People will think we’re ironic instead of creatively bankrupt,” my sister reasoned.Yes, we thought we were being clever New Yorkers – that the name was a joke no one...

Nuk shquhej për zgjuarsi, por në mësime ishte i pari.

…You know, one good apple can spoil the rest,” Colonel Korn concluded with conscious irony.

Oh – a diamond ring – and Rhett, do buy a great big one!

Rain never falls on a cloud.

Maia screamed and woke. ‘Serenity?’ Cala’s voice, Cala’s angular shape outlined against the window. ‘ ‘Tis an ironic title, in sooth,’ Maia said feebly, realizing that the entangling garments of the nightmare were merely his...

In the grounds of the ch teau was a church said to date from the year 1000, and he went to look at it, but he had never really understood what people saw in old...

Irony – The modern mode: either the devil’s mark or the snorkel of sanity.

The Blue Jay’s Lullaby—Spiders and sowbugs and beetles and crickets, Slugs from the roses and ticks from the thickets, Grasshoppers, snails, and a quail’s egg or two— All to be regurgitated for you.Lullaby, lullaby, swindles and...

The idea of reappropriation isn’t a new one. The process of turning negative words, symbols, or ideas into positive parts of our own identity – was used for social justice movements long before hipsters thought...

Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: “At the end of an interrogation sentence, place a question mark. You’d be surprised how effective it can be.

The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than a list, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis.

The historical irony is that a step that is basically within the discourse of the left is being carried out by a right-wing leader. It is as significant as Richard Nixon going to China.

Gij vreesdet mooglijk voor een spoorwegramp?Maar, Rika, wat kon zaalger voor mij zijn,Dan, onder hels geratel en gestamp,Met u verplet te worden door één trein?

The world always seems like it’s going to hell when you’re depressed. And, of course, it always is going to hell in some way. That’s what makes it so hard to tell the difference between...

But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.

War pacifies itself.

Irony cleans away all those secret stains. Irony is the path that leads safely back to official realities.

John says I musn’t lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.Dear John! He loves me very...

Cela ne se remarque pas, mais il est hors de lui. Il y a des gens chez qui ça ne se voit pas.

There is no greater cruelty than a genius stumbling over something idiotic.

So your High Priest and Sacerdote propose to kill Death.” Edroc

Existo desde el principio del mundo y, desde entonces, soy un ironista.

Goose neck is a delicacy. You have to at least try it. In fancy restaurants people pay up to fifty dollars a plate for this stuff.’ And at our house we were force-fed it for...

That was his mother. When she wasn’t crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

I think sometimes people think cheerful is a synonym for dumb, so no one is ever cheerful.

My father thinks reading is a waste of time.” Hunter thought her father was a waste of space.

Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

We must uncover our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things, tied to our bourgeois way of life; it isgood-and that is the real theater-totranscend them in the manner of play, bymeans of games...

What would a racist call werewolves? Wargs? She kind of liked that one, but suspected that racist bastards didn’t read Tolkien.

He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid.

Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence.

O, wonder!How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,That has such people in’t!

The fool’s crime is the crime that is found out and the wise man’s crime is the crime that is not found out.

The things that don’t happen to us that we’ll never know didn’t happen to us. The nonstories. The extra minute to find the briefcase that makes you late to the spot where a tractor trailer...

I BELIEVE EVERYONE IS SPECIAL . . . BUT SOME PEOPLE THINK . . . . IT’S JUST ANOTHER WAY OF SAYING NO-ONE IS

It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.

The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.

During voir dire, the interviews for jury selection, each person is asked under oath about their experience with the criminal justice system, as defendant or victim, but usually not even the most elementary effort is...

I got mixed up with some oddness in my youth, and the long and short of it is that I can’t shuffle off this mortal coil until I have read the ten most boring classics.

It would be the last thing he did if he beat my dog.

Whatever doesn’t kill them, makes them make reality TV shows…

Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? Youtake delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves.””You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect...

Perhaps we can conceive of the ironist as the fetishist’s apprentice, reaching out for all readers, ensnaring them in a tangle of ambiguity, uncertainty and indecision from which there is no escape. Irony, quite possibly,...

My momma always said, ‘You and Elvis are pretty good, but y’all ain’t no Chuck Berry.

The cinema is an invention without any future.

You could write a book about things that you can’t find on-line.

…queira Deus que nunca se extinga a caridade para que não venha a acabar-se a pobreza…