"Ironic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dependent on the appreciation of a master for his happiness. The new Braithwaite both in body and character had hardened. His gray eyes had concentrated into command. His clean-shaven cheeks and small military mustache gave him an expression which was tolerantly ironic. The moment you saw him, you knew beyond question that he was ruthlessly aware of what he wanted out of life. He was a sword which had lain hidden in its scabbard and was now withdrawn, glistening, intimidating and ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... was it worth while, Mr. Sinclair implicitly inquires, when the conflict, at no matter how great a distance, could breed such vermin as Peter Gudge? Explicitly he does not answer his question: his art has gone, at least for the moment, beyond avowed argument, merely marshaling the evidence with ironic skill and dispensing with the chorus. 100% is a document which honest Americans must remember and point out when orators exclaim, in the accents of official idealism, over the great days and ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... invade. invasor m. invader. inventar to invent. invierno winter. invitar to invite. ir to go; vr. to go away, depart; ir (with present part.), to go on —ing. iris m. rainbow. ironia irony. ironico ironic. irrealizable unrealizable. irritar to irritate. isla island. islamita m. Mohammedan. Italia Italy. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... nearest to Sir Michael. Some of the others laughed at him, calling him Don Quixote, and she heard Sir Michael say that the young man's theories were those of the Gironde. "The Revolution devours her own children," he said, with his fine old ironic smile. "And a good many of us have to eat our own professions before we're forty. The great thing would be if we could keep our youthful generosity with ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... recognise wise and silent leaders, and use the laws which men have made in order to repair the havoc which other men have also made." But he reverts to the note of sad and kindly cynicism as he contemplates this supreme ironic procession of life with the laughter of gods in the background, even although he hastens to remind us that much may be made of it if ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... August 9, armed men gather around the approaches to the Assembly, and sabers are seen even in the corridors.[2661] The galleries, more imperious than ever, cheer, and break out in ironic shouts of triumph and approval every time the attacks of the previous evening are denounced in the tribune. The president calls the offenders to order more than twenty times, but his voice and his bell are drowned in the uproar. It is impossible to express an ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... blind enough not to regard the ultimate break between Philip and Ottoline as really unhappy for either party. On the contrary, I looked upon the separation of these two people as a fortunate occurrence for both; and I conceived it as a piece of ironic comedy which might not prove unentertaining that the falling away of Philip from his high resolves was checked by the woman he had once despised and who had at last grown to know and to ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... secretary's office, reflecting, it could be argued, a growing indifference. That such unwillingness to enlist, as Lester Granger put it, should occur on the heels of a widely publicized promise of racial equality in the service was ironic. The Navy was beginning to welcome the Negro, but the Negro no longer ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... beyond the coming and going of flowers and leaves and birds, that her mind began to fix itself on a man who loved her to the point of disgust and departure; and to her love of the country round about Sales Hall was added a tender half-ironic sentiment. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... said Day, in his ironic tones, "that not only have I the honour of a distinguished baronet as first officer, but ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... an ironic parallel, because that was what finally saved Earth for its own people. ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... the ironic "Unknown" for an appreciable space of time; then he broke into a laugh. He had suddenly recalled Vyse's similar experience with "Hester Macklin," and the light he was able to throw on that obscure episode was searching ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... of ironic disappointment escaped his pursed-up lips. For at one glance he could see that it held no mystery. The only mystery about it all was that he had been theatrical enough to imagine it could prove anything that was not ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... too much!" She had an ironic gaiety for the implications of his "this," besides wishing to insist on a general prudence. "She'll wonder ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... looked from the stone face to the face of flesh with fascinated repulsion—the man and the "familiar" were so ghastly alike. Then he suddenly understood that this was a quaint double jest of the eccentric physician's—his grim fling at his lack of physical charm, his ironic jeer at ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... the play (the scenes in which the shrew and her tamer appear) is farce with ironic philosophical intention. He indicates the tragedy that occurs when a manly spirit is born into a woman's body. Katharina is vexed and plagued by forced submission to a father who cannot see her merit, and ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... beautiful inner soul to him. He, being a gentleman and an understanding one, asks me out to Jersey, and those children just cram into the hungry corners of my life. They play with me; they—they"—here a subtle touch of truth struck through Patricia's ironic tones—"they teach me to play. Haven't I a right to snatch—what ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... Christmas I spent out in Nebraska," Mr. Lamson was saying. He was probably the most travelled man in town. Every time he told a story, he went a little farther West. (Harry Squires disconcerted him on one occasion by asking in his most ironic manner if he didn't think it would be a good idea to settle in California when he got there, and Mr. Lamson, after thinking it over, stopped his subscription to The Banner.) "Yes sir; that was a terrible winter. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... man appeared in the door of the smoking-room he was welcomed with ironic cheers. But he was not discouraged. He would go outside and stand in the rain while he hatched a new rumor, and then, in great excitement, dash back to share it. War levels all ranks, and the passengers gathered in the smoking-room playing solitaire, sipping muddy Turkish coffee, and discussing ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... double decade after, When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me, And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter At the lot of men, and all the ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... ironic snort. It was evident that he did not in the least believe the latter part of Faenza's narrative. Joel de Jurgan took up ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... life's energies, it is the bridge to every eternity which is not merely a spectral condition of earth disembowelled of its lusts. For sex holds the substance of the image. But we must remember with Heine that Aristophanes is the God of this ironic earth, and that all argument is apparently vitiated from the start by the simple fact that Wagner and a rooster are given an analogous method of making love. And therefore it seems impeccable logic to say that all that is most ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... side of the screen of the choir, just behind the pulpit, is the "Danse Macabre," or dance of death, afavourite subject with artiste from the 12th to the 14th cent. The ironic grin and jocund gait of the skeleton death contrast vividly with the dismayed and demure expression of the great and mighty kings, priests, and warriors, young and old, gay and sedate, he marshals off, in the midst of their projects and plans, to the dark silent grave. Under ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... critic had mercilessly dragged into the light, had inspired Broechner with the strongest aversion to Goldschmidt. Add to this the personal collisions between the two men. At some public meeting Broechner had gazed at Goldschmidt with such an ironic smile that the latter had passionately called ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... strange and welcome it is for my eyes to find them beautiful." She seemed almost to murmur to herself. Then she braced herself slightly against the nurse's shoulder, and went on, in her light, sweet, ironic voice. "They probably never told you—but I didn't care for Nature, exactly. I don't think I care for it now, as some people do, but I can see that this is beautiful. Of course you don't know what it means to me. It has simply changed the world." She waved her hand again. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... came to me it was as if some ironic hand had touched an electric button, and all my fatuous phrases had leapt out ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... it. As I learned later, they had two good uses, one was that they consumed the unstable materials and neutralized them, but the other was that their droppings, when mixed into the water supply, also gave all that consumed them a greater tolerance for nuclear material. It was almost ironic that their whole way of life was dependent on the feces of another life form, but I will refrain from turning it ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... Senhor Jose," spoke the coronel, with ironic politeness, "that you may not go so soon. You have killed two men recently. You refuse to reveal some things which should be known about ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... the elder passed me on the other side of the street with a wave of the hand and an ironic smile. The younger brother, the one they had married to an elderly shrew, he, on the strength of an older friendship and as if paying a debt of gratitude, took the liberty to utter a ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... sentiment. An irritated and irritating sensuality could accommodate itself either to sentiment or to philosophy. Voltaire's tales are, in narrative form, criticisms of belief or opinion which scintillate with ironic wit. His disciple, Marmontel, would "render virtue amiable" in his Contes Moraux (1761), and cure the ravage of passion with a canary's song. His more ambitious Belisaire seems to a modern reader a masterpiece in ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... son's conviction. This made him furious, not so much because of the sentence as because of a special circumstance. The policeman who had arrested his son was—just think of it!—Bernardo,—yes, Bernardo, his own neighbor—the same chap who would greet him daily with the ironic words: "How are things, Felix old boy? And when will you ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... The light above struck blind on the glass in one eye, but the other danced with a genial, a mad scintillation. The light of it caught like contagion, and touched the merest glancer at him with the spark of its warm, ironic mirth. The question which naturally rose to Flora's lips—"Who in the world is that?"—she checked; why, she didn't ask herself. She only felt as she followed Clara, trailing away across the floor, that the interest of the evening which had promised ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... latter, for while they are lively they do not reveal much literary ability. But their writer saw with open eyes, eyes that were disposed to caricature the peculiarities of others. This trait, much clarified and spiritualized in later life, became a distinct, ironic note in his character. Possibly it attracted Heine, although his irony was ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... that he couldn't swim, and then he thought wildly of the Judge, who hadn't regained full consciousness. He went under once, and came up choking and sputtering. He decided his end had come—and he didn't even know the identity of the enemy who had done him in. It was ironic. He should have asked Dor to tell him more about Garf—was he a traitor, or a Tamdivarian gangster, or what? John Andrew gasped and ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... to heighten Mr. Thompson's embarrassment—like a flank attack while he was in the act of waving a flag of truce. But he perceived that there was no malice in the words, only a flash of ironic ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... devoted to her poets; there was no addition that I could see. Over it hung the fine photograph of Watts's "Hope," an ironic emblem, and elsewhere one of that intolerably sad picture, his "Paolo and Francesca": how I remembered the wet Sunday when Catherine took me to see the original in Melbury Road! The old piano which was never touched, the one which had been in St. Helena with Napoleon's doctor, there ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... Snowe," used to occasion me much inward edification. What contradictory attributes of character we sometimes find ascribed to us, according to the eye with which we are viewed! Madame Beck esteemed me learned and blue; Miss Fanshawe, caustic, ironic, and cynical; Mr. Home, a model teacher, the essence of the sedate and discreet: somewhat conventional, perhaps, too strict, limited, and scrupulous, but still the pink and pattern of governess-correctness; whilst another person, Professor Paul Emanuel, to wit, never lost an opportunity ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... learn much of what we know about the jongleurs; and one of not the least amusing[134] deals with the half-clumsy, half-satiric boasts of two members of the order, who misquote the titles of their repertoire, make by accident or intention ironic comments on its contents, and in short do not magnify their office in a very ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... provocative intelligence, the utter incongruity of Enriquez' extravagant attentions if ironical, and their equal hopelessness if not, seemed to me plainer than ever. What had this well-poised, coldly observant spinster to do with that quaintly ironic ruffler, that romantic cynic, that rowdy Don Quixote, that impossible Enriquez? Presently she ceased playing. Her slim, narrow slipper, revealing her thin ankle, remained upon the pedal; her delicate fingers were resting idly on the keys; her head was slightly thrown back, and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... clear, followed by the crunching sound of a heavy iron gate opening and closing with grating finality. The hourly call was sounded by a guard, who, unseen by them, paced the main entrance to the inclosure: "All's Well." It sounded six times from invisible lips. Terry pondered its ironic message to those who heard it from within those steel and concrete dormitories: "All's Well," sounding to those who had crime on their souls, and had left, somewhere, mothers, wives, children ... sweethearts.... It oppressed ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... replied Muller with an ironic smile, adding: "All who have any reason to fear us are very ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... as an insignificant little man with hollow cheeks and a thin grey beard; for the weariness of expression which was habitual to him vanished before the charming sympathy of his smile. His sunken eyes glittered with a kindly but ironic good-humour. Now passed a guard in the romantic cloak of a brigand in comic opera and a peaked cap like that of an alguacil. A group of telegraph boys in blue stood round a painter, who was making a sketch—notwithstanding half-frozen fingers. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... dreamy child. She could, about things that interested her, be remarkably sharp and penetrating. She had a swift and often successful intuition about characters; facts and details about places or people she never forgot. She had a hard, severe, entirely masculine sense of independence, an ironic contempt for sentimentality, a warm, ardent loyalty and simplicity in friendship. Her carelessness in all the details of life sprang from her long muddled years at St. Dreots, the lack of a mother's guidance and education, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... "I don't suppose it does. Only I know you are a gentleman," she added, with delightful inconsistence. Stanton bowed gravely to the fire in ironic acknowledgment. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... to be served by mitigating their last agonies. No shelter either, for the sight of buildings might delay the final phase. But high above the doomed there floated the flag of the Federation, on a lofty pole, a touch of ironic sentimentality that had commended itself to some mind ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... 'round and 'round them; of the wonderful village "notion" store, presided over by a terrible female person with a deep bass voice, who asked you over the counter as you entered, "Which side, young man?" It was bad enough to be called "Bubbie", but to be called "young man" in this ironic bass was almost insufferable. Yet you bore it nobly, for the sake of the pound of shot for your air-gun or the blood-alley or the great pink and white peppermints, two for a cent, that reposed in a glass jar on the left side of the shop. Was Miss Emily so terrible a person, I wonder now? ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... kindly meant it, I sud be laith to think ye hinted Ironic satire, sidelins sklented On my poor Musie; Tho' in sic phraisin' terms ye've penn'd it, I scarce ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... his lips as he saw them fade into the yawning gulf of moonlit distance,—going in different directions toward their ranches—an ironic smile, softened by ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hear an oath from Miko. And then his ironic voice. "We will not bother you, Haljan. There is no hurry. You will be hungry in good time. And sleepy. Then we will come and get you. And a little acid will help you to think ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... which all possible solutions are equally unsatisfactory and undesirable. The playwright cannot too soon make sure that he has not strayed into such a no-thoroughfare. Whether an end be comic or tragic, romantic or ironic, happy or disastrous, it should satisfy something within us—our sense of truth, or of beauty, or of sublimity, or of justice, or of humour, or, at the least or lowest, our cynical sense of the baseness of human nature, and the vanity of human aspirations. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... rickety phonograph was at work; and somewhere below, a piano was being mauled; and somewhere else a ukelele was being thumped and a doleful singer was snarling "The Beach at Waikiki." This racket was their only epithalamium. It was more like the "chivaree" with which ironic crowds tormented bridal couples back ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... opponents, and the evening opposition paper had come out with a red-hot article condemning the administration for reckless extravagance. It had especially condemned Dugan for burdening the city with new bonds to create an unneeded park, and the whole thing had ended with a screech of ironic laughter over the—so the editor called it—fitting capstone of the whole business, the purchase of two dongola goats at perfectly ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... Basterga answered. "We hold the Tertasse Gate, and the Monnaye. The Porte Neuve is cut off, and at our mercy; it will be taken when we give the signal. Beyond it four thousand men are waiting to enter. We hold Geneva in our grip at last—at last!" And in an accent half tragic, half ironic, he declaimed:— ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... enough and accurately enough to throw off stuff at escape velocity, but it's a matter of energy and we can't handle one percent of what we'd need. Even if you could generate it fast enough, your conduits would melt under the current." He got up and walked a few steps, then sat down again. "Ironic, isn't it? All we can do is ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... if she would ever be able to return to the shell out of which the ironic humour of chance had thrust her. Wondered if she could pick up again philosophically the threads of dull routine. Jane Norman, gliding over this mysterious southern sea, a lone woman among strong and reckless ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... Mrs. Carew in ironic scorn. "But why stop with Jerry? I'm sure Jerry has hosts of friends who ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... their way from Tepic, by way of Jalisco, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas, was in ruins. The black trail of the incendiaries showed in the roofless houses, in the burnt arcades. Almost all the houses were closed, yet, here and there, those still open offered, in ironic contrast, portals gaunt and bare as the white skeletons of horses scattered over the roads. The terrible pangs of hunger seemed to speak from every face; hunger on every dusty cheek, in their dusty countenances; ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... one—that they are "poems rather than studies;" and much surprise has been expressed that Chopin should have chosen such a modest and apparently inappropriate name for them as "studies." Now, I have a theory on this subject: I believe it was partly an ironic intention which induced Chopin to call some of his most inspired pieces "studies." Pianists have always been too much in the habit of looking at their art from purely technical or mechanical points of view. They looked for mere ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... of urging then?' He betrayed the half-amused, half-ironic surprise of the man accustomed to find people ready enough, as a rule, to clutch at excuse for a tete-a-tete. Although she had flushed with mingled embarrassment and excitement, he proceeded to increase her perturbation by suggesting, 'Mrs. Freddy ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... down and rummage in the bag, speaking in her slow but quite good French, to explain the use of the acidulated drops, or to give a lesson in cat's cradles. And the poilus would listen with their polite, ironic patience, and be left smiling, and curiously fascinated, as if they had been visited by a creature from another world. She would move on to other beds, quite unconscious of the effect she had produced on them and of their remarks: "Cette vieille dame, comme elle est ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... of words. Its seeming praise is really condemnation; its compliments are insults. Its advantage lies in the difficulty its victim experiences in making a reply. It is useful in chastising follies and vices; but as a rule ironic touches are to be preferred to continuous irony. The following is from Thackeray: "So was Helen of Greece innocent. She never ran away with Paris, the dangerous young Trojan. Menelaus, her husband, ill-used her; and there never was any siege of Troy ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... dismay that Jane could, for the same reason, no longer write to him. Ironic chance had so arranged that the landlady with whom he usually lodged in town, and whose house he used as a permanent address, had given up letting lodgings at the beginning of the tour, and had drifted into the limbo of London. Jane's only guide to his ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the fence and was standing with his hand on the top rail. She met his ironic gaze for a moment ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... bacon in the pot to welcome me.' The man told us this with a dry grin, and added, ''Tis meself wouldn't like to be afther bringin' the poor ould woman the good news. It might be too much joy for the crathur to bear.' This ironic speech revived all our doubts ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... out to him a strange, spotted lizard, which scurried for shelter from the intruders. As they returned, they loitered by the green, verandaed club house to count the fast diminishing fleet of yachts, and joined an ironic audience who watched the struggles of two motorboat owners with their craft, and a pair of rickety wagon trucks. Sunset found them climbing the home steps to sink into the easy porch chairs and wait blissfully until Mrs. Fletcher announced that ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... was a large part of his endowment. His cool irony associated him more closely to the Schlegels than to Novalis, with his life-and-death consecrations. His absurd play-within-a-play, Puss in Boots (1797), is delicious in its bizarre ragout of satirical extravaganzas, where the naive and the ironic lie side by side, and where the pompous seriousness of certain complacent standards is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... retirement. She was always leaving abruptly for Europe, and every once in a while she did something quite uncanonical; enjoying wickedly the consternation she caused among the serenely regulated, and betraying to the keen eyes of the New Yorker an ironic appreciation of the immense wealth which enabled her to do as she chose, answerable to no one. Her husband was uxorious and she had no children. She had seemed to Price more restless than usual of late and showing unmistakable signs of abrupt ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... making a good first impression," Alexander said with ironic emphasis. "I hope he cuts you off from the Lani. He'll have the authority to do it, since ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... words the cripple fixed upon the speaker the hard ironic eye of one toughened and defiant in misery, and, in the end, grinned upon him with his ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... seems as if he had in them written his own epitaph. I believe he thought so himself; a few words he said in my last talk with him makes me believe that — now. At any rate, the history of literature, so full of Fate's exquisite ironies, has nothing more poignantly ironic, and nothing at the same time more beautifully appropriate, than the publication of Rupert Brooke's noble sonnet-sequence, '1914', a few swift weeks before the death they had imagined, and had already made lovely. Each one of these five sonnets faces, in a quiet exultation, the ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... I got here, the only light burning was in Simon's study—otherwise the house was in darkness, which seemed to me an ironic commentary on my foolish gesture! The study light went out almost immediately, but I lingered on. I sat down on a fallen log in the deep shadow of those trees—there, to the right of the path—and began to think back to old times. One discovery I made was ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... crucified sooner than obey Nero—and the Prior cried out for silence; and that he could not hear his Christian King likened to the heathen emperor. Monk after monk would rise; one following his Prior, and disclaiming personal learning and responsibility; another with ironic deference saying that a man's soul was his own, and that not even a Religious Superior could release from the biddings of conscience; another would balance himself between the parties, declaring that the distinction of duties was insoluble; that in such a case as ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... had moved forward to the end of the house with Alan to meet her father. At that instant, by the ironic humor of chance, her glance fell upon a certain improvised wash-stand covered with oilcloth. She shook her head decisively. "No, he won't risk waiting to do that. He'll make sure of his ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... old habit of scorn of everything which was not of the city returning upon her irresistibly. But it chanced that she caught Juliet's eyes, unconsciously wearing such an expression of solicitude to see her friend complaisant in this matter which meant so much, that Judith hurriedly followed her ironic question with the more kindly supplement: "But doubtless I should have plenty, and ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... mind all the time was absorbed in the dramatic or ironic aspects of what he had just seen. For dramatic they were—though perhaps a little cheap. Could he, could anyone, have made acquaintance with this particular woman in more characteristic fashion? He laughed ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Etruscan. Neither he nor any one else knew a word of that language, the last vestige of which is lost. Schmoll said continually to Marmet: 'You do not know Etruscan, my dear colleague; that is the reason why you are an honorable savant and a fair-minded man.' Piqued by his ironic praise, Marmet thought of learning a little Etruscan. He read to his colleague a memoir on the part played by flexions in the idiom of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is used in that way," commented Sir Charles, moving towards the door, where he looked back with a curt, ironic gesture of leave-taking. "It's au revoir then, doctor, and not good-bye. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Canalejas. His smile was ironic as before. "But, unlike Senor Ortiz, I have no hope. I have arranged for my daughter to conceal herself and escape from Brazil. I have prepared for everything, Senhor. As you know, I had intended to kill Senhor Ribiera. In returning with you I have merely ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... Yankee accepted the foreman's attitude with a wave of the hand that dismissed any counterargument. But there was an ironic gleam in his eye. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... continued, in the same, amused, ironic strain, "because I've been traveling about, half my life, to get it cured, Germany and France, everywhere! And there ain't no such animal! ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... and unable to deny this chronometry, felt that an ironic Providence was punishing him for ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... proportions, as his friend, and whose chief attraction lay in his great vivacity and animated features, he had led a wild and dissipated life in which play, drink, passionate love affairs, and constant and prompt duelling had rung the changes. Ceremonious politeness, an ironic and pedantic coldness, which testified to bold self-confidence, combined with a very hot temper, formed the chief characteristics of this personage and natures akin to his. Degelow's wildness and passion were lent a curious diabolical charm by ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the God-like. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (Haerte), my Indifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favourite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor Person might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... that Adelaide Crapsey had no more time for the miniature microscopic equations, the little thing seen large, the large thing seen vividly. She might have spent more hours with them and less with her so persistent guest, this second self at her side; ironic presence, when she most would have strode with the brighter companion, her first and natural choice. Her contribution is conspicuous among us for its balance and its intellectualism tempered with fine emotions. She had so much to settle for herself, so much bargaining for the little escapes ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... a portrait of the illustrious Concepcion, together with some sympathetic remarks about her, remarks conceived very differently from the usual semi-ironic, semi-worshipping journalistic references to the stars of Concepcion's set. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... These were ironic aspects Joe hadn't thought about before, just as he hadn't thought about the need to defend the Platform while it was being built. Defending it was Sally's father's job, and he wouldn't have a popular time. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... sincere expression of her curiosity and not doubtful or ironic challenge of an educated woman to a man of the forest. But as ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... infinitesimal, and yet it was real. In a while we had gained sea room; in a while more we were fairly under sailing way, and the cliffs had begun to drop from our quarter. With one accord we looked back. Percy Darrow waved his hand in an indescribably graceful and ironic gesture; then turned square on his heel and sauntered away to the north valley, out of the course of the lava. That was the last I ever ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... satirical and ironic, was positively brutal that afternoon. The latest play, book, moving picture, the inefficiency of the New York police, his afflicting correspondents, were hacked to the bone. When he had finished, his jangling nerves were unaccountably soothed. Other ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... they could hear the tiny, ironic words flinging themselves spitefully in the room, and biting upon the air. "Time's up," the Thing tittered—"Make it fifty thousand now—for a day. Fifty thousand down and the ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... the Ancient Spirit and Chorus of the Years, the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirit Ironic, the Spirit Sinister, Rumours, Spirit-Messengers, ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... the bitterest moment of Catherine Leyburn's life. In it the heroic dream of years broke down. Nay, the shrivelling ironic touch of circumstance laid upon it made it look even in her own eyes almost ridiculous. What had she been living for, praying for, all these years? She threw herself down by the widow's side, her face working with a passion that terrified ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to find De Boer before me. He was standing with legs planted wide, arms folded across his deep chest, and on his face an ironic smile. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... all Greek life there lay a shadow. Man, a weak and pitiable creature, lay exposed to the shafts of a grim and ironic power that went its own way careless of him, or only interfered to avenge its own slighted majesty. "God is always jealous and troublesome"; such is the reflection which Herodotus, the pious historian of a pious age, puts in the mouth of the wisest of the Greeks.[1] Punishment will ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... unusual a condition of dejection that, a week before the evening we are describing, she had been obliged to order a box at the Gaiety Theatre, she, who, like all optimists, habitually frequented those playhouses where she could behold gloomy tragedies, awful melodramas, or those ironic pieces called farces, in which the ultimate misery of which human nature is capable is drawn ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... "poetry"—if you do this, you are not likely to leave it unfinished. And before you reach the end you will have encountered *en route* pretty nearly all the moods of poetry that exist: tragic, humorous, ironic, elegiac, lyric—everything. You will have a comprehensive acquaintance with a poet's mind. I guarantee that you will come safely through if you treat the work as a novel. For a novel it effectively is, and a better one than any written ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... and children huddled shoulder to shoulder in the cramping quarters. An ironic picture came to me of the crowding masses of Quabos stuffed into the protection of the outer cave, waiting the outcome of the fight being waged by their warriors. Here were we in a similar circumstance, waiting for the battle to be decided. Though ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... work and looked at her sister. She thought Gudrun so CHARMING, so infinitely charming, in her softness and her fine, exquisite richness of texture and delicacy of line. There was a certain playfulness about her too, such a piquancy or ironic suggestion, such an untouched reserve. Ursula admired ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... delicate and ironic art will remain unassailable through all changes of taste and varieties of opinion. What she really possesses—what might be called the clue to her inimitable secret—is nothing less than the power of giving expression ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... been removed from the surrey, its place taken by a large box with a square opening, covered with heavy wire net at one end, and a board fitted movably in grooves at the other. There were mutters incredulous, ironic, from the awaiting group of men; envy was perceptible, bitterness "... for a dog. Two hundred! Old Pompey hollered out of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... (mentioned in Baedeker—'fatiguing but repaying')—was disclosed to him after the effort of the climb, he had doubtless felt the existence of some great, dignified principle crowning the chaotic strivings, the petty precipices, and ironic little dark chasms of life. This was as near to religion, perhaps, as his practical spirit had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... doubt you could," answered Mr. Green with a fresh leer, that contained this time something ironic. "I nothing doubt it! But by your leave, I'll pursue my ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... and a thin ironic smile hovered on his lips— "And you carried it off well! But—the poor child!—what an ordeal for her! You can hardly have felt it so keenly, being seasoned to hypocrisy for so many years!" Her eyes flashed up at him ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... nearly made an end of James Fenimore Cooper, we believe. His fellow-countrymen fell on him, tooth and nail. We didn't take so kindly to criticism in those days as we do now, when it merely tickles the fat on our ribs, and we respond with the ironic laughter you profess to like so much. What is the drift of the book besides the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... its foundering seemed at hand. The waters poured back and forth at her waist, as though holding her body captive for the assaults of the active seas which came over her broken bulwarks, and plunged ruthlessly about. There was something ironic in the indifference of her defenceless body to these unending attacks. It mocked this white and raging post-mortem brutality, and gave her a dignity that was cold and superior to all the eternal powers could now do. She ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... ironic Fortune gave to him also a chance of testing of his own doctrine. There is extant a letter written on his death-bed. 'I write to you on this blissful day which is the last of my life. The obstruction of my bladder and internal pains have reached the extreme ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... Ghetto is a singular mixture. It is half-ironic gaiety and half-melancholy. But it has not the depressing sadness of the Russian Quarter. Its temper is more akin to that of the Irish colony that has settled around Southwark and Bermondsey. There is sadness, but no misery. There is gloom, but no despair. There is hilarity, but no ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... society and that of women only in so far as they were essential to his deeper understanding of life. His code was noblesse oblige and he privately damned it as a superstition foisted upon him by his ancestors. He was sentimental and ironic, passionate and indifferent, frank and subtle, proud and democratic, with a warm capacity for friendship and none whatever for intimacy, a hard worker with a strong taste for loafing— in the open country, book ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... may seem playthings of ironic fate: One stoutly shod paces a velvet sward; And one is forced with naked feet to climb Sharp slaty ways alive with scorpions, While wolfish hunger strains to catch his throat; One lingers o'er his purple draught and laughs, One shuddering tastes his bitter cup and groans; ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... old man who bankrupted himself to save his son from the gallows. He knew that this very house, which remained as the last refuge, was mortgaged again as when his father and mother had come into it before he was born. The ironic circle ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... After that, the next step is to become a small power itself. England exhibited this symptom of decadence very badly in the war with the Transvaal; but America exhibited it worse in the war with Spain. There was exhibited more sharply and absurdly than anywhere else the ironic contrast between the very careless choice of a strong line and the very careful choice of a weak enemy. America added to all her other late Roman or Byzantine elements the element of the Caracallan ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... preferred organizing to being organized, leading to being led. Early in his military training he had evinced an inclination to take things into his own hands and act without authority. It was somewhat ironic that the very trait that had deprived him of a couple of bars on his shoulder should have put the medal on ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... royal highness. I should have had myself announced and craved an audience, I reckon," was Bucky's ironic retort; and swiftly on the heels of it he added. "You make ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... blank Atheism which had for a time paralyzed its efforts—and as he unwittingly yielded more and more to the mild persuasions of these genial influences, so the former Timon-like bitterness of his humor gradually softened. There was no trace in him now of the dark, ironic, and reckless scorn that, before his recent visionary experience, had distinguished his whole manner and bearing—the smile came more readily to his lips—and he seemed content for the present to display the sunny side of his nature—a nature impassioned, frank, generous, and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... to the theme that women should be handled with the rod. Gil Campos proceeded to laugh, being gifted with an ironic vein, and made fun of him. For my part, I was tired of it, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... a certain order of architecture, otherwise known as the Normal American. Most of the public buildings of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our earlier architects preferred the Ironic. Recent additions to the White House in Washington are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of the Dorians. They are exceedingly fine and cost one hundred ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... never feel sure that Caleb Barter is dead. We should have gone out that morning when he forgot to take his whip and we thought the vengeful apes had slain him. We should have proved it to our own satisfaction. It would be an ironic jest, characteristic of Barter, to allow us ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... fell a prey to ironic laughter. He would have spoken, but Mr. Wilding plucked a paper from his pocket, ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... most charming woman I've encountered west of the Great Lakes," he said with an ironic and yet a singularly engaging smile. But I didn't intend him to draw a herring ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... It will burrow through the latest of his works and exhume his half-buried experiments in rhyme, assonance and polyphony. This part of the paper will examine Jurgen and call attention to the distorted sonnet printed as a prose soliloquy on page 97 of that exquisite and ironic volume. It will pass to the subsequent Figures of Earth and, after showing how the greater gravity of this volume is accompanied by a greater profusion of poetry per se it will unravel the scheme of Cabell's fifteen essays in what might be called ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... moderation an inherent spirit of competition—not to say pugnacity—so strong that it will often show through the coating of his "Live and let live," half-surly, half-good-humored manner; add a peculiar, ironic, "don't care" sort of humor; an underground but inveterate humaneness, and an ashamed idealism—and you get some notion of the pudding of English character. Its main feature is a kind of terrible coolness, a rather awful ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... carried unanimously, and the newly made judges were instructed by Will to "trot along to the finishing point" and wait till they saw him leading the van. Then they would know who had won the race. There was an ironic shout at this assertion and Conway's laugh came back to them as he and his sister started ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... world: dismal, ironic, the streets of towns where industrial life sits heavy on the neck of a race as little adapted to it as any in Europe. No one has ever described better the shaggy badlands and cabbage-patches round the edges of a ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... trouble to combat this opinion, Mr. Shaw explained to Cuthbert Vane that a copra gatherer had once lived here, and that the place must have yielded such a profit that he was only surprised to find it deserted now. Behind this cool, unemphatic speech I sensed an ironic zest in the destruction ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... too preoccupied to wonder how his mother would take this visit; but he welcomed Mr. Langhope's departure, hoping that the withdrawal of his ironic smile would leave his daughter open to gentler influences. Mr. Tredegar, meanwhile, was projecting his dry glance over the scene, trying to converse by signs with the overseers of the different rooms, and pausing now and then to ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... unbroken glare of white makes my eyes ache.... There's one big indoor task I finally have accomplished, and that is tuning my piano. It made my heart heavy, standing there useless, a gloomy monument of ironic grandeur. ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... temporary castration, and the president of the United States was walking around in Paris in an immaculate frock-coat and a high silk hat. The President was closeted in a peace conference mumbling valorously amid lifted eyebrows, amused shoulder shruggings, ironic sighings. A long-faced virgin trapped in a bawdy house and calling in valiant tones for ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... he became aware of motion. The flitter seemed to hurtle forward at comet-like speed. Kieran knew that this was merely an ironic little joke, because now they were proceeding at something in the range of normal velocity, whereas before their speed had been quite beyond his comprehension. But he could comprehend this. He could feel it. They were going like a bat out of hell, and somewhere ahead ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... and almost unique judgment passed upon Tacitus at the bottom of page 133 and the top of page 134, or again, the excellent sub-ironic passages in which he expresses the vast advantage of metaphysical debate: which has all these qualities, that it is true, sober, exact, and yet a piece of laughter and a contradiction of itself. It ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Ch'un and Hsi Ch'un interposed with an ironic laugh, "what's the use of the hurry-scurry you're in the whole day long! Even when you're having your meals, or your tea, you're in this sort ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... tightly and smiled in ironic fashion. Whenever he was highly pleased he grew rather talkative, and now he had much to say for a man whose life was about ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... the back, surrounded by silence and a deep twilight gloom, Masters told her the tragic story of Rezanov and Concha Arguello, who would have married before that humble altar and the history of California changed if the ironic fates had permitted. The story had been told him by Mrs. Hathaway, who was the daughter of one of the last of the grandees, and whose mother had lived in the Presidio when Rezanov sailed in through the Golden Gate and Concha Arguello had been ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... In ironic contrast to the failure of legislation to prevent the spread of disease, is the success of an ill-advised statute making adultery a crime. Under it, a married man having relations with a prostitute and the woman herself, are subject to criminal ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... the animal in a deadly loathing which, betrayed in word or look or gesture, animated in him only a spirit of derision. In the absence of Victor, Sturm's eyes were ever ironic, his bows and leers mocking, his speeches flavoured with clumsy sarcasm; from which it resulted that the girl never quite forgot the impression which he had managed to convey in those few moments of their first encounter, that Sturm knew something she ought ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... meeting the other's ironic fence with crude thwacks. 'Do you think a God-fearing congregation would offer office to ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... house he had found only frank, disinterested friendship,—a somewhat ironic comradeship, the condescending tolerance of a person compelled by solitude to choose as her comrade the least repulsive among a host of inferiors. Alas! How clearly he remembered and could again foresee the sceptical, cold smile with which his words were always ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of the existence of an off-shoot of the Holy Land League—"The Flowers of Zion Society—established by East-End youths for the study of Hebrew and the propagation of the Jewish National Idea." Side by side with this, as if in ironic illustration of the other side of the life of the Ghetto, was a seeming royal proclamation headed V.R., informing the public that by order of the Secretary of State for War a sale of wrought-and cast-iron, zinc, canvas, tools and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... smiled. He had just broken an imperfect tooth upon a piece of toast, and, as usual when irritated, his temper became ironic. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... and gongs: /n./ A standard elaborated form of {bells and whistles}; typically said with a pronounced and ironic accent ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... suddenly, it was borne in upon me that a great change had come over her since the day of our first meeting. She had grown younger, more girlish, and more gentle. At first she had seemed much older than I; a sad-faced woman, weary, solemn, enigmatic, almost gloomy, with a bitter, ironic humour and a bearing distant and cold. Now she was only maidenly and sweet; tinged, it is true, with a certain seriousness, but frank and gracious and ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman |
