"Ironical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... communicated with the garden was an apparatus of brass, which it is not necessary to describe further than to say that it served to support a parrot, which maintained itself on it with the air of gravity and circumspection peculiar to those animals, taking note of everything that went on. The hard and ironical expression of the parrot tribe, their green coats, their red caps, their yellow boots, and finally, the hoarse, mocking words which they generally utter, give them a strange and repulsive aspect, half serious, half-comic. There is in their air an indescribable something of the stiffness ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... saw as clearly into me as I do myself, instead of retiring from an accusation, I step up to meet it, and rather give it some kind of colour by an ironical and scoffing confession, if I do not sit totally mute, as of a thing not worth my answer. But such as look upon this kind of behaviour of mine as too haughty a confidence, have as little kindness for me as they who interpret the weakness of an indefensible cause; namely, the great folks, towards ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... audacious enough to indulge in gibes at the expense of the doughty lady during the ball. In fact, while in the enterprising stage which forms so interesting a part of the effects produced on human bipeds by champagne, he had been bold enough to pay her some strongly ironical compliments in her capacity of "mermaid." He had told her incidentally that she was eminently fitted for her part, as it was a well-known physiological fact that fat kept afloat on water. Frau Stark, who ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... sober, a more quiet man, with a more well-regulated mind, he had never met with. A man with a larger family he had never known (cheers). The parish required a man who could be depended on ('Hear!' from the Spruggins side, answered by ironical cheers from the Bung party). Such a man he now proposed ('No,' 'Yes'). He would not allude to individuals (the ex-churchwarden continued, in the celebrated negative style adopted by great speakers). He would not advert to a gentleman who had once held a high ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the buccaneers had lasted some time, when one of them re-entered the house, and with a repetition of the same salute, which had in my eyes an ironical air, begged for a moment's loan of the torch. Silver briefly agreed; and this emissary retired again, leaving ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... landlord is often called upon by the tenant to do what the tenant used to do himself, the question of compensation to the tenant must on many estates appear to the landlord extremely ironical. It is, in the greater number of cases, the landlord who should receive compensation, and not the tenant; and though he has power to demand it, such power is over and over ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... think it would not," replied Winthrop with an ironical laugh. "At least, it was not intended that way. But does our Government expect to make itself an oligarchy or despotism? If that is so, I should like to know what we are ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... little stouter, brighter of colour, greyer of beard, more nervous perhaps in voice and breathing. His manner to Hemmings was full of flattering courtesy; but his sly, ironical glances played on the secretary's armour like a fountain on a hippopotamus. To Scorrier, however, he could not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... rooms assigned them, guided by a flunky, some passed across the terrace with swords trailing and spurs ringing, and disappeared in the darkness. They had not all left the Emperor, when, suddenly, Jack heard behind him the voice of the Marquis de Nesville, cold, sneering, ironical. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... him aside and said, "These gods think I know and understand everything. Therefore I gave no answer in their presence. But I do not know the answer to your question and you had better go and ask the Buddha." Even more curiously ironical is the account given of the origin of Brahma[720]. There comes a time when this world system passes away and then certain beings are reborn in the World of Radiance and remain there a long time. Sooner or later, the world system ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... fell asleep as soon as she stretched her body on their warm surfaces. She used to wonder at her own inactivity. She could lie there hour after hour in the sun and listen to the strident whir of the big locusts, and to the light, ironical laughter of the quaking asps. All her life she had been hurrying and sputtering, as if she had been born behind time and had been trying to catch up. Now, she reflected, as she drew herself out long upon the rugs, it was as if she were waiting for something to catch up with her. She ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... all that had happened came back to her—the story her father had told about saving the old king's life, and the grim, ironical gratitude in making Colonel Hare his heir—as if such things could be! And then her own journey to Allaha; the nightmarish durbar, during which she had been crowned; the escape from the ordeals with John ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-conscious pride and exultation in the laugher. "What a ridiculous thing you are, to be sure!" he seems to say; "how clumsy and awkward, and what a poor show for a tail! Look at me, look at me!"—and he capers about in his best style. Again, he would seem to tease you ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... flinching and merely bowed to the judge. There was the usual "sensation in Court." Women's voices were heard saying "Shame!" "Shame!" "Three cheers for Vivie Warren," and a slightly ironical "Three cheers for David Whatyoumay-callem Williams." The judge uttered the usual unavailing threats of prison for those who profaned the majesty of the Court; Honoria, Rossiter, Praed (in tears), Bertie Adams, looking white and ill, all ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... round his sister, as if they were expecting her to acquit herself of the exhibition of some peculiar faculty, some brilliant talent. Their attitude seemed to imply that she was a kind of conversational mountebank, attired, intellectually, in gauze and spangles. This attitude gave a certain ironical force to Madame Munster's next words. "Now this is your circle," she said to her uncle. "This is your salon. These are your regular habitu; aaes, eh? I am so glad ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... half-ironical smile, but he answered simply, evenly: "It's not in me; but I'd live even a sparer life than I do, if I thought anybody ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... the Americans with great success—perhaps never better than in the columns of that admirable weekly journal the Nation. Anyone who cares to search the files of about eight or ten years back will find a number of ironical leaders, which by their subtlety and wit delighted those who "caught on," while, on the other hand, they often deceived even the elect Americans themselves and provoked a shower of ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... verse in three Books. This is an ironical form of didactic poetry in which Ovid teaches the art of lying quite as much as the ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... women quite frequently have less wit than men, but they don't take themselves quite so seriously; they view themselves with a certain somewhat ironical humor. Men love a joke—on the other fellow. But your really humorous woman loves a joke on herself. That's because women are less conventional, of course. I can still remember the face of the horrified gentleman I met one day on the street after luncheon, who had unconsciously ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... entered, and knife and fork in hand, and with shining chops, stared at them with an angry, bothered, and alarmed countenance, which increased their laughter. It was a good while before he obtained a hearing, such was the hilarity, so sustained the fire of ironical compliments, enquiries, and pleasantries, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Trinity College, Dublin. He graduated B.A. in 1748; M.A., 1751. In 1750 he came to London, to the Middle Temple. In 1756 Burke became known as a writer, by two pieces. One was a pamphlet called "A Vindication of Natural Society." This was an ironical piece, reducing to absurdity those theories of the excellence of uncivilised humanity which were gathering strength in France, and had been favoured in the philosophical works of Bolingbroke, then lately published. Burke's other work published ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... characters and in the tone of the dialogue, but more especially in its endeavour to convey practical instruction respecting the conduct of civil and domestic life in all their several requirements. This utilitarian turn in Euripides was the subject of Aristophanes' ironical commendation [Footnote: The Frogs, v. 971-991.]. Euripides was the precursor of the New Comedy; and all the poets of this species particularly admired him, and acknowledged him as their master.—The similarity of tone and spirit is ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... but once. At this time Mr. Brooke had been dead some years. In a preface to his play he had vouched for its purity, and denounced the conduct of the Licenser, as opposed to the intention of the Legislature, Dr. Johnson assisting his cause by the publication of an ironical pamphlet—"A Vindication of the Licenser from the malicious and scandalous aspersions of Mr. Brooke." Modern readers may well be excused for knowing little of the dramatist whose "Gustavus Vasa" had no great deal to recommend ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... criticizing Archie's work. When Archie suggested that there would be an economy of time in loading the gravel into a wagon and effecting the distribution by that means the foreman stared at him open-mouthed for a moment, then burst into ironical laughter. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... white friends. The Tamasese orators were sometimes ill received. Over in Savaii, they found the village of Satupaitea deserted, save for a few lads at cricket. These they harangued, and were rewarded with ironical applause; and the proclamation, as soon as they had departed, was torn down. For this offence the village was ultimately burned by German sailors, in a very decent and orderly style, on the 3rd September. This ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... naked and unashamed; a voice terrible in its sincerity, absolute in its abandonment to truth, prophet-like in its carelessness of personal consequences, its carelessness of all except the deliverance of a message—and yet withal a courtly voice, and, if it please, ironical. It is as if Elihu the son of Barachel stood up and his wrath were kindled: "Behold my belly is as wine which hath no vent; it is ready to burst like new bottles. I will speak that I may be refreshed." And yet we dare not say ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the bottom of that compassionate irony which paces under the name of the maternal instinct. A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self delusion. That ironical note is not only daily apparent in real life; it sets the whole tone of feminine fiction. The woman novelist, if she be skillful enough to arise out of mere imitation into genuine self-expression, never takes her heroes ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... class was first described in its decay. Against it are held up as ideals representatives of the middle class in the guise of the gentleman brigand. Every Chinese also knows the great satirical novel Hsi-yu-chi ("The Westward Journey"), by Feng Meng-lung (1574-1645), in which ironical treatment is meted out to all religions and sects against a mythological background, with a freedom that would not have been possible earlier. The characters are not presented as individuals but as representatives of human types: ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... The ironical voice broke sharply into the midst of her fugitive thoughts, and Sara jumped violently, flushing scarlet as she found Trent's eyes surveying her with a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the publication; "above six thousand of them have been already vended."] In the same spirit he composed the "Guardian," in which Phillips's Pastorals were insidiously preferred to his own. Pope sent this ironical, panegyrical criticism on Phillips anonymously to the "Guardian," and Steele not perceiving the drift, hesitated to publish it, till Pope advised it. Addison detected it. I doubt whether we have discovered all ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of Robert's 'Reapers,' Horace Vernet's 'Judith,' and Scheffer's 'Faust.' . . . That I never thought it worth while to discuss my political principles with him it is needless to say; and once when he declared that he had found a contradiction in my writings, I satisfied myself with the ironical answer, 'You are mistaken, mon cher; such contradictions never occur in my works, for always before I begin to write, I read over the statement of my political principles in my previous writings, that I may not contradict myself, and that no one may be able to reproach me ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... replied the voice with an ironical laugh. "That's lucky. You have probably forgotten that we were to go to the theatre last night, and start for St. Germain at ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... of colour, their chiaroscuro; but they were not the expression of a hopeless, or even of a predominantly melancholy, feeling about the human soul. Such at least is my own impression. He is to a considerable degree ironical—this is part of his charm—part even, one may say, of his brightness; but he is neither bitter nor cynical—he is rarely even what I should call tragical. There have certainly been story-tellers of a gayer ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... man was trying to analyze the sad and ironical smile with which Simoun had received the news that he was to be arrested. What did that smile mean? And that other smile, still sadder and more ironical, with which he received the news that they would not come before eight at night? What did ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... gaze, Pyotr Dmitritch's face immediately assumed the expression it had worn at dinner and in the garden—indifferent and slightly ironical. He yawned ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... "in the annexed group, that unnatural wretch, with the infernal visage, insulting his supplicating mother; the predominant character on the three other villain-faces, though all disfigured by effrontery, is cunning and ironical malignity. Every face is a seal with this truth engraved on it: 'Nothing makes a man so ugly as vice; nothing renders the countenance ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... at the ends, big and strong, with grey eyes, and a sort of sage self-reliance; only twenty-six, but might be forty. Here is a real Latin, who was buried by an explosion at Verdun; handsome, with dark hair and a round head, and colour in his cheeks; an ironical critic of everything, a Socialist, a mocker, a fine, strong fellow with a clear brain, who attracts women. Here are two peasants from the Central South, both with bad sciatica, slower in look, with a mournful, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... me he bowed very genially. I was conscious, on the contrary, of being pale, and my hands, to my terrible vexation, were slightly trembling ... my throat was parched.... I had never fought a duel before. 'O God!' I thought; 'if only that ironical gentleman doesn't take my agitation for timidity!' I was inwardly cursing my nerves; but glancing, at last, straight in the prince's face, and catching on his lips an almost imperceptible smile, I suddenly felt furious ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... are often explained as corruptions may also have their face-value. The first Gotobed was a sluggard, Godbehere was fond of this pious form of greeting, and Goodbeer purveyed sound liquor. With Toogood, perhaps ironical, we may compare Fr. Troplong, and with Goodenough a lady named Belle-assez, often mentioned in the Pipe Rolls. Physick ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... that the ironical reception given to such exhibitions of boastfulness rouse in him a feeling of irritation which is all the greater for the fact that he does ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... educated first at home, like his younger brother, and afterwards in the Corps of Pages. From childhood he was distinguished by remarkable beauty; moreover he was self-confident, somewhat ironical, and had a rather biting humour; he could not fail to please. He began to be seen everywhere, directly he had received his commission as an officer. He was much admired in society, and he indulged every whim, even every ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... particularly infamous, for though it was in their power to put an end to the war at once, by sending a large army thither, they preferred sending a handful of troops, in order that the war might be prolonged, for no other reason than that it was of advantage to them. Having paid him an ironical compliment for his politeness and urbanity, I asked whether he reckoned amongst the selfish actions of the English government and nation, their having expended hundreds of millions of pounds sterling, and an ocean of precious blood, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... voice assumed a peculiar accent of ironical melancholy and of profound sadness: 'Yes, our existence has shone with all the splendour of the crown and sovereignty; and yours, Montholon, Bertrand, reflected that splendour, as the dome of the Invalides, gilded by us, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... had based morality on a natural instinct for the beautiful and had made it independent of religion, as well as served the cause of free thought by a keenly ironical campaign against enthusiasm and orthodoxy, and Clarke had furnished the representatives of natural religion a useful principle of morals in the objective rationality of things, the debate concerning prophecy and miracles[1] ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... reddened to his forehead the sword-thrust came again in a flash of memory. It was only a single sentence; neither argument nor entreaty nor remonstrance; merely the statement of a fact: "you did not love her enough to accept her money." At the time those ironical words were spoken they had scarcely any meaning to him, and what meaning they had was instantly extinguished by anger. Now abruptly they reverberated in his ears. He forgot his mother; he forgot the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... possibilities of the Dimensionist idea, made grotesque suggestions. I said: "And when a great many of you have been crowded out of the Dimension and invaded the earth you will do so and so—" something preposterous and ironical. She coldly dissented, and at once the irony appeared as gross as the jocularity of a commercial traveller. Sometimes she signified: "Yes, that is what we shall do;" signified it without speaking—by some gesture perhaps, I hardly know what. There was something ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... if they had not brought him wisdom. Defeats can hardly be said to have made him misanthropic; but having little philosophy in his composition, he vented his spleen when there was occasion on his opponents in ironical remarks that made him dreaded, and which were often more effective than arguments; but his sagacity and knowledge of men taught him that a hostile and open conflict with a chief magistrate whose honesty even he respected, and whose patriotism the people so generally regarded, would be not only ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... eyes, which shrank from meeting the bold, reproachful, and ironical glance of the baron, had wandered restlessly about the room and fell now upon the picture of Watteau; upon the loving, happy pair, who were tenderly embracing under the oaks in the centre of that enchanting landscape. This group, upon which the eye of the princess accidentally ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Little we understood that ironical "railway" proviso of a harassed general staff. We had been reviewed the day before, and the good practice of our guns had been praised by the inspecting officer. Now was our chance, we thought. Nevertheless, we had to live on that guarded "order" ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... moral distress. But Hassler was sunk deep in the divan, with his head lying back on a cushion and his eyes half closed, and let him go on talking without even seeming to listen; or he would raise his eyelids for a moment and pronounce a few coldly ironical words, some ponderous jest at the expense of provincial people, which cut short Christophe's attempts to talk more intimately. Kitty returned with the breakfast tray: coffee, butter, ham, etc. She put it down crossly on the desk in the middle ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... as he turned it upon Braxton Wyatt was lightly ironical, and his tone had been the same. Again the younger ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the general tenor is along severely orthodox lines, but as to occult verities the style appears flippantly superficial. Many comments upon "rewards of virtue" and "refined craft in uprightness" seem gayly ironical. Such jar ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with black curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broad and flat, and he had high cheek bones; his thin lips were constantly compressed into an impudent, ironical—it might almost be called a malicious—smile; but his forehead was high and well formed, and atoned for a good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A special feature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor, which gave to the whole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wealth already thus obtained was religiously expended in engines and machinery for the boring of wells and the conveyance of that precious water which the exhausted river had long since ceased to yield. It seemed as if the gold they had taken out was by some ironical compensation gradually making its way back to the soil again through ditch ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... up, and so far they have never committed any murders—that can be proved against them," put in Carmena, with an ironical smile. "Just the same, it wasn't their fault they didn't get Jack. Do you wonder he won't have them in on this lost-lode deal? Either he plays a lone hand, or we run Cochise ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... of the floor, full of her own peculiar injured dignity, not answering, but making a low ironical reverence. Mary Seaton fell on her knees, clung to the Queen's dress, and declared that while she lived, she would not leave ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... learn in this world when he acts that way. I learned something of the notions lying back of this feller's work up there. Say, he hadn't finished with you when he took that ten millions out of you." An ironical smile lit the man's dark eyes as he thrust home his retaliation for the financier's insults. "Not by a lot," he went on, with a smiling display of teeth that conveyed nothing pleasant. "They've a slogan up there that means a whole heap, and it comes from him, and runs through ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... saw in that part of the world. I perceived that he had reasons for not wishing to descant upon literature, and suffered him without protest to deliver himself on certain social topics, which he treated with extraordinary humor and with constant revelations of that power of ironical portraiture of which his books are full. He had a great deal to say about London, as London appears to the observer who does n't fear the accusation of cynicism, during the high-pressure time—from April to July—of its peculiarities. He flashed his faculty ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... Company's man, that will make up the man he lost for them, eh—you think that, eh?" Pierre's eyes had a curious ironical light. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his wish to see her married to Marcus; he had gained his point inch by inch, very quietly; but when he had explained to her that it was in his hands to secure the martyr's crown for her husband she had turned suspicious and ironical, had made him swear that it was true, threatening him with punishments in this world and in the next; but he had let it all pass over his head, had solemnly sworn as she desired him, pledging not merely the salvation of his soul but his possessions in this world; till, at length, convinced ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... meaning is "ever the same" (Latin)—presumably Cooper's talking shirt is being ironical, suggesting that that "worse and worse" is the constant condition of ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... thing prevail against the plausible; that element which rejoices that even its enemies are alive. Apart from the problems raised in the play, the very form of it was an attractive and forcible innovation. Classic plays which were wholly heroic, comic plays which were wholly and even heartlessly ironical, were common enough. Commonest of all in this particular time was the play that began playfully, with plenty of comic business, and was gradually sobered by sentiment until it ended on a note of romance or even of pathos. A commonplace little officer, the butt of the mess, becomes by the last ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... for all he was worth, to squeeze every drop he could out of it so that his mother—"your grandmother, you know, Dick"—might have every last luxury she wanted. Well, she'd had 'em, though one of the ironical things about it was that she didn't want so very many, and he needn't have worked so hard or so long. However, that's neither here nor there. What's done is done. The War's done—they say—and the thing that would please Raven best would be——Here he brought ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... gratifying. By degrees the falseness of my position became clear to me, and this set me thinking. For a couple of weeks I was like one demented, and after that I ceased to feel proud of my false moral victory. At the first ironical remark on the part of my adversary I thrashed him until he became unconscious. This brought about an estrangement between Lande and myself. When I came to examine his life impartially, I found it astonishingly poor ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... concluding exercises of the dissipation of the Dawlish doubloons, a feat which he achieved so neatly that when he died there was just enough cash to pay the doctors, and no more. Bill found himself the possessor of that most ironical thing, a moneyless title. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... betrayed his party, and entered into terms with Antony and Lepidus. It was agreed that they three should adopt the title—so beautifully ironical—of Triumviri reipublicae constituendae, and share the power and the provinces among them. Gaul was to be Antony's; Spain fell to the lot of Lepidus, and Africa, Sardinia, and Sicily were to belong to Octavius. A conjunct proscription ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... ball at Versailles Queen Victoria spoke to me in German. She gave me the impression of beholding in me a noteworthy but unsympathetic personality, but still her tone of voice was without that touch of ironical superiority that I thought I detected in Prince Albert's. She continued to be amiable and courteous like one unwilling to treat an eccentric ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... be to avoid a party on the night of delivery—afterwards, the more the better, and the whole transaction inevitably tends to a good deal of discussion. Murray tells me there are myriads of ironical Addresses [2] ready—some, in imitation of what is called my style. If they are as good as the 'Probationary Odes' [3], or Hawkins's 'Pipe of Tobacco' [4], it will not be bad fun ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Alick is so full of consideration," said the sister, eagerly. "He does not get half the credit for it that he deserves, because, you know, he is so quiet and reserved, and has that unlucky ironical way with him that people don't like; especially rattlepates like those," pointing with her whip in the direction ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a list of toasts as only men inured to tests of strength could take. Ironical toasts to the North-West Passage, whose myth Sir Alexander had dispelled; toasts to the discoverer of the MacKenzie River, which brought storms of applause that shook the house; toasts to "our distinguished ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... sprang up between Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. They were very unlike in their characters and mode of life. Michael Angelo was bitter, ironical, and liked to be alone; Leonardo loved to be gay and to see the world; Michael Angelo lived so that when he was old he said, "Rich as I am, I have always lived like a poor man;" Leonardo enjoyed luxury, and kept a fine house, with horses ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... receiving the trader's answer, Hugh turned sulkily on his heel and strode towards the door. Now, it happened that Baptiste's bundle lay just behind him, and on turning to leave the place, he tripped over it and stumbled, whereat the voyageurs burst into an ironical laugh (for Hugh ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... is magniloquent, perhaps a bit thrasonical; His dark denunciations—at a distance—sound ironical. And when we read the rows between him and Sir RICHARD CARTWRIGHT; dear, We have our doubts if either chief quite plays the patriot part ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... poetry, the inevitable cigarette in one hand, the other gesticulating in the most fanciful and fervid manner. He would recite in passionate whispers—so as not to awaken Katie—for hours at a time, poems from Shakespeare to Shelley, and Verlaine to Whitman, poems tender and sweet, bitter and ironical and revolutionary, just as the mood suited him. His feeling for poetry and nature seemed to grow as his hope ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the thing while instinctively warding it off, and discovered that it consisted of two crumpled papers. One was addressed to himself, and the other to Dr. Bull, with a very long, and it is to be feared partly ironical, string of letters after his name. Dr. Bull's address was, at any rate, considerably longer than his communication, for the communication consisted entirely of ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... sentimentality at all, seem to move irresistibly toward the same disdainful skepticism. Consider the last words of "Riders to the Sea." Or Gorky's "Nachtasyl." Or Frank Norris' "McTeague." Or Stephen Crane's "The Blue Hotel." Or the ironical fables of Dunsany. Or Dreiser's "Jennie Gerhardt." Or George Moore's ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... the hall to the drawing-room, she left the group about the door to welcome him. "Weren't you surprised," she asked him with an ironical laugh, "at the people, I mean—all ages and kinds? You see Parker had to be appeased. He didn't want to stay, and I don't know why he should. So we gave him Laura Lindsay." She nodded good-naturedly in the direction of a young girl, whose sharp thin little ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... my return, fair lady? Such as I," he continued in an ironical tone of voice, "who are foremost in the chase of wild stags and silvan cattle, are not in use to lag behind, when fair ladies, like you, are the objects of pursuit; and if I am not so constant in my attendance as you might expect, believe me, it is ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... said, almost gruffly. "Go in, Con., and be prepared to welcome Sybil back; and I," he added, moving away, and turning a wicked look over his shoulder, "will be prepared to welcome Burrill;" a low, ironical laugh followed these words, and Evan Lamotte leaped the low garden palings, and went back as he had come, by the ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... got beyond, &c.: an ironical way of saying that he has so much overdone his application to himself of the title of (prospective) 'benefactor' of Athens, that another word (e.g. 'deceiver') would be more appropriate. The word [Greek: psychrhon] is (at least by ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... of the concert-room, the strains of M. Oudshorn's skilful orchestra, floated in through the half-closed persiennes of his room, and later mingled with his dreams, tinging them, perhaps, with some of that indefinable plaintiveness, a sort of sadness essentially ironical, with which all dance music, even the most extravagant, is ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... leave you quite unenlightened," he added. "The name of a failure never spells anything." With another smile, partly amused, partly ironical, he stepped from the little island and disappeared into the ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... quiet and letting her think a carriage came rapidly up behind them, with a horseman riding beside it; and, as the pedestrians drew aside, an ironical voice fell upon them, and the carriage and horseman stopped, and floured, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Shebbeare, a public writer, who, in a series of printed letters to the people of England, had animadverted on the conduct of the ministry in the most acrimonious terms, stigmatized some great names with all the virulence of censure, and even assaulted the throne itself with oblique insinuation and ironical satire. The ministry, incensed at the boldness, and still more enraged at the success of this author, whose writings were bought with avidity by the public, determined to punish him severely for his arrogance and abuse, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... wait!" proceeded Geoffrey with gentle regret. "Well, I suppose I ought not to blame you. You are at an age when it is easy to forget. I had no right to hope that you would be proof against a few months' separation. I expected too much. But it is ironical, isn't it! There was I, thinking always of those days last summer when we were everything to each other, while you had forgotten me—Forgotten me!" sighed Geoffrey. He picked a fragment of cake absently off the tablecloth and inserted it ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... away, lighted another cigarette, and, casting a glance partly ironical, partly provocative, at the good-looking young man on ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... at orthodoxy appeared in The Ordination, a piece written to comfort the Kilmarnock liberals when an Auld Licht minister was selected for the second charge there. The tone is again one of ironical congratulation, and Burns describes the rejoicings of the elect with infinite zest. Two stanzas on the church music will ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... place I could see everything: the guests as they arrived (I remarked very few carriages, mostly cabs and flies), and a little crowd of blackguard boys and children, who were formed round the door, and gave ironical cheers to the folks as they stepped ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... denunciations, he descended from the bench which he had mounted for the purpose, and, advancing to the sheriff and his assistants, now standing mute and doubtful with their hastily procured fetters in their hands, he paused, and stood confronting them with an ironical smile, and with folded arms, in token of his readiness now to submit himself to their hands. But a wonderful change had suddenly come over the whole band of these tory dignitaries. The dark and angry scowls of mediated ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of honorable wealth, Frau Scheff, would like to wash their esteemed countenances," he explained with ironical deference. ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... desperate sinners, related so jocosely as to keep the crowd in a roar of laughter. He had laughed with the rest, but he could not imagine his guide, with the stern, grave eyebrows, writhen features and earnest, ironical tone, covering—as even he could detect—the deepest feeling, enjoying such broad sallies as tickled the slow merriment of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... speaking. A half-mournful, half-ironical expression passed over his face. His steadfast gaze embarrassed Lisa, but he went on smiling.—"Well, God grant them happiness!" he muttered at last, as though to himself, and turned away ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... relations with you have not served to establish a feeling of excessive confidence in you," was the quietly ironical response. ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... knew that many good men were among these Puritans, wished to decline the term altogether, under the less offensive one of Non-conformists. But the fierce and the fiery of this party, in Charles the First's time had been too obtrusive not to fully merit the ironical appellative; and the peaceful expedient of our moderator dropped away with the page in which it was written. The people have frequently expressed their own notions of different parliaments by some apt nickname. In Richard the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... close to the head, grew in regular scallops over a forehead of dazzling whiteness; his eyes, the color of Spanish tobacco, were spiritual, deep, penetrating, perhaps too insistently so, in expression; the mobile sinuous mouth had the ironical voluptuous lips that Leonardo da Vinci loved to paint; the nose was delicate and sensitive, with quivering nostrils; a deep dimple accentuated the chin; the bluish-black tint of the shaven skin, softened with rice-powder, contrasted with the clear rose and white of the upper part ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... coincided with the receipt of the despatch. The effect of this document was prodigious. Molteno considered that he had been personally insulted. The Legislative Assembly was defiant, and greeted the recital of Carnarvon's words with ironical laughter. A Ministerial Minute, signed by Molteno and his colleagues, protested against the Colonial Secretary's intrusion, and especially against his rather ill advised reference to a proposed separation of the eastern from the western provinces of the Cape. It was a fact that Port Elizabeth and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... white rage, the Father of Ice remounted his horse and rode away, disregarding the ironical salute of Mitri, who stood out before his door, awaiting the arrival ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Duc de Fronsac never failed, when he came to pay his respects to the Queen at her toilet, to turn the conversation upon Trianon, in order to make some ironical remarks on my father-in-law, of whom, from the time of his appointment, he always spoke as "my colleague Campan." The Queen would shrug her shoulders, and say, when he was gone, "It is quite shocking to find so little a man in the son of the ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... had danced, the bad taste of this woman's dress, and the possibility of a marriage. The ball had brought amusement to all, to Esther it had brought happiness. Her happiness was now visible in her face and audible in her voice, and Sarah's ironical allusions to her inability to learn to read no longer annoyed her, no longer stirred her temper—her love seemed to induce forgiveness for ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... species of dialogue, not adapted for the stage, the philosophic. When, in Plato, Socrates asks the conceited sophist Hippias, what is the meaning of the beautiful, the latter is at once ready with a superficial answer, but is afterwards compelled by the ironical objections of Socrates to give up his former definition, and to grope about him for other ideas, till, ashamed at last and irritated at the superiority of the sage who has convicted him of his ignorance, he is forced to quit the field: this dialogue is not merely philosophically instructive, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... turned and looked at his ancient friend. The wrinkles about the brow were deeply ironical now, and the grey eyes of the master armourer twinkled with appreciation of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... be under no uneasiness on that account," replied the General in an ironical tone, which, though lost upon her, was obvious ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier |
