Cruel Irony Quotes & Sayings

We are a species and a culture that, through our attention habits, carry past wounds that cause anger, fear, longing, and sorrow. These affect our lives far more deeply than we realize. We see the world through an imperfect lens, which deeply colors our perceptions, making us more angry, fearful, sorrowful, and overwhelmed than we need to be. Our attention habits, and the emotions they repress, keep us separate from the world, from feeling part of it; they prevent us from fully sensing what is around us and participating in it. As a result, we are unable to fully engage the here and now. The cruel irony is that because we have no other frame of reference, because we do not pay attention to how we pay attention, we think we are seeing the world as it is. — Les Fehmi

Cruel irony, the poor man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case. — Albert Camus

What a cruel irony of fate, to pair together, like Siamese twins united by the shoulders, scientific adversaries of such contrasting character! — Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

In a cruel twist of irony, they achieved the immortality they'd been seeking. It's believed that the hollows can live thousands of years, but it is a life of constant physical torment, of humiliating debasement - feeding on stray animals, living in isolation - and of insatiable hunger for the flesh of their former kin, because our blood is their only hope for salvation. If a hollow gorges itself on enough peculiars, it becomes a wight. — Ransom Riggs

And then he says, "The writer must be true to truth." And that's a killer, because the only way you can describe a human being truly is by describing his imperfections. The perfect human being is uninteresting - the Buddha who leaves the world, you know. It is the imperfections of life that are lovable. And when the writer sends a dart of the true word, it hurts. But it goes with love. This is what Mann called "erotic irony," the love for that which you are killing with your cruel, analytical word. — Joseph Campbell

I have a lot of stuff that I never published because I always had a sense that novels were not finally going to be the way I made my living, because the form was dying commercially. — William Monahan

Just go look.
That sentiment had been the driving force behind humanity's progress across the ages, a simple imperative fueled by our innate curiosity: to discover what was around the next bend, over the next horizon. It was that same inquisitiveness that impelled us to explore who we are, where we came from, and where we are headed next. — James Rollins

Dramatic irony is a cruel occurrence, one that is almost always upsetting and I'm sorry to have it appear in this story, but Violet, Klaus, and Sunny have such unfortunate lives that it was only a matter of time before dramatic irony would rear its ugly head. — Lemony Snicket

If the Ego is hateful, Love your neighbor as yourself becomes a cruel irony. — Paul Valery

Hell is cold. Do you remember when you told me that? We were in the cellars of the Dark House. Anyone else would have been panicking, but you were as calm as a governess, telling me Hell was covered in ice. If it is the fire of Heaven that takes you from me, what a cruel irony that would be. — Cassandra Clare

That was the last cruel irony of Tobias's life: that he doomed the woman he would have died to save. — Cassandra Clare

My mom and I had secret from my dad that we didn't think we were stupid, that we didn't think we needed feminism to be explained to us. — Kathleen Hanna

Chava," he said, "it's a cruel irony that you have the most difficulty precisely when those around you are on their best behavior. I suspect you would find it much easier if we all cast politeness aside, and took whatever we pleased."
She considered. "It would be easier, at first. But then you might hurt each other to gain your wishes, and grow afraid of each other, and still go on wanting. — Helene Wecker

Whatever the incentive, whatever the situation, dishonest people will try to gain an advantage by whatever means necessary. Or, — Steven D. Levitt

I have compromised down the line. I've disliked it intensely in the old days when you were trying to talk race relations and they would not allow you to talk about the legitimacies of race relations. In the old days, you didn't talk about black, you talked about Eskimo or American Indian, and the American Indian was assumed not to be a problem area. — Rod Serling

Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or too deeply inured to mind it. She always grinned at him and fobbed him off with pleasantries, whether he was amorous or acrid.
'God Almighty,' he would groan, 'she is not good for me, this Marie. What can I do for her? She is burning me alive and the Skaggerack could not quench me, not all of it. The devil! What can I do with this? Some day I shall smash her across the eyes, yes, across the eyes.'
So you see the man really loved her.
("The Tiger") — A.E. Coppard

These were the moments I wished I were dead, when I was too weak to do anything about it. It was nature's cruel irony, stringing me along. — Pepper Winters

I'm addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win. — Larry Ellison

But apparently yoiu don't need dot-com wealth to ruin an area for its low-income residents. The Pioneer Press quotes Secretary of HUD Andrew Cuomo ruing the "cruel irony" that prosperity is shrinking the stock of affordable housing nationwide: "The stronger the economy, the stronger the upward pressure on rents. — Barbara Ehrenreich

The cruel irony of housework:
people only notice when you don't do it. — Danielle Raine

She grew more and more vexed with his dignified behavior. By a cruel irony, she was drawing out what was best in his disposition. — E. M. Forster

Our founders did not oust George III in order for us to crown Richard I. — Ralph Nader

As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy. — Will Durant