Quotes & Sayings About Sarcasm And Irony

The more repression there is, the more need there is for irreverence toward those who are responsible for that repression. But too often sarcasm passes for irony, name-calling passes for insight, bleeped-out four-letter words pass for wit, and lowest-common-denominator jokes pass for analysis. Satire should have a point of view. It doesn't have to get a belly laugh. It does have to present criticism. — Paul Krassner

Carefully I opened my eyes and looked at him again. All his natural gifts were there in a blaze of light: the delicate but strong limbs, large sober brown eyes, and his mouth that for all the irony and sarcasm that could come out of it was childlike and ready to be kissed. — Anne Rice

I don't get you people. You watch the Godfather on television and tons of people are getting shot and stabbed to death, blood splattering everywhere and it is entertaining. But, when they killed a horse, people were outraged. — Mario Stinger

A man doesn't like to have his ego popped, especially when he prides himself on his sagacity, and then to be proved wrong by a man who claims he doesn't know anything. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I'm so sick of sarcasm and irony, I could kill! Sincerely, the real root of things is love and sacrifice. — Ben Foster

The over-weight and out of shape guy who owned the house had apparently decided that having a half-million dollar house meant that he couldn't afford to hire someone to clean out his gutters. Now he was dead with what looked to me like a broken neck after the ladder had slipped. He'd taken the plunge into his fancy landscaping - complete with rock garden. But hey, his fucking gutters were clean. — Diana Rowland

... And I wondered if we had disappointed God so much, that he wrote us off as pets, just alive to entertain. — Bethany Brookbank

What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage. — Charlotte Bronte

I'd love to start some movements. What I'm tired of is irony, and sarcasm, and music/movies/what have you, not having the guts to mean anything. — Don Hertzfeldt

Repeat a lie a thousand times and it become a successful political campaign. — Ljupka Cvetanova

So you thought you could shit and eat at the same time. How disgustingly convenient. — Nenia Campbell

For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of war.
[Funeral Oration of Pericles] — Thucydides

What is your advice to young writers?"
"Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes. — Charles Bukowski

Im.' The monosyllable was heavy with contempt. 'E's a twat.'
'Is he?'
'Yeah, 'e is. Ask Kieran.'
She gave the impression that she and Kieran stood together, sane, dispassionate observers of the idiots populating Lula's world. — Robert Galbraith

My films often have a very strong strain of irony, or even sarcasm, which is definitely related to homosexual camp. But it is by no means straightforward: quite often I am sincere when I appear to be sarcastic, and I am sarcastic when I appear to be sincere. I also try to contradict myself at least once a day, which is a camp must. — Bruce LaBruce

And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable. — Guy De Maupassant

A careful blending of sarcasm, irony, and teasing, bickering has its own distinctive cadence and rhythm and is as difficult to master as French, Spanish, or any elective second language. Like Chinese, the fine points of bickering can be discerned in the subtle rise and fall of the voice. If not practiced properly, bickering can be mistaken for its less sophisticated counterpart: whining. — Linda Sunshine

La Zona is such a closed area, a dangerous, outlaw area. My time in the Zona was a time outside of society, almost out of the real world. And the girls there had such a sense of irony and sarcasm. They were also really interested in my film. They'd be like, "Thank God we live in Mexico, because our kind of prostitution has a heart. We wouldn't want to sit behind a glass cage or be sold by our own mothers. We have free will." — Michael Glawogger

Teenagers are never joking. when seeking to prove a point, principals and teachers should remember that teenagers are never, ever sarcasic or ironic. if they say "I wish someone would drop a bomb on this school right now," that means they have arranged for a nuclear arsenal to be emptied onto the school and should be immediately suspended and ridiculed. if they say they were merely coming up with a joking excuse to postpone a bio test, reply that all jokes are funny, and that since dropping a bomb on a school is not funny, it is therefore
not
a
joke. — David Levithan

At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin. — James Thurber

I did not understand that she was hiding her feelings under irony, that this is usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded, and that their pride makes them refuse to surrender till the last moment and shrink from giving expression to their feelings before you.
to have guessed the truth from the timidity with which she had repeatedly approached her sarcasm, only bringing herself to utter it at last with an effort. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If you turned your back on irony, it curdled into sarcasm. And what good was it then? Sarcasm was irony which had lost its soul. Beneath — Julian Barnes

You see," I explained to Joshua, "what Joy is doing is ironic, yet that's not her intent. That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm."
"No kidding?" said Josh.
"Why do I waste my time with you? — Christopher Moore

The speed felt tremendous. And the bottom of the ravine was treacherous. She ought to control her mount somehow - slow it; steer it to safer footing. Of course. And while she was at it, she ought to defeat the Alend Monarch's army, take care of Master Gilbur and the arch-Imager Vagel, and produce peace on earth. While composing great music with her free hand.
Instead of doing all that, however, she concentrated with a pure white intensity that resembled terror on simply staying in the saddle — Stephen R. Donaldson

So the reason I was struck again and again was because of my overwhelmingly positive energy. Funny, I'd always thought of myself as a pessimist. — Jennifer Bosworth

I had become wiser, I tried to find out what irony really is, and discovered that some ancient writer on poetry had spoken of "Ironia, which we call the drye mock." And I cannot think of a better term for it: The drye mock. Not sarcasm, which is like vinegar, or cynicism, which is so often the voice of disappointed idealism, but a delicate casting of cool and illuminating light on life, and thus an enlargement. The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement. — Robertson Davies

He's crazy," Bruno said, twirling a finger in circles around the side of his head and whistling to indicate just how crazy he thought he was. "He went up to a cat on the street the other day and invited her over for afternoon tea." "What did the cat say?" asked Gretel, who was making a sandwich in the corner of the kitchen. "Nothing." explained Bruno. "It was a cat. — John Boyne

We're not big on irony in Jamaica, sarcasm and double-talk. We tend to say things plainly, sometimes to the point of boredom. — Marlon James

That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm. — Christopher Moore

If time is money and you wasted my time, then give me back my money! — Ljupka Cvetanova