400 Irony Quotes

Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.

I was told that The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.

Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies.

A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?)

As soon as the war ended, we located the one spot on earth that hadn't been touched by the war and blew it to hell.

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

Whoever you hate will end up in your family. You don't like gays? You're gonna have a gay son. You don't like Puerto Ricans? Your daughter's gonna come home with Livin' La Vida Loca!

I eventually became the king ruler of the pear-packing plant.

President Bush says he needs a month off to unwind. Unwind? When the hell does this guy wind?

Those who are offended by something are most often those who deserve to be offended by it.

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

The booby father craves a booby son, And by Heaven's blessing thinks himself undone.

Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.

I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.

The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?

California is a fine place to live - if you happen to be an orange.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

As soon as someone is identified as an unsung hero, he no longer is.

God bless the homicidal maniacs. They make life worthwhile.

Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes.

Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by myself.

Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?

Deadly nightshade is the only plant I have ever been able to get to grow for me.

A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler O' purpose thet we might our principles swaller.

Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.

I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.

Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem.

The happiest time of anyone's life is just after the first divorce.

Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself.

Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.

Cocaine addiction is God's way of saying you make too much money.

White Australians were sent to Australia as convicts on great big boats. The scum of the earth, sent to the arsehole of the planet. On the way they must have been going 'I can't believe I'm being sent to this shithole, all I did was steal a loaf of bread, and now I'm being sent to this shithole, it's gonna be horrible, I'm going to hate it', then the convicts docked at Bondi Beach. They all looked up and went 'OH YEAH!'...and a nation was born!

Shaken and broken, our people behold the loss of the men of Stalingrad. Three hundred and thirty thousand German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly driven to death and destruction by the inspired strategy of our World War I Private First Class. Fuhrer, we thank you!

I have no doubt that in heaven the angels will regard the blessed as a necessary evil.

The Channel is a slipper-bath of irony through which we pass these serious Continentals in order not to be infected by their gloom.

Murder? Don't talk to me about murder. I invented murder!

After all, ironic philosophies produce passionate works.

I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious.

To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.

Sometimes I read one of my stories, maybe one that I wrote thirty years ago, and I think, Now I'd go and do it differently. Or I think I would just alter a phrase that seems to me a little too polished or too sharp or too smart-aleck or something. Or too ironic. Irony was so big then that it got under your skin and you sort of didn't recognize it.

While thus he threw his Elbow round, Depopulating all the Ground, And, with his whistling Sythe, does cut Each stroke between the Earth and Root, The edged Stele by careless chance Did into his own Ankle glance; And there among the Grass fell down, by his own Sythe, the Mower mown.

No director in human history has ever made or will ever make worse movies. Warhol makes Ed Wood look like Ingmar Bergman.

When in-laws are outlawed, only outlaws will have in-laws.

Life always provides me with better jokes than any I could invent.

Blackpool's illuminations are nothing if not splendid, and they are not splendid.

Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached. Yet he managed to do it without making himself hated, and, more than this, the very people he attacked have swallowed him so completely that he has become a national institution himself.

God this stuff isn't getting to me - the shootings, the knifings, the beatings. Old ladies being bashed in the head for their social security checks. Nah that doesn't bother me. But you know what does bother me? You know what makes me really sick to my stomach? It's watching you stuff your face with those hotdogs! Nobody - I mean nobody puts ketchup on a hot dog!

But Nebraska was not always a bed of roses. When the first settlers arrived, they found a harsh, unforgiving place, a vast treeless expanse of barren, drought-parched soil. And so, summoning up the dynamic pioneer spirit of hope and steely determination, they left. But a few of them remained and built sod houses, which are actually made of dirt. Think about that. You can't clean a sod house, because it would be gone. The early settlers had a hell of a time getting this through to their children. 'You kids stop tracking dirt out of the house!' they'd yell.

'Will I still be able to traffic rocks to the community?'

P. Diddy: All right, I got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that I'm gonna have to shut down the studio. The good news is that I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance.

Leonard Washington : G-G-G-G-G-G-Goodbye! If you need money, sell rocks. I heard that's what they do out here. Say hi to your people for me and if they ask about Leonard Washington tell them I got my ass out of here!

Interviewer: Davey, how do you respond to the rumors circulating that you are a homosexual? Is there any truth to these? Davey: How should I respond? Ecstatically? Fantastically!

Random: Ha, the monster was funny. Davey: Hey, that's mean. I hope you get a monster.

Madonna: 'Listen, all you do is talk about my sex life on your show, so now you don't want to talk about my sex life when I'm on your show?!'

The noblest dog is the hot dog. It feeds the hand that bites it.

So the two of them went to London by the early morning train. 'Let's surprise her,' said Nigel, but Cedric telephoned first, wryly remembering the story of the pedantic adulterer - 'My dear, it is I who am surprised; you are astounded.'

As there was no form of government common to the peoples thus segregated, nor tie of language, history, habit, or belief, they were called a Republic.

If the French were German in their essence, then how the Germans would admire them!

'I set out as a steeplejack in my youth to preserve chimneys. I've finished by knocking most of them down.'

'Har under ar askan av en man som hade vanan att skjuta allt till morgondagen. Dock battrades han pa sitt yttersta och dog verkligen den 31 januari 1972'

'A person fucks himself up so much,' Colonel Aureliano Buendia said, 'Fucks himself up so much just so that six weak fairies can kill him and he can't do anything about it.' (p. 128)

The schoolboy who uses his Homer to throw at his fellow's head makes perhaps the safest and most rational use of him than any one ever will.

I know what you're thinking. You're all thinking, 'Jesus, he's not going to attack children, is he?' Yes, he is! He's going to attack children! And remember, this is Mr. Conductor talking. I know what I'm talking about.

The last thing they need is for you to stop and get out of your car and go over to the fire, because by now it is a fire, and start bothering them with a lot of stupid questions. 'Are you hurt?' Of course they're hurt; look at all the blood! You just ran over them with a ton and a half of steel!

Don't you find it funny that all these tough-guy boxers are fighting over a purse?

Honk if your horn is broken.

His poor marksmanship must be taken into account. We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target 6 out of 7 times at point-blank range. Of course, this fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery.

Il y a une maniere de dire ce mot rien entre amants, qui signifie tout le contraire.

If you have ice cream I will give you some. If you have no ice cream I will take it away from you. (It is an ice cream koan [cone].)

'My favorite foods used to be granola bars and chicken, but then I became vegetarian, so now it's just chicken.'

In Boston, when they shit on you, they hand you a towel - so that you can can wipe their ass.

'Mr. Richardson's endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.' (Referring to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton on GoodFriday).

The skipper stormed and tore his hair, Hauled on his boots and roared at Marden- 'Nantucket's sunk and here we are Right over old Marm Hackett's garden!'

And if any man pretends that he is now sure he shall be saved and that he cannot fall away from grace; there is no better way to confute him, than by advising him to send for the surgeon, and bleed to death.

Fay: Have you known him long? Hal: We shared the same cradle. Fay: Was that economy or malpractice? Hal: We were too young then to practice and economics still defeat us.

I mused upon the ironic fate which had compelled a mathematical genius to make his sole confidant of a philistine lawyer, and induced that lawyer to repeat it confusedly to an ignoramus at twilight on a Scotch hill.

Seraphs and saints with one great voice Welcomed that soul that knew not fear. Amazed to find it could rejoice, Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.

Who is worse shod than the shoemaker's wife?

There are too many ironies in the fire!

Everybody is forever saying that the essay is dead. This is always said in essays.

People like Mike Read and DLT would often complain that they couldn't go anywhere without being recognized, but of course would go everywhere in a tartan suit carrying a guitar, so they would have attracted attention in a lunatic asylum. In the streets of London, people would go, 'Who the fuck is that? Isn't that that Mike Read bloke?'

(after playing 'I Need Someone Tonight' by A Certain Ratio) - Ah, I do like a deeply meaningful lyric, although I suppose if you need someone tonight, it is a meaningful lyric.

Kevin (one of the engineers), our man in the studded leather bracelets and AC/DC tour jacket says that they sound like a very sick Judas Priest, but of course in my estimation Judas Priest sound like a very sick Judas Priest.

My day started off particularly well with a phonecall from Richard in Germany who told me, he says 'Do you want any wine? My father owns a vineyard.' Owns a vineyard??!! So I said 'Next time I come to Germany I shall come and stay with you - probably for several years'. (plays a record) I'm always very pleased to get letters or indeed phonecalls from anybody whose family own vineyards - or Mercedes Benz dealerships, or, because I have so many children, a toilet paper factory as well, if you want to get in touch.

1300 BC: God gives Ten Commandments to Israelites, making them His Chosen People and granting them eternal protection under Divine Law. Nothing bad ever happens to Jews again.

Like, the Afghanistan war, man did I dig that. I'd like to go again.

It's like putting Captain Ahab in charge of save the whales.

This was the first time Remington rifles were used in the Argentine, and it tickles my fancy to think that the firm that shaves me every morning bears the same name as the one that killed my grandfather.

The scene shall never fit the deed. Grotesquely wonders come to pass. The fool shall mount an Arab steed And Jesus ride upon an ass.

Now, Stuart, as you will discover if you have not done so already, believes that the principal raison d'etre of food is to conceal from public view the hideous pattern on the plate beneath.