"Irony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exposed the bourgeoisie and made an end of its moral prestige. That was enough: like Darwin he had for the moment the World Will by the ear. Marx had, too, what Darwin had not: implacability and a fine Jewish literary gift, with terrible powers of hatred, invective, irony, and all the bitter qualities bred, first in the oppression of a rather pampered young genius (Marx was the spoilt child of a well-to-do family) by a social system utterly uncongenial to him, and later on by exile and poverty. Thus Marx and Darwin between them toppled ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... harder, the cruel sea, spotted here and there with black patches between which splashes of light revealed the wild waves throwing high their curd in the cold, argent glimmer. One of these illuminating dashes, as if in a spirit of irony, moved toward the ship, almost enveloped it and showed suddenly a number of mad, leaping human figures issuing with horrible cries ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... 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 follows another choral ode, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... tossed her pretty bead, saying, "Let me tell you, Caroline, that little girls are sometimes as wise as their elders, and I shall give you a proof of my superior wisdom, by not returning irony for irony. Perhaps it may be you who is to be married—perhaps it may be both of us. There are more crowns in Europe than one. But hark! there sounds the clock. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... in his idea of finding more horses loose in the fields. The men soon rounded up eleven of the whites, all more or less frightened, and among the number were Queen and Blanca Mujer. The raiders had been unable to handle more than one horse for each man. It was bitter irony of fate that Belding should lose his favorite, the one horse more dear to him than all the others. Somewhere out on the trail a raider was fighting the iron-jawed ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... said Saxham, with rather heavy irony, "that you acquainted them with your opinion of them ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... immutable. His revenge is furious as a 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... need hardly say is not shared by the large majority of Chinese. Persons who have committed political offenses in their own country find protection not only in America but in all countries in Europe, Japan, and other civilized lands. It is an irony of fate that since the establishment of the Chinese Republic, Manchu and other officials under the old regime, now find secure asylums in Hongkong, Japan, and Tsingtao, while hundreds of ex-Manchu officials have fled to the ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... this that saved the day. The leader tapped with his violin bow on the tin shade over his electric light and the dazed musicians came to attention. They began on the number the girl had been singing. It was like the irony of fate to hear the strains of a sentimental song when the poor girl was in danger of death. But the music quieted the audience. Men and women sank back in their seats, watching with fear-widened eyes the actions ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... his throat, Owen ran into the sitting-room where the weapons taken from the men had been piled. They were not there. He picked up the rifle. By some peculiar irony the lock worked all right for him now, but a quick look told him there were no more cartridges in the magazine. He dropped the rifle and looked wildly around for ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... continuous rhetorical display; and yet, while the attention was closely held by the even flow of lucid reasoning, the emotions and passions were from time to time deeply aroused and strongly excited. In many passages of direct retort Mr. Webster used an irony which he employed always in a perfectly characteristic way. He had a strong natural sense of humor, but he never made fun or descended to trivial efforts to excite laughter against his opponent. He was not a witty man or a maker of epigrams. But he was a master in the use of a cold, dignified ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... coming across honest enthusiastic David with little remarks, each skillfully discordant with the rising sentiment. Was he droll, Talboys did a bit of polite gravity on him; was he warm in praise of some gallant action, chill irony trickled on him ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Sir Kasimir, with a shade of irony in his tone. "It would be a troublesome siege; but the League numbers 1,500 horse, and 9,000 foot, and, with Schlangenwald's concurrence, you would ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Prince pronounced the word Madame, there was a shadow of fine irony, which Aminta could not but observe. She blushed slightly, for she thought the stranger alluded to her recent marriage; and though shocked at his familiarity, Aminta was satisfied with replying politely, that she would be happy if the visitor would remain ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... prison? Go. Are you tired of going? Sit. They robbed you? Keep still. They beat you? Bear it. They have killed you? Stay dead. That's certain. And I'll carry off Savka; I'll carry him off!" His curt, barking phrases, full of good-natured irony, perplexed the mother. But his last words aroused envy ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... you shouldn't," said Mrs. Morel, and she returned to her book. He winced from his mother's irony, frowned irritably, thinking: "Why can't ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... house. But to her surprise, her coming had evidently been anticipated by them, and they were actually—and unexpectedly—awaiting her behind the low whitewashed garden palings! As she neared them they burst into a shrill, discordant laugh, so full of irony, gratified malice, and mean exaltation that Cissy was for a moment startled. But only for a moment; she had her father's reckless audacity, and bore them down with a display of such pink cheeks and flashing eyes that their laughter ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... verses, or had me otherwise than wholly on trust from Lowell; but he leaned over towards his host, and said, with a laughing look at me, "Well, James, this is something like the apostolic succession; this is the laying on of hands." I took his sweet and caressing irony as he meant it; but the charm of it went to my head long before any drop of wine, together with the charm of hearing him and Lowell calling each other James and Wendell, and of finding them still ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... children cheered, seemingly with no intent of irony.) He added that, in his opinion, kind hearts were, if he might so put ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... the temperament of violent force, and in such types the reaction is always tremendous. The indomitable activity of the last twenty months had bred weariness of spirit. The nemesis of a career of strenuous Will in large natures is apt to be a sudden sense of the irony of things. In Danton, as with Byron it happened afterwards, the vehemence of the revolutionary spirit was touched by this desolating irony. His friends tried to rouse him. It is not clear that he ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... for securing better and more equitable conditions of labor. The talk about preserving to the misery-hunted beings who make contracts for such service their "liberty" to make them, is either to speak in a spirit of heartless irony or else to show an utter lack of knowledge of the conditions of life among the great masses of our fellow-countrymen, a lack which unfits a judge to do good service just as it would unfit ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... passion, that was creeping into all his veins, poisoning and crippling all his vitalities, he was still independent enough of it to be able to handle it with the irony it deserved. For it was almost as ludicrous as it was pitiable. He did not want any man of the world, any Harding Watton, to tell ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... flowed musically from the throat of the fair singer at the piano, were inflected with a subtle irony, which caused the frown to deepen upon the brow of the tall, scholarly, though somewhat morose-looking man who had entered the parlor soon after the singer had begun, and who, without glancing in her direction, ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... that the problem in its new guise should still be glossed over in the old way. In neither era, consequently, could an honest novelist freely follow his observations upon Southern life in general. The mind of the herd bore down upon him and crushed him into the accepted molds. It seems a curious irony that the Negroes who thus innocently limited the literature of their section should have been the subjects of a little body of narrative which bids fair to outlast all that local color hit upon in the South. Joel Chandler Harris is not, strictly speaking, a contemporary, but Uncle ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... It is a masterpiece, I know; but it is a little masterpiece; they are very careful not to mention the great ones."[*] This, which is the best known and most generally admired of Balzac's novels, is dedicated by a strange irony of fate to Maria, whose identity has never been discovered; the only fact really known about her being her pathetic request to Balzac, that he would love her just for a year, and she would love him for all eternity. She did not, however, have undisputed ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... has found 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, and we sincerely trust that he ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... 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 in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... He wanted to know something about the settler's grant. He said: "Of course you know after a chap has been out here in the open, it will be impossible to go back again to office life." I boosted Canada and suddenly the irony of the situation occurred to me. Here we were lying down in a road quite close to the German lines, so close that it would be suicide to even stand up, and yet here we were calmly discussing the merits of Canadian ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... faith in miracles, fondness for drink or 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 by graphic satirical ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... had been possible; and I now saw that in coming at all I ought to have come accompanied by a squad of police with authority to search the whole place, from end to end and top to bottom. And I reflected, with a grim sense of the irony of it, that to do that would have been a fine long job for a dozen men—what, then, was it that ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... 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 Fourteenth was wittily defined as despotism ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the ships of Hoche's unlucky expedition; he landed with Humbert in Donegal, and saw the Race of Castlebar; he had some marvellous experiences in the West Indies, and everywhere the devotion of women facilitated his hairbreadth escapes. There need be no irony in repeating that avowed fiction can have no chance at all in competition with literature ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... have been good enough to ask me to share your fly," the man observed, with a rather aggressive touch of irony, "I may as well let you know who I am. My name is ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... superficial but rather subtle qualities by which he has achieved success, it seems a sort of irony to think what he might have done and did not do for the country of his birth. What did he ever do for Canada? Before the war—nothing. He made huge fortunes here. He created mergers here. He started consolidated ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... allow the Bond, as an organisation, to commit itself to any overt opposition to the principle of a contribution to the British Navy—an attitude which would have been obviously inconsistent with the Bond's profession of loyalty—and with characteristic irony the third reading of the Navy Contribution Bill was eventually passed, a year later, without a division in the Legislative Assembly by a Ministry[34] placed in office by Bond votes for the declared purpose of opposing the policy of the Imperial Government on the one question—the ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... Swift's exposure of the corrupt bishops, the "holy Persons" in the House of Lords (Travels, II, vi). Believing that Swift's pungent satire on the church hierarchy is good and true, he makes the dean himself the target of a playful bit of raillery, a type of irony for which Swift ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... Ariosto has already been mentioned.[4] But the stuff of the old Charlemagne epos is sophisticated in the brilliant pages of Ariosto, who follows Pulci and Boiardo, if not in burlesquing chivalry outright, yet in treating it with a half irony. Tasso is serious, but submits his romantic matter—Godfrey of Boulogne and the First Crusade—to the classical epic mould. It was pollen from Italy, but not Italy of the Middle Ages, that fructified English poetry in the sixteenth century. Two indeed ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... manner of box it was," said Lady Dorinda with irony, though a dull red was startled ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... highly approved by the local health authorities. This one was on the subject of pure milk. Its association with the excerpt from the Areopagitica (which, having been set for a standing head, was not cut out by the "Killed") set the final touch of irony upon the matter. Even in his fury ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and has been aptly called "a land of unrest." In the eighteen-forties the country witnessed many plans, "pronunciamientos" and revolutions, which could not escape the vigilant mind of Madame Calderon, who often refers to them with a spice of delicate satire and irony which is not unkindly. After the long period of peaceful if unexciting viceregal rule, the government of the new republic had become the prey of political groups, headed by men who coveted the presidency chiefly impelled ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... persuasive manner, and his scholastic acquirements were great advantages. He soon obtained considerable influence among the respectable old gentlemen who at that time sat as judges in the one court and magistrates in the other. His intense love of fun, and his powerful irony, made these courts, instead of dull and dreary places, lively and cheerful. Many droll stories are told of him, one of the best of which relates to his cross-examination of a pompous witness. Edmonds began ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... straits. He narrowly escaped capture after the parade the other day. I managed to get him smuggled out of the city in the same ambulance that carried Father's horse. The horse was drunk and Quim was sober. Wasn't that an irony of fate? But I promised to tell you how I became associated ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... 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 cruel ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... that never be!" exclaimed the artist, in the common Italian phrase, but with a little irony. "But as for the responsibility, I do not know whose it was. It was certainly not I who invited the young lady ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... irony, keen and delicate, is a sprightly medium of truth: witness this passage on a new volume of M. Michelet: "Narrative, properly so called, which never was his forte, is almost entirely sacrificed. Seek here no historical highway, well laid, solid, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... preached in the black gown; while every ambitious cleric who could put a thesis together could flaunt his red and black in the Vice-Chancellor's procession on Sundays in the University church. The face was one of mingled irony and melancholy, and there came from it sometimes the ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the fine comb and passed it repeatedly through her hair; but he had only combed it three or five times, when he perceived Ch'ing Wen hurriedly walk in to fetch some money. As soon as she caught sight of them both: "You haven't as yet drunk from the marriage cup," she said with a smile full of irony, "and have you already put ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... disdain; believing that the faith which he had just embraced contained the pure truth. He despised all the attacks which could be made against it, and laughed already at the irresistible arguments which he was to find in the works of the Eagle of Meaux. But his mistrust and irony soon gave place to wonder first, and then to admiration: he thought that the cause pleaded by such an advocate must, at least, be respectable; and, by a natural transition, came to think that great geniuses would only devote themselves to that ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 who prefer their profits to their ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... indulge in fretful regrets over her broken health. When I remember, too, how lonely your days are, and think of your husband and what he might make of them, then I cannot help realising with absolute vividness the supreme irony of fate. Here am I, craving for nothing so much on earth as the sympathy, the affection of—shall I say such a woman as you? And your husband, who might have the best, remains utterly indifferent, content with something far below the ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 now! Whewwwh! ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... other artistic absorptions, because it seems literally to check the growth of other qualities and interests. In fact, in many ways Lestrange was like a pious child. He was apt to be snubbed by Father Payne, but he was wholly indifferent to all irony. I used to listen to him playing the organ in the evenings, and a language of emotions and visions certainly streamed from his fingers which he was never able to put into words. Father Payne treated him as one might treat an inspired fool, with a ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... indeed, actually sent in his resignation,—when news came of the doings of another John Brown at Harper's Ferry. The resignation was instantly recalled, with the remark that it was not a time for Browns to seem to be backward on the question of slavery. Such is the irony ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... And then the Judge, looking up, saw what no one else in the court had seen—that the Colonel was sincere and in earnest; that what he had conceived to be the pleader's most perfect acting, and most elaborate irony, were the deep, serious, mirthless convictions of a man without the least sense of humor. There was a touch of this respect in the Judge's voice as he said to him, gently, "You may ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... There was the irony in it that so puts up a boy's dander. "Dinna think," said Tommy, hotly, "that I'm fleid at you, though I have no beard—at least, I ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... point Mendoza had preserved that tone of elaborate irony which, it will be remembered, was so disconcerting to English audiences, and stood so much in the way of his popularity. But now his manner changed. Becoming more serious, and I fear I must add, more dull ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... to this in a tone of savage irony. "You are a minister of religion, and you are an old man. Two privileges—and you presume on ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... received from them, had deprived them of all claim even on the pity of those who had triumphed in spite of them. At any rate, Franklin insisted, and it was the utmost to which he would assent,—his irony and sarcasm in making the offer showing the depth of his bitterness on the subject,—that a balance should be struck between the losses of the Loyalists and those of the Colonists in the conflagration of their sea-ports ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... naturalists, so long may we gratefully remember that this man to his death bore upon him all the signs of a martyr, so long shall we point to him as one of the witnesses who have fought for us and for the liberty of science." Verily these words from Virchow's lips sound like the bitterest irony; for was not Lorenz Oken one of the foremost and most zealous champions of that monistic doctrine of development against which Rudolf Virchow at this day is most violently striving? Did not Oken himself proceed farther in the construction ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... Embankment, Robert Hardrow, with a cynical smile on his lips, listened to the splendid irony ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... then, that they would believe you, and spare me?" I asked, with unconcealed irony, forcing myself even against my will, to render my ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... the sublime irony of the figure he made, continued to plead. "Natalie, don't turn away from me! You took me for better or worse, remember! You found me at a disadvantage to-day; I don't look like this ordinarily. And ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... that "the 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 ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... have left her long ago under such tongue-lashing, but old Dewey could not leave, because to leave is an act. There were no verbs in his vocabulary comprehending possibilities of usefulness within range of the present tense. What an irony ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... 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
... hold the poseetion a 'm in withoot anxieties. Noo there wes the 'Eruption' in '43"—it could not be ignorance which made John cling to this word, and so we supposed that the word was adopted in the spirit of historical irony—"that wes a crisis. Did a' ever tell ye, Rebecca, that there wes juist ae beadle left the next morning tae cairry on ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... him regularly during his absence, curt, businesslike epistles, which always terminated on a grim note of irony: "Your faithful steward, N. V. West." He never varied this joke, and Babbacombe usually noted it with a faint frown. The fellow was not a bad sort, he was convinced, but he would always be more or less of an ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... inundar to inundate. inusitado unusual. inutil useless. invadir to invade. invasor m. invader. inventar to invent. invierno winter. invitar to invite. ir to go; vr. to go away, depart; ir (with present part.), to go on —ing. iris m. rainbow. ironia irony. ironico ironic. irrealizable unrealizable. irritar to irritate. isla island. islamita m. Mohammedan. Italia Italy. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... and amazement, and that Belle had stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to prevent laughter, a spark of anger glittered in his eyes. His first thought was that Mr. Jocelyn was indulging in unexpected irony at his expense, and the ready youth whose social habits had inured him to much chaffing was able to reply, although a little stiffly and awkwardly, "I suppose most young men have ambitious hopes ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... in your irony! for I see that Mrs. Grey looks quizzical expectation. Well, I will. In fact, I'm as well prepared as a man whose health is drunk at a dinner given to him, and who is unexpectedly called upon for a speech,—or as Rosina, when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... "Irony is not your forte; and, Merton, I beg you to recollect that I detest bantering,—it is so excessively ungenteel. No wonder you look nervous and ashamed, after your recent very surprising manifestation of—well, I might as well say ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... invisible gobbosity; the nose, crooked and out of shape like those of many deformed persons, turned from right to left of the face instead of dividing it down the middle. The mouth, contracted at the corners, like that of a Sardinian, was always on the qui vive of irony. His hair, thin and reddish, fell straight, and showed the skull in many places. His hands, coarse and ill-joined at the wrists to arms that were far too long, were quick-fingered and seldom clean. Goupil wore boots only fit for the dust-heap, and raw silk stockings now of a russet black; ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... and prosperity, he fell finally under the weight of accumulated misfortunes. Nobody who heard him declare that "he accepted the Cincinnati Convention and its consequences," but must be struck by the illustration of what is called "the irony of fate," which nearly everything that occurred afterwards affords. His nomination, from whatever point of view we look at it, was undoubtedly a high honor. The manner in which it was received down to the Baltimore Convention was very flattering. Whether it ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... irony sped through Aimee, as she bent her head for its crowning at this young wife's hands, and received the ceremonial wishes for her crowning of happiness, a crowning occurring but once in her lifetime. Irony was the only ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... paid a small rent to the manor, to save trouble, and to satisfy his conscience of the mineral deposit. By right of discovery, lease, and user, this became entirely his, as nobody else had ever heard of it. So by the fine irony of facts it came to pass, first, that the squanderer of three fortunes united his lot with a Jewess; next, that a great "cosmopolitan" hugged a strict corner of jealous monopoly; and again, that a champion of communism ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... would not have come here without some excellent 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 he would pay ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... regardless of rate. Yet he was the hero of sixty-seven battles on land and sea, and engaged in more than two hundred personal encounters, where rifles, pistols, stilettos, swords or cudgels played their part. Behold the irony ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... greater freedom and daring. Both were handsome, dashing, fearless, swaggering, gaily-dressed boys, and many were the girls within the palace, and the town which lay around it, who cast loving eyes upon them. Awang, however, cared little for this, for, by the irony of that Fate which always directs that men should fall in love with the wrong women, and vice versa, his heart was eaten up with a fiery desire for a girl who was a jamah-jamah-an, or casual concubine of the King, and who resolutely declined ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... be—strong enough to fill this town hall to overflowing because a teacher has been wrongly—yes, and iniquitously—dismissed from the lower school." (Here there was a considerable stir, and many wondered whether Miss Lucretia was aware of the irony in her words.) "I say wrongly and iniquitously, because I have had the opportunity in Boston this winter of learning to know and love that teacher. I am not given to exaggeration, my friends, and when I tell you that I know her, that her character is as high ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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
... critical moment had, in the eyes of the discontented, turned success into failure and left behind a bitter feeling of resentment at the treacherous dexterity of the government. The men, in whose imagined interests the people had been defrauded of their coveted land, had by a singular irony of fortune been driven ignominiously from Rome and were now the victims of graver suspicions on the part of the government than on that of the Roman mob. The effect of the late senatorial diplomacy had been to create ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... replied, 'Honores mutant mores'—Honours change manners. Sir Thomas's humour was what may be called quiet, because its effect did not immediately show itself in boisterous merriment, but would undoubtedly remain long in the remembrance of those to whom it was addressed. Made with as much courtesy as irony, is it likely his keeper in the Tower would ever forget his remark? "Assure yourself I do not dislike my cheer; but whenever I do, then spare not to thrust me out of your doors." Nor did his quaint humour desert him at the scaffold: "Master Lieutenant," said he, "I pray you see me safe up; for ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... are going to release this prisoner. If your heart dictates you to deliver Seldon also, I declare to you I will not oppose it the least in the world." Aramis accompanied this remark with a smile, the irony of which effectually dispelled Baisemeaux's confusion of mind, and ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... two make four," she said with that irony for which she was feared and famous. "Now for your guess. I hope it ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... his kindred, and his children could grow up far from the barbarous laws that crushed out the spirit of the ancient clans. Along the banks of the Monongahela those Scotch and Irish settlers built their rude cabins under the guns of Fort Pitt, guarded—strange irony of fate—from a savage enemy by the very flag which flaunted oppression in their native Britain and Ireland. That they learned to love their adopted land who can question? A Virginian cavalier, accustomed to the graces and politesse of a ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... 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 World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was alone when he received the latter of these letters. At first, a look divided between irony and melancholy passed over his face, as he read his sister's preface and her hearsay evidence, but, as he went farther, his upper lip curled, and a sudden gleam, as of exultation in a verified prophecy, lighted his eye, shading off quickly, however, and giving ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hypothesis. Mrs. Westgate did it justice; she greeted it with a smile and pronounced it most brilliant, while, in reality, she felt that the young girl's skepticism, or her charity, or, as she had sometimes called it appropriately, her idealism, was proof against irony. Bessie, however, remained meditative all the rest of that day and well on ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... her hands and sank back slackly in his chair. "Victory!" he said, a note of inextinguishable irony in his voice. "A victory I'd have given five years of my life for last March. Yet I could go on winning them—a whole succession of them—and they could lead me to nothing ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... first notes about The Queen Pedauque is the fact that in this ironic and subtle book is presented a story which, curiously enough, is remarkable for its entire innocence of subtlety and irony. Abridge the "plot" into a synopsis, and you will find your digest to be what is manifestly the outline of a straightforward, plumed romance ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... trouble has come," answered Ferris, with a shade of irony in his voice, "through following the advice that I have already given you, I shall endeavour, as well as I am able, to help you out ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... O irony too deep for mirth! O posturing apes that rant, and dare This antic attitude! O Earth, With your wild jest ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... Lance felt almost like hurling himself through the window. Then, he straightened up. His mouth compressed into a thin line. "If I must face the facts, I must. But," his tone edged off into irony, "it sure isn't easy. You'll have ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... homecoming he had dreamed of in the unfathomable reaches of space. Hilary thought bitterly. Five short years and he was already forgotten. Then the irony of it struck him, and ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... "doctor" I looked at him more warmly, and I saw then what was plain enough to see but for the dim light of the little place,—the thin flush on the cheek, the hopeful mind, the contrast of the will to live and the need to die, God's little irony on man, it was all there plain enough to read. The "spell" for which the little druggist was going is that which is written in letters of sorrow over the sunlit desolation of Arizona and ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... 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 ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... overhanging and alarming, till you chanced on those diminutive features. It was as if his growth had been terminated before it reached the expressive parts. He had an elaborate manner—a reticence, a drawl, and a chronic irony. Across half of his chest there streaked a rainbow of color; gay little ribbons of decoration, orange and ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... hard work, for which no emolument would be a fitting reward, is distilling sunshine. This new book is full of it—the sunshine of humour, the thin keen sunshine of irony, the mellow ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... trait more striking than another, it was her perfect, simple faith in what people said; irony was a mystery to her; lying, a myth,—something on a par with murder. She thought Kate meant so; and reaching out for the pretty wicker-flask that contained her daily ration of old Scotch whiskey, she dropped a little drop into a spoon, diluted it with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... schemer, but a grave and blameless presbyter of Alexandria. Arius was a disciple of the greatest critic of his time, the venerated martyr Lucian of Antioch. He had a name for learning, and his letters bear witness to his dialectical skill and mastery of subtle irony. At the outbreak of the controversy, about the year 318, we find him in charge of the church of Baucalis at Alexandria, and in high favour with his bishop, Alexander. It was no love of heathenism, but a real difficulty of the gospel which led him to form a new ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... society is the organ whose function it should be to keep us 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 ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Secretary of State, he had aided the Federalists in establishing the new government. When at length they were driven from power in the executive and legislative branches of the government, he was chosen for their last stronghold, the Supreme Court. By historic irony he administered the oath of office to his bitterest enemy, Thomas Jefferson; and, long after the author of the Declaration of Independence had retired to private life, the stern Chief Justice continued to announce the old Federalist ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... she turned on him. "You think you are sure of me, don't you?" she cried. And in her tone at once were defiance and irony. ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... apparent coldness of restraint; the baldness, the laconism of a spirit that abhorred loose, ungainly manners of speech. Even the frenetic and orgiastic finales of the "Harold" and "Fantastic" symphonies are tempered by an athletic steeliness and irony, are pervaded, after all, by the good dry light of the intellect. The greater portion of the "Harold" is obviously, in its coolness and neatness and lightness, the work of one who was unwilling to dishevel himself in the cause of expression, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Laumieres, who was very much touched by this story and whose nerves were rather highly strung, was drying her tears behind her open fan, suddenly the harsh and shrill voices of the fast women who were returning from the Casino, by the strange irony of fate, struck up an idiotic song which was then in vogue: "Oh! the poor, oh! the poor, oh! ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... and le Plus beau diner du monde, betrayed a singularly inventive and keenly bantering mind. The whole order of contemporary and utilitarian ideas, the whole commercialized baseness of the age were glorified in stories whose poignant irony transported ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... and opulent young Guardsmen; but what, Paul reflected with a qualm, would the kind lady say if she learned the real state of his present fortunes? He thought of the guinea that lay between him and starvation, and was amused by the irony of her proposition. Miss Winwood evidently took it for granted that he was in easy circumstances, living on the patrimony administered during his boyhood by a careless guardian. He shrank from undeceiving her. His dream ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... great deal, I remember, but everybody in the Convent was kind, and when, of my own choice, I returned to the girls at recreation, the sinister sense of dignity which by some strange irony of fate comes to all children when the Angel of Death is hovering over them, came to me also—poor, helpless innocent—and I felt a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... trade has well been called the systematic plunder of a continent. But in the irony of fate those Africans who lent their hands to the looting got nothing but deceptive rewards, while the victims of the rapine were quite possibly better off on the American plantations than the captors who remained in the African jungle. The only ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... 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 ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... mill? A wrinkle appears on your forehead, your eyebrows are drawn together; you lay down my letter for a moment; you attempt to penetrate this mystery by the unaided power of your imagination. Suddenly a playful expression beams upon your countenance; your mouth expresses the irony of a wise man tempered by the indulgence of a friend; you have caught a glimpse, through an opera-comique cloud, of a miller's pretty wife with powdered hair, a waist all trimmed with gay ribbons, a light and short skirt, and ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... not to burden my friends,' she added, drawing her mantle round her and speaking in a tone of irony. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... dressing in nautical style, and assuming airs foreign to me," I thought to myself, though I could not help fancying that there was some quiet irony in the old man's tone. His plan did not at all suit my notions. I was already beginning to feel very uncomfortable, bobbing and tossing about among the ships; and I expected to be completely upset, unless ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... was—let drop an oath. "Are you doing anything at all?" he asked savagely, dropping the thin veil of irony that shrouded his temper. "That is the question. ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... nothing of the sort," replied Etta. "Of course I know that all that you say about position and work is mere irony. Paul thinks there is no one in the world ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... said with an accent of bitter irony. "And what could we tell the lawyer? That Sarah Brandon has made an old man, the Count Ville-Handry, fall madly in love with her? That is no crime. That she has made him marry her? That was her right. That the count has launched forth in speculations? She opposed it. That he understood nothing ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... will fit in when it comes to the sacrifices this afternoon? I imagine the Korinos ought to feel like dying when they are to have such an unusual funeral procession?" Harry said this with a bit of irony, as he turned to George ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... 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 contrary.' ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... still in the same condition," said Reine, "neither better nor worse, and, with the illness which afflicts him, the best I can hope for is that he may remain in that condition. But," continued she, with a slight inflection of irony; "doubtless it is not for the purpose of inquiring after my father's health that you have come all ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... her head and gave her merry, ringing laugh. "What delicious irony! Germany defeated by its women! When I think of your august papa, dear Gisela! That kulturistically typical, that naive yet Jovian symbol of all the arrogance and conceit, the simple creed of Kaiserism ueber alles, and will-to-rule, ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... and her sufferings were all the more intense because she had to hide them from every one, especially from her husband, and they made a marked contrast, by the irony of fate, with the pleasures and amusements that surrounded her. She was too clear-sighted and intelligent to proceed to question the Emperor. She feared light and dreaded the truth. She hesitated before the abyss ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... kill and slay! Dem Spanish and Portuguese sailors were quite right in making slaves. I would do de same myself, suppose I were in dere place.' 'He is only a liberated!' is a favourite sneer at the new arrivals; so in the West Indies, by a curious irony of fate, 'Willyfoss nigger' is a term of abuse addressed to a Congo or Guinea 'recaptive.' But here all the tribes are bitterly hostile to one another, and all combine against the white man. After ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... He had not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance, He did not thereby mean to suggest that there really are some righteous persons who have no need of repentance; rather was He seeking by the keenness of His Divine irony to pierce the hard self-satisfaction of men whose need was greater just ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... saw that argument was useless, and then, in his grief and despair, he did for a time lose his self-control. Erica had often felt sorry for the poor creatures who had to bear the brunt of her father's scathing sarcasm. But platform irony was a trifle to the torrent which bore down upon her today. When a strong man does lose his restraint upon himself, the result is terrific. Raeburn had never sufficiently cared for an adversary as to be moved beyond an anger which could be restricted and held within due bounds; he of course cared ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... life, there is, from the mere terminology of official France, high or low—daily France—a gratuitous and uncovenanted smile to be had. With this the wit of the report of French literature has not little to do. Nor is it in itself, perhaps, reasonably comic, but the slightest irony of circumstance makes it so. A very little of the mockery of conditions brings out all the latent absurdity of the "sixieme et septieme arron-dissements," in the twinkling of an eye. So is it with the mere "domicile;" with the aid of but a little of the burlesque of life, the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... me a strange specimen of a Church of England clergyman? Well, perhaps you are right! I believe I am rather different to my brethren." He said this with sharp irony. "Nevertheless, if you inquire concerning me in the neighbourhood, I think you will find that my moral conduct has never disgraced ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... 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 ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... 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 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... that there's truth in your irony—as I remember him, however, he was not as you all ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... too much for her; she had overrated her strength about it, and the sustenance of irony. So at last she fell into my arms, which had long been waiting for her; and there she lay with no other sound, except a gurgling ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... visited him, he received this child who had been brought up at Bartres and had not yet been seen at Catechism, almost as sternly as the Commissary of Police had done; in fact, he refused to believe her story, and with some irony told her to entreat the Lady to begin by making the briars blossom beneath her feet, which, by the way, the Lady never did. And if the Abbe ended by taking the child under his protection like a good pastor who defends his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Which, says he, they discovered the uselessness of things in Asia so long ago they've forgot when, and then they discovered the uselessness of the discovery. They discovered gunpowder, he says, long before we did, but they use it for fireworks in the interests of irony. They've forgotten more'n we ever knew, says he, the stuck-up little cast-eyed pig. Go on! I'm disgusted. Haven't I put on curry till it give me a furred mouth and dyspepsia of the ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... last he did fall asleep it was only to dream of Bela. By the irony of fate he saw Bela as she might have been, wistful, honest, and tender; anything but the sullen, designing liar his anger had built up in the daytime. In dreams she smiled on him, and soothed his weariness ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... at a banquet, Maitre Gambetta recently toasted our ex-President "as the great commander who had sacredly obeyed and preserved his country's laws." Whether this was said in irony or ignorance, had General Grant taken with him to Paris his late Secretary of the Interior, the accomplished Z. Chandler, the pair might have furnished suggestions to Marshal MacMahon and Fourtou that would have changed the dulcet ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... brought the cup. Tristan gazes rigidly into Isolde's eyes as she approaches him bearing it. "The voyage nears its end. In brief space we shall stand," her lip curls with irony, "before King Mark! As you lead me to him, should you not deem it an apt speech to make: My lord and uncle, look at her well! A meeker woman you could never hope to win. I slew her affianced, I sent home to her his head; the wound made by his weapon she graciously ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... for the irony of Fate! Among the stud thus sold, in a fit of pique, for "an old song" was Surplice, the winner of the next year's Derby and St Leger. Lord George had actually had the great prize in his hand and had ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... best of spirits. Now we have arrived and got the party in, it remains to themselves to get better. Plenty of exercise and fresh food ought to do miracles. We have been out 160 days, and done a distance of 1561 miles, a good record. I think the irony of fate was poor Smith going under a day before we got in. I think we shall all soon be well. Turned in 10.30 p.m. Before turning in Skipper shook us by the hand with great emotion, thanking us for ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... oratorical efforts. While he remained fond 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 in language ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... to be the musical prophet of an evangelical bourgeoisie would be felt as a most comical irony, were it only something less of a mystery. Handel was brought up in the bosom of the Lutheran Church, and was religious in his way. But it was emphatically a pagan way. Let those who doubt it turn to his setting of "All we like sheep have gone astray," in ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Dr. Sitgreaves, that no species of knowledge was to be despised; and, consequently, he was an empiric in everything but his profession. At first, indignation at the irony of his comrade kept him silent; but, suddenly changing his purpose, he answered the applicant with a ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... what her mother 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 ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore
... all of us were glad to find our return to the mother-country was at last arriving. So far away from the offence, we need not fear attainder if we confess, some few of us, that our hearts were not whole in their welcome of the long-deferred event. It belonged to the irony that waits on all lives which are not too dull a material for fortune's jests, that we should cease to desire our home just when long patience and often-thwarted ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... old story in every biography written or unwritten. It seldom fails to touch us, either in the way of sympathetic reminiscence, or if life should have gone somewhat too hardly with a man, then in the way of irony, which is not less real and poetic than the eironeia of a Greek dramatist, for being concerned ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... mangled earth, found that they had made another small salient, jutting out from their front in a V-shaped wedge, so that it was a death-trap for the men who had to hold it. This was done again and again, and I remember one distinguished officer saying, with bitter irony, remembering how many of his men had died, "Our generals must have their little V's at any price, to justify themselves at ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... bleeding 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 ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... Mr Mackay, smiling at the Irishman's irony at my expense, in return no doubt for my whimsical assumption of dignity when telling him who I was. "I suppose he's come to fill the place of young Rawlings, who, you may remember, cut and run from us at Singapore on ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... satirical chronicler. His style is not less lively than severe—not subtle enough for irony, but caustic, free, and full of earnest meaning. This volume is also an admirable manual, skilfully adapted to the purpose of diffusing a general knowledge of history and the working ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey |
