Quotes & Sayings About Irony In Literature

Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do. — Italo Calvino

Even English Language doesn't provide you with the Synonyms of the word Success. — Kshitij Shringi

The irony of Christianity is that believers get so angry, and self righteous toward other Christians who sin differently than they do. Christianity is like one large fraternity where brother and sisterhood is tested by hazing. — Shannon L. Alder

It is the specialist's task to talk about means, about centimeters. An artist's task is to talk about the goal, about kilometers, thousands of kilometers. The organizing role of art consists of infecting the reader, of arousing him with pathos or irony
the cathode and anode in literature. But irony that is measured in centimeters is pathetic, and centimeter-sized pathos is ridiculous. No one can be carried away by it. To stir the reader, the artist must speak not of means but of ends, of the great goal toward which mankind is moving. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Dwight would later learn that being Lyon's friend would cost him opportunities to make more of them, but he was content with that. He had learned the school year before that having a close friend was like having fifty not so close ones. ** — Michael Kroft

This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an overcooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job. — Susan Sontag

If you look at the world, you'll be distressed. If you look within, you'll be depressed. If you look at God you'll be at rest. — Corrie Ten Boom

Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite. — Joseph Brodsky

Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving ... The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years. — David Foster Wallace

Suddenly we have a baby who poops and cries, and we are trying to calm, clean up, and pin things together all at once. Then as fast as we learn to cope
so soon
it is hard to recall why diapers ever seemed so important. The frontiers change, and now perhaps we have a teenager we can't reach. — Polly Berrien Berends

A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' ... — Christopher Hitchens

Today, fantasy is, for better or for worse, just another genre, a place in a bookshop to find books that, too often, remind one of far too many other books; it is an irony, and not entirely a pleasant one, that what should be, by definition, the most imaginative of all types of literature has become so staid, and, too often, downright unimaginative. — Neil Gaiman

Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold onto something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't come back. You're left so alone that you can't explain. — Henry Rollins

There is an extraordinary irony in government efforts to promote more rational and sustainable forms of behaviour in individuals in economies which are dominated by the imperative to make profit through capital accumulation, and which are inevitably addicted to unsustainable growth. Too much of the practice literature ignores political economic matters mediating practices. As Tim Jackson and others have shown, the idea of a green capitalism, in which growth of output is 'de-coupled' from greenhouse gas emissions, is an impossible dream. I shall therefore argue that practice approaches need to consider political economic matters. — Elizabeth Shove

In mainstream literature, a trope is a figure of speech: metaphor, simile, irony, or the like. Words used other than literally. In SF, a trope - at least as I understand the usage - is more: science used other than literally. — Edward M. Lerner

An unhappy ending makes it literature rather than romantic fiction. — Victoria Clayton

Honor's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times. — Ben Jonson

Love is a war of lightning,
and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness. — Pablo Neruda

The spectacle is at the same time the mirage of self in the mirror of things. — Paul Ricoeur

Everything I love: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. — Christopher Hitchens

In basic terms, civilization is dependent upon the spontaneity and fulfillment of the individual. Your civilization is in sad straits. Not because you are allowed spontaneity or fulfillment to individuals, but because you are denied it, and because your institutions are based upon that premise. — Seth