"Irony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before in their history, and the efficiency of the civil service reached its maximum. No other governor-general ever drew so heavily on his private means in promoting the public good, and it was the irony of fate that he should have been accused, by certain irresponsible anti-imperialists, of using his public office to promote his private interests. Near the end of his administration grossly and absurdly false charges ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... Roger, half shocked. "No; I had a justice of the peace. I was the guest of honor," he went on, with a savage irony. "With good reason; it was I who ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... he contributed very largely to her growing up. The sight of his work and his methods; the occasional talks she overheard between him and his scientific comrades; the tones of irony and denial in the atmosphere about him; his antagonisms, his bitternesses, worked strongly upon her still plastic nature. Moreover she felt to her heart's core that he was unsuccessful; there were appointments he should have had, but had failed ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... persons of authority and influence uttered with such terrible license. He attacked the gods, the politicians, the philosophers, and the poets of Athens; even private citizens did not escape from his shafts, and women were subjects of his irony. Socrates was made the butt of his ridicule, when most revered, and Cleon in the height of his power, and Euripides when he had gained the highest prizes. He has furnished jests for Rabelais, and hints to Swift, and humor for MoliEre. In satire, in derision, in ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... effectively unsealed Sir Richmond's mind. Hitherto Dr. Martineau had perceived the possibility and danger of a defensive silence or of a still more defensive irony; but now that Sir Richmond had once given himself away, he seemed prepared to give himself away to an unlimited extent. He embarked upon an apologetic ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... discovered by chance a strain which would yield three hundred pounds more of seed cotton per acre than any other sort within his knowledge, and he alluringly named it Accidental Poor Land Cotton. John Farrar of the new railroad town Atlanta was thereby moved to irony. "This kind of cotton," he wrote in a public letter, "would run a three million bale crop up to more than four millions; and this would reduce the price probably to four or five cents. Don't you see, Mr. Miller, that we had better let you keep and plant your seed? You say that you had rather plant ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... new scheme. Greatly to her annoyance, Wharton came forward to her help, guaranteeing the solvency and permanence of her new partnership in glib and pleasant phrase, wherein her angry fancy suspected at once the note of irony. But Mrs. Jellison held firm, embroidering her negative, indeed, with her usual cheerful chatter, but sticking to it all the same. At last there was no way of saving dignity but to talk of something else and go—above ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... consequently, sounded all the more as if they were uttered at random by a man bereft of his reason. But his looks, the looks of those pale, cold, clear, blue eyes, were certainly not those of a madman. They clearly expressed menace, yes, menace, as well as irony, and, above all, implacable ferocity, and their glance was like a flash of lightning, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... irony of chance, had been so fortunate as to discover the wonderful lost Mariposa, the Veiled Mariposa; but although a vast fortune lay before his eyes, within his grasp, he was withheld from profiting by this strange ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... feeling came gradually over the watching multitude. The face of the giant was indeed that of a god in the noble, irony-tinged serenity of his calm features. It was if a further world had opened, and one of divinity had stepped down; a further world of kindness and fellow-love, where were none of the discords that bring conflicts and slaughterings ...
— A Scientist Rises • Desmond Winter Hall
... a 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 stockings with gilded clocks; in short, one of those ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... carried along by a tendency which no individuality can resist or greatly modify. Both unsubstantial rumor and incautious personal utterance have suggested an impatient desire in Mr. Gladstone to be rid of the occupation of Egypt; but scarcely has his long exclusion from office ended when the irony of events signalizes his return thereto by an increase in the force of occupation. Further, it may be noted profitably of the chain just cited, that the two extremities were first possessed—first India, then Gibraltar, far later Malta, Aden, Cyprus, Egypt—and ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... insatiable explorer of the earth has disappeared from it except in his own writings. The only monument to his memory existing is a shabby little marble shaft erected on the southerly summit of Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals. By a kind of irony of fortune, which Smith would have grimly appreciated, the only stone to perpetuate his fame stands upon a little heap of rocks in the sea; upon which it is only an inference that he ever set foot, and we can almost hear him say ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... subject better adapted far the indulgence of personal feeling, or for those sentimental confidences between the reader and the poet, in which the modern muse so much delights, could not be imagined. But what do we find? The theme is treated in the most general manner. Though emphasizing the irony of his reflection by the beautiful touch of memory in the second stanza, the poet speaks throughout as a moralist or spectator; from first to last he seems to lose all thought of himself in contemplating the tragedies he foresees for others; the subject is in fact handled ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... irony in the look that Katherine turned on her, and Audrey understood this time. As plainly as looks can speak, it condemned her as altogether lighter than vanity itself; and while condemning, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... may offend again, and I warn you of it. But the next time I offend, tell me so plainly and frankly like a lady, and don't lacerate my heart and bludgeon my vanity with imaginary faults of your own and purely gratuitous penance. I might suspect you of irony! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... French alliance, while Henry was engaged in treasonable intrigues with Scottish nobles, and in fomenting border troubles. But the truce was renewed in 1533, and a more definite peace was made in 1534. Henry now attempted to enlist James as an ally against Rome, and, by the irony of fate, offered him, as a temptation to become a Protestant, the hand of the Princess Mary. James refused to break with the pope, and negotiations for a meeting between the two kings fell through—fortunately, ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... him any message?" Cecil asked with faint irony. "He will no doubt be up with the fish later in ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "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 what ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... of 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 follows another choral ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... how they can blame you for the trouble of last night," Bradley said, and Ned caught a tone of irony in his voice. ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... really cannot, even if they wished it, enter into any of his views, or comprehend his most ordinary feelings; and, therefore, they cannot believe in the sincerity of the impressions he describes. The candour which he expresses, and evidently feels, they mistake for irony, or totally distrust; his unwillingness to give pain to persons from whom he has received kindness, they scornfully reject as affectation; and, although they must know right well, in their own secret ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... had thus brought his speech to its proper, and what would have been a perfect close, he suddenly changed his tone, and, in a strain of consummate and powerful irony, began to rally his antagonist. He assented to the gentleman's eulogium upon Lord Mansfield. It was deserved. He acknowledged the justice of his remarks in relation to himself (Hamilton) and his ephemeral fame; but he did not see why the gentleman should have included himself in the same ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... scepticism to the assurances of those who say that right conduct will survive though religion be surrendered. It has perhaps not been generally observed that just as the virtuous agnostic is generally the child of Christian parents, so by a seeming irony he is {179} often found to be the father of Christian children: there is hardly a genuine case on record where "free-thought," Agnosticism, Rationalism, has descended from parents to children to the third or fourth ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... to decide—and the thing was discussed at a little family 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 ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... had rebelled, we were punished by being rusticated or sent into the country to board. I went to Professor Dodd to receive my sentence, and in a grave voice, in which was a faint ring as of irony, and with the lurking devil which always played in his great marvellous mysterious black eyes, he said, "If you were any other student, I would not send you to the city, and so reward your rebellion with a holiday. But as ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... asked Kate. She was capable, wit and social strategist that she was, of assuming all this interest by way of leading an inept youth to make a fool and a braggart of himself for her amusement. But she showed not a glimmer of irony, neither in her mouth nor in her green-grey eyes. She spoke with the straight, sincere interest of a dairymaid listening to the self-told heroisms of ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... time he had signed himself thus: and the envelope was addressed 'Miss Maurice'! The irony of it cut her to the quick. Tears of self-pity, flooding her eyes, startled her back to reality; and sent her stumbling towards her own room. But before she could reach it, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... between ill-concealed art and as ill-concealed irony had been practised with impunity by the Marquess for a fortnight, and the lady's imagination began to revel in the delights of a triumph, when a really respectable offer was made to Miss Harris by a neighbor of her father's in the country—one she would rejoice to ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... unknown, it is doubtful whether Maurel, of all men, would have allowed of the loss of a fat line. (2) As Canio is chief of the company it is eminently proper that he should make the announcement to the crowd. (3) The ghastly irony is accentuated by the speech when it comes ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... him to know then, that this child of the wilderness had given him her love, unsought. She had loved him, and she had died for him, whilst a man who had loved her, now wept over her poor body. The tragedy of it all shook him, and the irony of Jean Benard's grief was almost beyond endurance. A great humility filled his heart, and whilst he acquitted himself of blame, he regretted deeply his vehemence of repudiation. All her words came back to him in a flood. She must have guessed that he loved Helen; yet in the greatness of ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... so sure, so contented, isn't it?" the youth demanded of her, whether in innocence or irony she could not tell. "People are trained, or they train themselves, by the millions, to think of things in exactly one way." He who had once been "Gargoyle" looked piercingly into the eyes of this one being to whom at least he was not afraid ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was unpleasant, not a doubt; but since you ask me for advice, can't you think of some way to make Sundays and holidays endurable to Ned, bless his big heart! Be a little easy on him, a little careless about his ways. Ned is such a simple fellow! Hard words, irony and sarcasm, complainings and scoldings cut him very deeply! Don't be offended, but don't you think that perhaps you could manage it to somehow keep Ned from flinging out of the house desperate and foolish every once in a while, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... doubt be grateful for your sympathy," the young woman answered, flinging a queer little look of irony at him. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... nothing against me," the Professor repeated in a tone of irony. "You only want to drag me through the village before the squire. Tell the squire to come here ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the Governor to his staff, "but young, quite young." And they smiled approvingly at the grim irony of ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... greatest of Roman Epicureans, the materialist, whose maxim was: enjoy the present for there is no God, and no to-morrow, speaks despairingly of that drop of bitterness, which rises in the fountain of Delight and brings torture, even amid the roses of the feast. It is with mocking irony that Dante places Epicurus in the furnace-tombs of his Inferno amid those heresiarchs who denied the immortality of the soul. Hafiz was an Epicurean without the atheism or the despair of Epicurus. The roses in his feast are ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... who are submerged. These books are the record of what a clear-eyed, sane, vigorous, sympathetic, humorous man knows about life; a man too conscious of things as they are to wish grossly to exaggerate or to disguise them; and at the same time so entirely aware how much poetry as well as irony God has mingled in the order of the world as to be incapable of concealing that fact either. He is of such ample intellectual frame that he makes the petty contentions of literary schools appear foolish. I find a measure of Hardy's ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... 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 ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... I discovered that young Wintermill couldn't be depended upon to rescue his best friend, I stepped into the arena, so to speak," said Mr. Thorpe with fine irony. "I sensed the situation perfectly. Percy was young and strong and enduring. He would be a long time dying in the natural order of things. What Anne was looking for—now, keep your seat, my boy!—what she wanted was ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... between thy husband and his rights," whispered Alan Rookwood, in a tone of horrible irony; "it is not too late to repair ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... is an ingenious way of accounting for Wordsworth's neglect of our luminous pages. Yet it rather sounds like irony, coming from Mr. Walter Savage Landor to the editor of "The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... of the poetry of the moment—felt nothing of its pathetic irony in view of the deed she was half-unconsciously designing. She saw only, at first dimly, then distinctly, that here were the means by which mamma's enemy might be punished and swept from mamma's place, and that if she failed her opportunity now she would be a traitor and a coward, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... a tone of irony.) When I see a young man spending his time at the theatre, in search of good morals, I think he "pays too ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... whole time I was with them, I never heard them indulge in a joke, or other levity, and the practice of it is apt to give offence: they are so accustomed to take what is said in its literal meaning, that irony was always considered a falsehood, in spite of explanation. They could not see the propriety of uttering what was not strictly true, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... times in succession, while Woloda, who was dozing on a settee in the drawing-room, kept addressing no one in particular as he muttered, "Lord! how she murders it! WHAT a musician! WHAT a Beethoven!" (he always pronounced the composer's name with especial irony). "Wrong again! Now—a second time! That's it!" and so on. Meanwhile Katenka and I were sitting by the tea-table, and somehow she began to talk about her favourite subject—love. I was in the right frame of mind to philosophise, and began by loftily defining love as the wish to acquire ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... with gallant irony, bowing with a chivalrous humility that drove her nearly mad, but he ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... remarkable for the mildness of his temper and the amenity and grace of his manner, but whose society was courted in the most distinguished circles of Paris on account of his accomplishments. He perceived in Bonaparte a kind of acerbity and bitter irony, of which he long endeavoured to discover the cause. 'I believe,' said Albert one day to my mother, 'that the poor young man feels keenly his dependent situation.'" ('Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, vol. i. p. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... standard of living that prevailed among the mass of the people was only what it was, even in those countries which we termed wealthy, it seems at first sight an utterly astonishing anomaly that at frequent intervals large numbers of competent and industrious work-people should find no work to do. The irony of the situation cannot be more tersely expressed than in the words, which a man is supposed to have uttered as he watched a procession of unemployed men: "No work to do. Set them to rebuild their ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... might well have mistaken the identity of the boy's father. For he stood now, holding the Master's arm; while a few paces above them was the little man, pale but determined, the expression on his face betraying his consciousness of the irony of ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... were gone. Lash was correct 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 ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... their consciences alone could explain. But for this unjust, vulgar, and degrading interpretation of his own act of expiation, he was totally unprepared. It completely crushed whatever sentiment remained of that act in the horrible irony of finding himself put upon his defence before the world, without being able now to offer the real cause. The anguish of that night had gone forever; but the ridiculous interpretation of it had survived, and would survive it. In the eyes of the man before him he was not ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... in silence, suffered from the irony of Pascal, the full bitterness of which she divined. She, who usually took M. Bellombre's part, felt a protest rise up within her. Tears came to her eyes, and she answered simply in a ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... the author of the plays. This is untrue. We have more than one reference by his contemporaries, identifying the actor with the poet, some so strong that the Baconians themselves can explain them away only by assuming that the writer is speaking in irony or that he willfully deceives the public. By assumptions like that, any one ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... not yet again the great soul of the hero!" put in Basset with grim irony. "If he lie abed i' th' day for a wound to his wrist, what shall he do for a stab to his feelings? You shall drive him to drown him in salt water; and that were cruelty unheard-of, for it should make his eyes smart. I tell thee what, Jack Enville—there ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... eyes searched the other's impassive face for some trace of the irony he suspected. They were as wide asunder as the poles, these two, in their political views; and mistrusted as Andre-Louis was by all his colleagues of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, he was by none ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... altar raised to the goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction, to set off the meanest things. The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity, is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in Europe. The little is made great, and the great little. You hardly know whether to laugh or weep. It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and folly. It is the perfection of the mock-heroic! ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... them it seemed that to know and meet evil was a far better thing than the innocence of such ignorance. To Gilbert, still under the shock of a knowledge compared with which "these two Cambridge gentlemen knew about as much of real evil as two babies in the same perambulator," the exquisite irony of this remark suggested a thought. Why not a whole comedy of cross purposes based on the notion of a priest with a knowledge of evil deeper than that of the criminal he is converting? He carried out this idea in the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the children gather about you, reminding you that in Italy even the oldest places—S. Paolo al Orto, for instance, with its beautiful old tower that is now a dwelling—are put to some use, and are really living still like the gods who have taken service with us, perhaps in irony, to console themselves for our treachery in ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... 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
... shown under a glass cover on the wall by the staircase in the entrance hall, and a model of that ancient fortress of tyranny, made from a block of stone from the renowned French prison, sent over in 1793, stands in happy irony in the banquet hall. A bedchamber on the second floor is pointed out as the room in which Lafayette slept. It ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... of his sufficed to restrain Vinicius or urge him to something. At present there remained nothing of that; such was the change that Petronius did not try his former methods, feeling that his wit and irony would slip without effect along the new principles which love and contact with the uncomprehended society of Christians had put in the soul of Vinicius. The veteran sceptic understood that he had lost the key to that soul. This knowledge ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... James Moore, whose fathers had for generations owned and farmed the land they now leased at the hands of the Sylvesters—there in the old hall they were assembled, a mighty host. And apart from the others, standing as though in irony beneath the frown of one of those steel-clad warriors who held the door, was little M'Adam, puny always, paltry ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... nature and atrocious English against the temptation of writing as he ought, Kinglake commenced author with a respect for "composition," ingrained perhaps by his Public School and University training. Borrow arrays his page by instinct, Kinglake by study. His irony (as in the interview with the Pasha) is almost too elaborate; his artistic judgment (as in the Plague chapter) almost too sure; the whole book almost too clever. The performance was wonderful; the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... build a shack out here an' live in it, I am!" exploded Hopalong in withering irony as he dug the sand out of his ears and also from his sixshooter. "I just nachurally dotes ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... regarding our memory with the severity of citizens called to sit in judgment on an affair concerning the state, will allude to us with the scathing irony of a ruined son, when he speaks of the father who has squandered ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... understand the irony of his temporary rescue, and had little experience of commercial integrity, so called, was intent on fulfilling his part of the understanding with Carmen. This could best be effected by a return dinner to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... have gone some way since these words were written in our Old Age Pensions.] Here he puts his finger on the very spot where one thoughtless cruelty of bureaucratic legislation is most shown. For many faithful servants of the State come in their last extremity to this destiny. This irony of legislation shone out lately in its true colours when it was discovered that, of over a thousand survivors of the Indian Mutiny, a large proportion, who were invited to the demi-centenary celebration dinner, came out of workhouses where they, who had served their country so well in ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... and a favourite theory, with the Europeans," he said, with a sort of bitter irony, "that all the animals of this hemisphere have less gifted natures than those of the other; nor is it a theory of which they are yet entirely rid. The Indian was supposed to be passionless, because he had self-command; and what in the European would be thought ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... played a part in one of his stories O. Henry wrote: "Formerly it was a resort of interesting Bohemians; but now only writers, painters, actors, and musicians go there." The same topsy-turvical irony might have been directed with equal happiness at the cafe of the Brevoort, or the Black Cat on West Broadway, or Gonfarone's at the corner of Eighth and MacDougal Streets, or at old Maria's. Whatever else it may be Bohemia is a democracy, and regardless ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... gave 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
... an excellent irony in the refrain: "Salute me, all the company," whose double interpretation must not be missed, though it may ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... become the martyr for his ideal. But the delicate hands are not the hands of an empire-breaker. This portrait will probably find its last resting-place in the National Gallery, where, with a curious irony, the Government places the portraits of the dead rebels who gave its statesmen many an anxious day and many a nightmare; and so it will go on, perhaps, until the contemplation of these pictures inspires some boy with an equal or better head and a ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... Bertram) was complete, being prepared for matrimony by a hatred of home, restraint and tranquillity, by the misery of disappointed affection and contempt of the man she was to marry; the rest might wait." This is not the touch of Gerard Douw. An undertone of irony, never obtrusive but everywhere perceptible, shows that the artist herself knew very well that she was not painting gods and Titans, and keeps everything ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... later the elk had to be destroyed. In a fit of exceptional moroseness it had killed the Bickelbys' German governess. It was an irony of its fate that it should achieve popularity in the last moments of its career; at any rate, it established, the record of being the only living thing that had ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... Woods, too, had gained my suspicions, and yet he was miles away from the murder. I realized suddenly that I had been refusing to look at the obvious in order that I might place the guilt where I wanted to believe it lay. Yet it did seem the irony of fate that the two men benefiting by Jim's death should have had nothing to ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... and a persecutor, yet suffered in silence, if he might protect his king. Before he died, Louvois had undermined his credit even with the king, and his funeral at night, to avoid a mob, was a pathetic fact. France has now reinstated him, say modern men—but that is the irony ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... to some extent partakers of it. Columbus was eager to make his great discovery pay well, to preserve the means of continued exploration. In one hand he lifted high the banner of possession with its promise of a cross, which direful irony fulfilled; with the other he kept feeding the ravenous nation with gold, to preserve its sympathy and admiration, that the supply of men and vessels should not fail. Las Casas himself, a just and noble man, the first advocate of the natural rights of men in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... analytical faculty. Uses: Separation of compound or general ideas into those that are elementary or more simple; knowledge of characteristic differences and discrepance. Abuses: A disposition to jest or ridicule; irony, sarcasm, and satire, without respect to truth, or the circumstances of person, place, or time. Organ, on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... with 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 ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... by invitation, and to speak now would be beyond pardon. In his heart was no room for humor, and yet a comic side of the situation in which he found himself was undeniable. The contrast it afforded to former opportunities was absurdly sharp and determined, and the irony of the little god's way of ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... him with sublime pity in her eyes. 'I do not conceal from you,' she said, 'that I love you very much. I, too, have suffered, and I had thought for one moment that fate had vouchsafed me happiness; but, as you would say—the irony of life.' ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... Atterson's front hall (the young men boarders gave her that appellation in irony) the ghosts of many ancient boiled dinners met you with—if you were sensitive and unused to the odors of ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... the whole story. Is it possible, I asked myself, that the writer of that article, whoever he may be, could have meant its title in anything but irony? Yet, there it stood on the front page of a most respectable journal, indorsed by an editor of the highest reputation. To my way of thinking, the wife was accessory to the crime; had no womanly self-respect, no delicacy, no Christian ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... picture of justice blinded, he exclaims: "What mocking irony in judicial pose of blind goddess poising nicely adjusted balance, whose crude, arbitrary registers reckon not of ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... By the irony of fate it was Dort—the possessor of Terween's carving of the Triumph of Charles V. (a pendant to the Triumph of the Church and the Eucharist)—that, in 1572, only a few years after the carving was made, held the Congress which virtually decided the ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... address to the Almighty, he adds, "On voit, au reste, par la, que Barrow etoit un pauvre philosophe; car il croyait en l'immortalite de l'ame, et en une Divinite autre que la nature {161} universelle."[351] This is irony, not an expression of opinion. In the book of mathematical recreations which Montucla constructed upon that of Ozanam,[352] and Ozanam upon that of Van Etten,[353] now best known in England by Hutton's similar treatment of Montucla, there is an amusing chapter on the quadrators. Montucla ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... also in German script, "Good people—they give everything!" and on several were orders to leave those within alone. And there was a curious and touching irony in that phrase: "Gute Leute— Schoenen!" chalked in stiff script by those now fighting for their lives to the north of us and likely never to ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... with fine irony, "will be pleased to see you, as he retired early; in fact he has ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... masque and music, of dreams like foam-white swans On lakes of hyacinthus? Must Love seek Great allies, Beauty sound her arriere-bans That all her splendours betray us to this bleak Simplicity whereto blind satyrs run?"— The irony seems ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... the vision of the angels on Mt. Sinai, and the celestial Sidonia 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 as we turn ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... surprise; but with all these unhoped-for favors of fortune, which did not give him the power to repair his misfortune, the noble poet deeply realized that riches and glory were not equal to a great love or a beautiful dream, and, completely upset by the irony of his fate, he broke into a harsh burst ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... dispute these dates, as was the case with Chopin, for Old Fogy will be soon forgotten. It is due to the pious friendship of the publisher that these opinions are bound between covers. They are the record of a stubborn, prejudiced, well-trained musician and well-read man, one who was not devoid of irony. Indeed, I believe he wrote much with his tongue in his cheek. But he was a stimulating companion, boasted a perverse funny-bone and a profound sense of the importance of being Old Fogy. And this is all I ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... its mill, which like an automatic machine ground him relentlessly since the end of the month of June. Not the least but one of the cruellest and most ironical phases — and nearly every clause of this Act teems with irony — is the Schedule or appendix giving the so-called Scheduled Native Areas; and what ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... ease, in congenial society, he displayed his mastery of irony and banter, neither hesitating to air his opinion of persons nor shrinking from admissions which were candid to the verge of cynicism. At such times he had not veiled his intense dislike of the Administration. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... no doubt about it, there was certainly a touch of cruel irony in Hyde's soft voice. Her breath came fast. "Why do you say that": she cried—"say it ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... from him, and the handkerchief with which she offers to bind his brow is secured by Iago. Left with his chief, Iago fans the rising flame of jealousy, and the act ends with Othello's terrific appeal to Heaven for vengeance upon his wife. In the third act, after an interview of terrible irony and passion between Othello and Desdemona, in which he accuses her to her face of unchastity, and laughs at her indignant denial. Cassio appears with the handkerchief which he has found in his chamber. Iago ingeniously contrives ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... a blessed thing to have a brother!" observed Bertram with irony. "Well!—and what news, sweet ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... slyly, silently, she managed to get rid of all my friends. We had not made any difference in our talk because of * her presence. We talked as we always had done in the past, but she never understood the irony or the fantasy of our artistic exaggerations, of our wild axioms, or paradoxes, in which-an idea is travestied only to figure more brilliantly. It only irritated and puzzled her. Seated in a quiet corner of the drawing-room, she listened ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... I'll send you assistance, for I see you require it," shouted Captain Hemming, with a touch of irony in his tone, as the ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... of those things publicly accounted good, true, and just which will win them public approval and increase their own wealth or power and position. Plato, in the Republic, pictures the type with magnificent irony: ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Neptune explained the perturbations of the adjacent planets. Nothing ever gravitates towards nothing; and it must be an unseen orb that so draws our yearning souls. If it be not so, then what terrible contradictions stagger us, and what a chilling doom awaits us! Oh, what mocking irony then runs through the loftiest promises and hopes of the world! Just as the wise and good have learned to live, they disappear amidst the unfeeling waves of oblivion, like snow flakes in the ocean. "The super earthly desires ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... eight books, the first of which, in irony of some histories which had previously been published, gives a description of the world and a history of its creation, and in brief, the story of Noah and the discovery of America, and a dissertation on the origin of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... took this to be bitter irony, which means saying the exact opposite of what you mean in order to make yourself disagreeable; as when you happen to have a dirty face, and someone says, 'How ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... effrontery; but it is needless to say that the author of the joke remained unknown save to a few of his comrades; and the great ruler of Hindostan was forced to rest content and ponder over the hidden sarcasm and bitter irony addressed to one in ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... way, and 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 ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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
... thick in her streets. All the opposing forces of Church and State, of theology and politics, of philosophy and science, of literary and social and economic theory, have contended for mastery in the place which Matthew Arnold, with fine irony, described as "so unruffled by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene!" Every succeeding generation of Oxford men has borne its part in these ever recurring strifes. To hold aloof from them would have ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... universities should strive with each other for the honour of his education, but it is certain the world have not coincided with this opinion of Mr. Welsted; who, by the way, can hardly be thought the author of such an extravagant self-approbation, unless it be an irony, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... think I was?' he asked, and there was a tender irony in his voice which made the playful question almost pathetic. 'If I had been a good child I should have been content and had no roving disposition, and have found my home and my world at Hampstead, instead of straying ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Christ spoke publicly on the mount, yet no one said aught until He had finished His discourse. How shall the hearer be otherwise than ridiculous? Nay, he will be deemed a flatterer and his praise no better than irony, when he declares that the teacher spoke beautifully; but what he said, this he cannot tell. This has all the appearance of adulation. For when, indeed, one has been hearing minstrels and players, it is no wonder if such has been the case with him, seeing he ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... she begged. "Throw the key into the sea, or whatever oblivion you choose to conjure up. Moments such as those have no place in my life. There is one purpose there more intense than anything else, that very purpose which by some grim irony of fate it seems to be within your ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 'Characteristics,' in his exquisite vein of irony sneers at Christianity for taking no cognizance of friendship either in its precepts or in its promises. Jeremy Taylor, however, speaks of this feature of Christianity as among the manifest tokens of its divine origin, and Soame Jenyns takes the same ground in a treatise ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... present to feed his pride of superiority; as in his first speech, act II. sc. 1. Shakspeare here, as in all his great parts, developes in a tone of sublime morality the dreadful consequences of placing the moral, in subordination to the mere intellectual, being. In Richard there is a predominance of irony, accompanied with apparently blunt manners to those immediately about him, but formalized into a more set hypocrisy towards the people as represented ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... last," he returned, while the points of blue light seemed to pierce Stephen like arrows—no, like gimlets, "well, you're wrong about one part of it—for if that ever happens, I'll laugh with you because of the sheer rotten irony." ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... cried I afterwards, "another newspaper praise for you now, 'Mr. Windham, with his usual vein of irony."' ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... 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 the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... work, whether poetry or prose, his plays, his novels, his letters, his conversations, are richly bestrewn with the luminous sentences of a keen-eyed, steadfast, patient, indefatigable watcher of human life. He deals gravely and sincerely with men. He has none of that shallow irony by which small men who have got wrong with the world seek a shabby revenge. He tells us the whole truth. He is not of those second-rate sages who keep their own secrets, externally complying with all the conventions ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... is with adamantine chains to his rock, and bound, as it might seem, for ever. When Napoleon said of Count Lobau, whose proper name was Mouton, 'Mon mouton c'est un lion,' it was the same instinct at work, though working from an opposite point. It made itself felt no less in the bitter irony which gave to the second of the Ptolemies, the brother-murdering king, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... qualities are concerned, then, Locke is as thoroughgoing a realist as St. Anselm. In Berkeley, on the other hand, we have as complete a representative of the nominalists and conceptualists—an intellectual descendant of Roscellinus and of Abelard. And by a curious irony of fate, it is the nominalist who is, this time, the champion of orthodoxy, and the realist ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... "Pharaoh! although I am a descendant of Jacob, whose sons sold their brother Joseph into Egypt, I do not deserve your irony. We are poor people, but the child is ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... "Jury" on their papers obeyed. They were a motley crew, some being Fifth-form boys, some Shell-fish, and some Babies. And by the odd irony of fate, the one who had drawn the "foreman's" ticket was Jukes, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... is a description of Shelley himself following Byron and Moore—the "Pilgrim of Eternity," and Ierne's "sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong"—to the couch where Keats lies dead. There is both pathos and unconscious irony in his making these two poets the chief mourners, when we remember what Byron wrote about Keats in "Don Juan", and what Moore afterwards recorded of Shelley; and when we think, moreover, how far both Keats and Shelley have outsoared Moore, and disputed with Byron ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... week was passed 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 in ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... Times.—"His real 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 evening sunshine ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... are not the essential characteristics. I am convinced that there is another Montaigne who has nothing in common with the Montaigne of convention and tradition. I am convinced that the scepticism, the Conservatism, the irony, the moderation, the affectation of humility, frivolity, pedantry, and innocent candour, are only a mask and disguise which Montaigne has put on to conceal his identity, that they are only so many tricks and dodges to lead the temporal and spiritual powers off the track, and to reassure ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... poet.... In 'The Wandering Soul,' the verse describing Socrates has that highest note of critical poetry, that in it epigram becomes vivid with life, and life reveals its inherent paradox. It would be difficult to describe the famous irony of Socrates in more poetical and more accurate words than by saying that he doubted men's doubts away."—Spectator, February ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... level of irony there are undoubtedly exalted patches of more than merely verbal humour, such as, for example, Sir Charles Repton's jolly speech at the Van Diemens meeting, in which he outlines with enormous gusto the principles of procedure of modern finance. (It will be remembered ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... kind. Young Gilding's lounge suit is quite as "handsome" as his dinner clothes, and he tubs and shaves and changes his linen when he puts it on. His wife wears a tea gown, which is classified as a neglige rather in irony, since it is apt to be more elaborate and gorgeous (to say nothing of dignified) than half of the garments that masquerade these days as evening dresses! They wear these informal clothes only if very intimate friends are coming to dinner ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... satires the vices and prejudices of his fellow-citizens, in a forcible and elegant style; and Parini, the great satirist of the eighteenth century, founded a school of satire, which proved most beneficial to the country. His poem, "The Day," is distinguished by fine irony and by the severity with which he attacks the effeminate habits of his age. He lashes the affectations and vices of the Milanese aristocracy with a sarcasm worthy of Juvenal. The satires of D'Elei, Guadagnali, and others are characterized by wit and beauty of versification. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... then come you, whose pores are running over as with streams, fountains, cataracts, and tell me such words as those which you have said to me. I find it difficult to think that this is not the purest irony, and I must recall your friendship in order to believe that you have not been cutting a joke at my expense after all. This is a peculiar story, dearest friend; believe me, I am not up to much. I really begin to think that Reissiger ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... strange irony of fate this man, who was by nature one of the most peaceable and peace-loving of men, singularly calm and dispassionate, not prone to disputation or given to wrangling, acquired the reputation of being perhaps the most ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... to say that. She had meant to say that it was impossible, out of the question. But her heart was running away with her, goaded on by the irony of it all. A veil seemed to have fallen from before her eyes, and she knew now why she had been drawn to Jimmy from the very first. They were mates, and she ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... had snapped out. "You'll end by hanging me before you've done! It won't be any good then saying 'Oh, I didn't know,' 'Oh, I didn't mean to!'" He mimicked with savage irony her frightened accents. And then, as she had burst into tears, he had ordered her up here, out ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his greatest feats in the kind of irony that appeals to a jury. And the audience deemed that the case was already ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... your friend waiting, Dorothy," said Mrs, Garrison, with blasting irony. "Give him my compliments and say that we trust he may come every day. He affords us a subject for pleasant discussion, and I am sure Prince Ugo will be as charmed to meet him here as he ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... rested on Saint-Prosper for a moment, but told nothing beyond the slight touch of irony in his words and then shifting to the young girl, it lingered upon each detail of costume and outline of feature. Before she could reply, Barnes cracked his whip, the horses sprang forward, and the stable boy, a confused tangle of legs and arms, was shot ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Tarrant; and the gay vibration of her voice as she uttered this simple ejaculation was the last that Ransom heard of her. Miss Chancellor swept her out of the room, leaving the young man to extract a relish from the ineffable irony with which she uttered the words "even a woman." It was to be supposed, on general grounds, that she would reappear, but there was nothing in the glance she gave him, as she turned her back, that was an earnest of this. He stood there a moment, wondering; ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... but a 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 ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... official visitations, used to cry out, "Fellow-citizens, I'm coming among you;" and the anecdote never recurs to my mind, without bringing Marble back to my recollection. When in spirits, he had much of this bitter irony in his manner; and his own early experience had rendered him somewhat insensible to professional suffering; but, on the whole, I always thought him a ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... situation indeed! To be occupying the most expensive suite in the hotel of a man who wished to lend him money, to be unable to pay one day's rent therefore, and yet to be stopped from accepting aid. There was a grim irony about it, for a fact. Then, too, the seed he had sown in banking circles, and his luncheon with the mayor! Haviland had a sense of humor; it would make a story too good to keep—the new oil operator, the magnificent and mysterious New York ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... lifting herself with a spring and raising her hand, while lightning flashed from eyes where twenty chaste years shone—"judge of the impression the love of a man like Michel must have made upon me. But by some irony of fate—or was it the hand of God?—well, he died; died in saving the life of, whom do you suppose? of Monsieur de Cadignan. Are you now surprised to ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... save in the ironical form. Whenever he addressed her he gave her pleasure; but she had to cut her pleasure out of the piece, as it were. There were portions left over, light remnants and snippets of irony, which she never knew what to do with, which seemed too delicate for her own use; and yet Catherine, lamenting the limitations of her understanding, felt that they were too valuable to waste and had a belief that if they passed over her head they yet contributed ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... day, not without a touch of irony, "how far have you got? Have you made a good bag? Anything mysterious? ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... thus exercised his authority, he turned to one of his companions, and, with an air of disdainful ridicule, told him he was like to have had an affair with a bourgeois; adding, by way of heightening the irony, "Egad! I believe he is ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... accompany the sung seguilla, which the beggars of Spain throw, like a slight irony into this lukewarm breeze, above the dead. And boys and girls think of the fandango of to-night, feel ascending in them the desire ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... with what actually is. The mere thought of these protagonists of the century working in harmony to one great purpose, without distrust of each other's motives, and with no necessity for anyone's dodging political foul play, summons the smile of irony. Mutual trust was never so much a suggestion to laugh down. The mere hint that it might be possible would make one a target for the wit ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... careless way. It is most extraordinary. To amuse a parcel of bored gentlefolk dozens of first-rate actors, singers and lecturers are engaged, but for the people a lecturer like myself is quite good enough." Schafroff smiled at his own bland irony. "Everybody's quite satisfied. What ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef |
