Verbal Irony Quotes

Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, 'How are you, you old scoundrel!' clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel.

The exact meaning of irony is so narrow that the word is hardly worth using; in its broad, current definition, it's a euphemism for sarcasm. 'I'm not being sarcastic; I'm being ironic.' No, you're not. You're evading the responsibility for being sarcastic.

That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.

A pun, though despicable in itself, can be the noblest vehicle of an artistic intention by serving as the abbreviation of a wittyview. It can be a social criticism in the form of an epigram.

I can be a very sarcastic person, and sometimes people take every word I say literally.

I don't like the word ironic. I like the word absurdity, and I don't really understand the word 'irony' too much. The irony comes when you try to verbalize the absurd. When irony happens without words, it's much more exalted.

There are reproaches which praise, and praises which defame.

Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, "I can't wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered," and there were people around who knew that the veal marsala was poisoned and that you would die as soon as you took a bite, your situation would be one of dramatic irony.

Even if that were true, it wouldn't be irony," Lucas pointed out. "Irony is the contrast between what's said and what happens.

I wish the first word I ever said was the word "quote", so right before I die I could say "unquote".

Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.

"Hello, Max," he said quietly, searching my face. "How do you feel?" Which was a ten on the 'imbecilic question' scale of one to ten. "Why, I feel fine, Jeb," I said brightly. "How about you?" "Any nausea? Headache?" "Yep. And it's standing here talking to me."

Blows are sarcasms turned stupid.

Sarcasm is lost in print.

I'm very garrulous, but I don't say anything.

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

Ha. "Against my will I am sent to bid you come into dinner." There's a double meaning in that. -Benedick (Much Ado)

It's an astonishing skill that people can read, and read well. Very few people can read well. For instance, I have to be very careful with irony, saying something while meaning the exact opposite.

Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light.

The trouble with talking about irony is, it's such a slippery thing that the second you start talking about it, you're a better example of it than you are an analyst.

Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.

Responding to a question about remarks attributed to him that he did not think were his: "I really didn't say everything I said."

I'm learning all the right vocabulary words - 'You're right, I'm wrong.'

When irony first makes itself known in a young man's life, it can be like his first experience of getting drunk; he has met with a powerful thing which he does not know how to handle.