c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
What is Destiny? Is it a doctrine formulated by aristocrats and philosophers arguing that there is some unseen driving force predicting the outcomes of every minuscule and life altering moment in one's life? Or is it the artistry illustrated by those under-qualifed and over-eager to give their future meaning and their ambitions hope? Is it a declaration by those who refuse to accept that we are alone in this universe, spinning randomly through a matrix of accidental coincidences? Or is it the assumptions made by those who concede that there is a divine plan or pre-ordained path for each human being,regardless of their current station?I think destiny is a bit of a tease....It's syndical taunts and teases mock those naive enough to believe in its black jack dealing of inevitable futures. Its evolution from puppy dogs and ice cream to razor blades and broken mirrors characterizes the fickle nature of its sordid underbelly. Those relying on its decisive measures will fracture under its harsh rules. Those embracing the fact that life happens at a million miles a minute will flourish in its random grace.Destiny has afforded me the most magical memories and unbelievably tragic experiences that have molded and shaped my life into what it is today...beautiful.I fully accept the mirage that destiny promises and the reality it can produce. Without the invisible momentum carried with its sincere fabrication of coming attraction, destiny is the covenant we rely on to get ourselves through the day. To the destiny I know awaits me, I thank you in advance. Don't cry because it's over....smile because it happened.
— Ivan Rusilko, Dessert
A brief hush fell over the table when the guy from the bar approached. After he finished depositing their drinks in the center of the table, Lynn jumped on the opportunity to flirt, winking and smiling prettily at him. “Thanks, cowboy.” “Cowboy?” Reaching for her appletini, Piper laughed. Lynn shrugged. “When I picture him in my bed, I see a Stetson and a saddle.” Something well-known among their group, ever since she watched John Travolta in Urban Cowboy, she was on a mission to secure herself her very own cowboy. “I bet you see a branding iron too,” Jules snickered. Lynn’s thoughtful gaze trailed after him as the bartender returned to making drinks.
— J.C. Valentine, That First Kiss
She wasn’t ready for this kind of distraction he caused her. It was bad enough she found him attractive, but having a attractive man in her home was just asking for trouble.
— J.C. Valentine, Stranded
A master like Raoul looks for a woman whose need to serve and submit matches his need to protect and take command.
— Cherise Sinclair, To Command and Collar
Look at me, sugar.” She lifted her eyes, and he wiped away the tear that spilled over. “I could tell you what I do and don't do, but you wouldn't believe a word I said. So let's get this over with.
— Cherise Sinclair, Breaking Free
The sound of his rough voice was…comforting, like there was safety wherever he was. Well, some safety…he certainly had an awful lot of sneaky tricks up his sleeve.
— Cherise Sinclair, Breaking Free
He'd seen when she began to panic, but he hadn't offered comfort like other Doms or changed his plans. He'd just waited her out. She could hate him a little for that.
— Cherise Sinclair, Breaking Free
His look darkens and he heaves me against his chest forcing me to look at him. “What I do know is that you are disrespectful and disobedient. And that is something that we have to change, don’t we?
— Aileen Rose, Girl In The Woods
The truth is I’m a chicken shit coward who’s afraid of a girl like you. When I’m with you, I want things I never thought I’d be able to have, or deserved, and that scares me a little. I’m just a regular guy who works in a bar and you’re this beautiful person who shines brighter than the stars.I think I just made up some cheesy poetry so I’ll stop while I’m ahead.If you feel like talking, give me a call. ~DSophie sat down on the floor and, through blurry eyes, reread the note so many times she had it memorized. She was going to do more than give him a call.
— Jenny Lyn, Clearing the Air
Don’t you like them?” She ran her fingers across the waistband ofher panties.“I’m afraid I can’t appreciate them in such low lighting. You will have to take them off and let me have a better look.” He tried to smile innocently. She rested her hands on her hips and shook her head slowly.“Very well. I will have to do it for you.” He took a step closer to her.
— Elizabeth Morgan, Razel Dazzle
You have a gorgeous ass, and it holds handprints beautiful
— Cherise Sinclair, My Liege of Dark Haven
What are you doing?”“Whatever I want.
— Cherise Sinclair, My Liege of Dark Haven
This is going to hurt, isn’t it?”“Yes it is.””Am I allowed to call you nam
— Bianca Sommerland, Defensive Zone
Now, can I help you with something? I’m new, but I’ll do my best to figure out how to get what you need.”…“That’s good to hear, Abby, since I need your breasts for a few minutes.
— Cherise Sinclair, My Liege of Dark Haven
To have to perform a scene, a punishment scene like that, was extremely unpleasant. It bothered me to hurt you, Jessica,” he growled. “You will let me hold you, and offer me some comfort in return.
— Cherise Sinclair, Club Shadowlands
No, no, I don’t want that.”“I didn’t ask.
— Cherise Sinclair, My Liege of Dark Haven
A little insecurity in a submissive wasn’t a bad thing, but her doubts shouldn’t be whether the Dominant cared.
— Cherise Sinclair, My Liege of Dark Haven
We were in the middle of a scene, and this crazy woman comes roaring out of the crowd, screaming, grabs my whip, and damned if she didn’t punch me.” Rubbing his reddened chin, the man’s lips curved a little. “It’s almost funny, but still, she ruined our scene.
— Cherise Sinclair, Club Shadowlands
You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t care, Abby.”“I don’t.” She glared at him, so full of life she almost glowed.“You do.” He kissed the pouting lips lightly. “And I’m going to keep you.
— Cherise Sinclair, My Liege of Dark Haven
We’re wasting time here. I’ve got a sweet ass to paddle. Some legs to spread…
— Starla Kaye, Cowboys in Charge
This is the owner of Dark Haven. Master Xavier. Call him ‘my liege.’”Xavier sighed. He had no idea who’d first given him that title, but the submissives took such delight in it, he’d allowed it to continue.
— Cherise Sinclair, My Liege of Dark Haven
I need your submission too, but only if it’s real. If you’re really not feeling it, then don’t pretend. Make me earn it.
— Bianca Sommerland, Defensive Zone
My cousin fell in love with a dom, so I checked into it to see if I needed to kill him before they got married.
— Cherise Sinclair, Doms of Dark Haven 2: Western Nights
Put me down.”“Nope.” He held her snuggled to his bare chest, tipping her up so he could rub his cheek against hers. “I like carrying you.
— Cherise Sinclair, Doms of Dark Haven 2: Western Nights
When I want to.” He ran his finger over her lips. “You don’t get a vote, honey.
— Cherise Sinclair, Doms of Dark Haven 2: Western Nights
Those tingles she’d felt in her abdomen spread lower. Her body recognised her lover’s voice, wanted him.
— Starla Kaye, Cowboys in Charge
Okay?” Even if she deserved to be punished, he always let her know he cared about her.
— Starla Kaye, Cowboys in Charge
The collar represented something of big importance to her. He knew she saw it as losing who she was. He saw it as her trusting him enough to let him be in charge.
— Starla Kaye, Cowboys in Charge
I won’t have people judging you because of this.
— Bianca Sommerland, Defensive Zone
He seemed to think that spanking solved problems instead of taking the time to talk about them.
— Starla Kaye, Cowboys in Charge
He seemed to think that spanking soled problems instead of taking the time to talk about them.
— Starla Kaye, Cowboys in Charge
Julia...do you feel how much you own me?" I moaned against the soft skin of her neck, her pulse beating wildly against my lips. So sweet and alive. "But you're mine. You own me, but you've always been mine.
— Kahlen Aymes, Don't Forget to Remember Me
...Her body twitched from his magic. "What is this feeling?" She panted as she asked the question. Her body felt pleasantly soft. His motions slowed and became languid."It's called an orgasm," he replied in that slow, silky way of his. She loved his voice when it got thick like honey. Most of the time he spoke so quickly that she lost track. She liked it when his tone got deep and husky. "You should have one every time a man touches you. If you don't, punch him in the face.
— Sophie Oak, Beast
No. No, I don’t want my hands restrained.”“Yes. You do.
— Cherise Sinclair, Doms of Dark Haven 2: Western Nights
He caught her staring and smiled-not a conceited I-work-out-and-have-a-great-body type smirk, but more of a I’m-a-boy; you’re-a-girl; life is good.
— Cherise Sinclair, Doms of Dark Haven 2: Western Nights
Use your safe word if you get scared, honey.”“I’m fine.” Her voice came out husky.“Yes, you are, aren’t you?
— Cherise Sinclair, Doms of Dark Haven 2: Western Nights
Damn, you’re soft. I have trouble keeping my hands off y
— Cherise Sinclair, Doms of Dark Haven 2: Western Nights
Shh, mi amor. The neighbors will hear and call the police.
— Kate Richards, The Milkman Cometh
Ned looked to DeVere. "You are the master of mayhem. Any brilliant ideas?""If we want him to leave the gate, we must provide proper motivation," DeVere answered."Such as?" Phoebe prompted."Let us keep to the basics, my pet. Men are primarily moved by either their stomachs or their cocks. If we cannot tempt the one, it must be the other."Ned glared. "What are you suggesting?""Our little chambermaid can take the blighter off by offering him a hand job.""The hell she will!" Ned barked before Phoebe could answer for herself. "Think of something else!""Come now, Ned. She'll be well compensated for her trouble. He laughed. "Hell, for a thousand, I might be tempted to do it myself."A WILD NIGHT'S BRIDE
— Victoria Vane
The things I do for love.
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Irony is wasted on the stupid
— Oscar Wilde
Nay, but prithee, with sprinkles 'pon it instead," I said solemnly, "and frosting of white.
— Jim Butcher, Small Favor
It was growing late, and though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, one was still obliged to dress for dinner.
— Georgette Heyer, April Lady
So, now I've been to see a drug counselor who told me I need to lay off the drugs and talk about my feelings, and a shrink who heard what I had to say and immediately put me on drugs.
— Libba Bray, Going Bovine
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,a medley of extemporanea,And love is a thing that can never go wrong,and I am Marie of Romania.
— Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope
There's nothing wrong with giving up all your principles for a suitable financial reward. It is indeed the basis of our society.
— Manny Rayner
That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Don’t underestimate the value of irony—it is extremely valuable.
— Henry James, Washington Square
I pound on the glass, screaming my head off. Everyone ignores me except for some Capitol attendant who appears behind me and offers me a beverage.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.
— Christopher Hitchens
The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
The prince of darkness is a gentleman!
— William Shakespeare, King Lear
A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that "individuality" is the key to success.
— Robert Orben
Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours,Yours are the eyes through which to look out Christ's compassion to the worldYours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.
— Teresa of Ávila
Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, or making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, "I can't wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered," and there were people around who knew that the veal marsala was poisoned and that you would die as soon as you took a bite, your situation would be one of dramatic irony.
— Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room
He had had much experience of physicians, and said 'the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not'.
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
You don’t need a plan. You have the Puck with you, remember? I’m an expert at this. And I’ve never needed an elaborate plan to pull anything off.”...“Worry not, human,” the cat sighed, giving himself a thorough shake. “I am going with you as well. With Goodfellow’s exemplary planning, someone has to make sure you go through the right door.
— Julie Kagawa, The Iron Daughter
You see, the mailman saw your husband during one of his walks.""He's my fiancé," I told her. "We are living in sin."Heather blinked, momentarily knocked off her stride, but recovered. "Oh, that's nice.""It's very nice. I highly recommend it.
— Ilona Andrews, Magic Shifts
I worked for Miss Margaret thirty-eight years. She had her a baby girl with the colic and the only thing that stopped the hurting was to hold her. So I made me a wrap. I tied her up on my waist, toted her around all day with me for a entire year. That baby like to break my back. Put ice packs on it ever night and still do. But I loved that girl. And I loved Miss Margaret.Miss Margaret always made me put my hair up in a rag, say she know coloreds don't wash their hair. Counted ever piece a silver after I done the polishing. When Miss Margaret die of the lady problems thirty years later, I go to the funeral. Her husband hug me, cry on my shoulder. When it's over, he give me a envelope. Inside a letter from Miss Margaret reading, 'Thank you. For making my baby stop hurting. I never forgot it.'Callie takes off her black-rimmed glasses, wipes her eyes.If any white lady reads my story, that's what I want them to know. Saying thank you, when you really mean it, when you remember what someone done for you-she shakes her head, stares down at the scratched table-it's so good.
— Kathryn Stockett, The Help
I don't want to hurt anyone" Laszlo fiddled with a button on his tux jacket. "Can't we convince the CIA that some of us are peaceful?" "we'll have to try" Angus folded his arms across his broad chest. "And if they doona believe we're peaceful, then we'll have to kill the bastards." Roman frowned, somehow their Highlander logic escaped him.
— Kerrelyn Sparks, How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire
I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite. There!
— Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: "At the end of an interrogation sentence, place a question mark. You'd be surprised how effective it can be.
— Woody Allen
So, like I said, these are a bunch of really sweet guys, but you wouldn't want to share a Galaxy with them, not if they're just gonna keep at it, not if they're not gonna learn to relax a little. I mean it's just gonna be continual nervous time, isn't it, right? Pow, pow, pow, when are they next coming at us? Peaceful coexistence is just right out, right? Get me some water somebody, thank you."He sat back and sipped reflectively.OK," he said, "hear me, hear me. It's, like, these guys, you know, are entitled to their own view of the Universe. And according to their view, which the Universe forced on them, right, they did right. Sounds crazy, but I think you'll agree. They believe in ..."He consulted a piece of paper which he found in the back pocket of his Judicial jeans.They believe in `peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life, and the obliteration of all other life forms'.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Tertiary Phase
I must be overtired', Buttercup managed. 'The excitement and all.''Rest then', her mother cautioned. 'Terrible things can happen when you're overtired. I was overtired the night your father proposed.
— William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Being a woman is worse than being a farmer there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturised, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised.The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if left to revert to nature — with a full beard and handlebar moustache on each shin Dennis Healey eyebrows face a graveyard of dead skin cells spots erupting long curly fingernails like Struwelpeter blind as bat and stupid runt of species as no contact lenses flabby body flobbering around. Ugh ugh. Is it any wonder girls have no confidence?
— Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary
He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal.
— John Fowles, The Magus
The things that don't happen to us that we'll never know didn't happen to us. The nonstories. The extra minute to find the briefcase that makes you late to the spot where a tractor trailer mauled another car instead of yours. The woman you didn't meet because she couldn't get a taxi to the party you had to leave early from. All of life is a series of nonstories if you look at it that way. We just don't know what they are.
— Anita Shreve
When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.
— Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
Ironic, isn’t it?” Shawn said.“It’s not ironic at all,” Gus said.“Dude, it’s so like a black fly in your chardonnay.”“How many times do I have to tell you that’s not ironic, either?”“Rain on your wedding day?”“‘Irony’ is the use of words to convey a meaning that’s opposite to their literal meaning,” Gus said. “That stupid song came out fourteen years ago, and we still have this exact conversation at least once a week.”“Yeah,” Shawn said. “Ironic, isn’t it?
— William Rabkin, A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read
Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.
— Lewis Hyde, Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking
Do you work for the government, any government?”"I pay taxes, which means I work for the government, part of the time. Yes.
— Roger Zelazny, My Name is Legion
Irony - The modern mode: either the devil’s mark or the snorkel of sanity.
— Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
We're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford."...""And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.""I care about lots of things," said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty."Such as?""Well," said the old man, "life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords.""Would you die for them?""Fjords?" blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. "No.""Well then.""Wouldn't see the point, to be honest.
— Douglas Adams
Even You-Know-Who can't split himself into seven.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Sometimes, you're the one who strikes it lucky. Sometimes, it's the other poor bastard who's left with the short straw, and you just have to shut up and get on with it.
— M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans
There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.
— Peyton C. March
to travel faster than a speeding bullet is not much help if you and it are heading straight towards each other
— John Brunner, The Infinitive of Go
Who else but me is ever going to read these letters?
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Human nature is pretty shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.
— Peter De Vries
We’ve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There’s been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously.
— Milan Kundera, The Festival of Insignificance
Jesus Christ was innocent too,' said Svejk, 'and all the same they crucified him. No one anywhere has ever worried about a man being innocent. Maul halten und weiter dienen ['Grin and bear it and get on with the job'] - as they used to tell us in the army. That's the best and finest thing of all.
— Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk
During the first day, curious at having outsiders among them, a long stream of inmates came over and talked with me. Remarkably, according to what they told me, nearly every inmate in the prison didn't do it. Several thousand people had been locked up unjustly and, by an incredible coincidence, all in the same prison.On the other hand, they knew an awful lot about how to knife somebody.
— Alan Alda, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned
I'm sick of the ignorance that lack of funding has generated, of the fathers who apporach me at dinner parties with their four-year-old girls clasped to their pant legs and say, "Yeah, but studies say kids can buy drugs more easily than they can buy alcohol." To which I always respond, "I guess that means you keep heroin in your liquor cabinet?
— Koren Zailckas, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than a list, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis.
— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Ironic. I'm here because of my inherent dangerousness, but it's my inherent politeness that makes me put up with this. With him.
— Sophie Jordan, Uninvited
Even if that were true, it wouldn't be irony," Lucas pointed out. "Irony is the contrast between what's said and what happens.
— Claudia Gray, Evernight
In the State of Denmark there was the odor of decay...
— Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber
Irony cleans away all those secret stains. Irony is the path that leads safely back to official realities.
— Geoffrey Wall, Madame Bovary
Irony serves as an alibi for a fetish.
— Nathaniel Wing, The Limits of Narrative: Essays on Baudelaire, Flaubert, Rimbaud and Mallarme
If she's really psychic," Zack said when he saw Tanisha's photo at school, "why does she need a doorbell?
— Joan Bauer, Peeled
And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell.
— Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
I took my .38 out and looked to see that there were bullets in all the proper places. I knew there would be, but it did no harm to be careful. And I'd seen Clint Eastwood do it once in the movies.
— Robert B. Parker, Small Vices
Now that’s true poetic irony. I rush into battle to defend the fair name of Rose Larkin, and what does she do but fetch Robert to stop me.
— Franny Billingsley, Chime
Jesus "...It sounds like these guys would be filed under Assholes Who do Evil Shit in My Name.
— Kevin Hearne, Hammered
I don’t know why you’re enjoying this so much.”“Because I am a connoisseur of fine irony. ’Tis a bit like fine wine, but has a better bite.
— Lynn Kurland, Princess of the Sword
Has all the trappings of a mystery novel, doesn't it?
— Patricia Cornwell, Body of Evidence
When one has no character, one HAS to apply a method. Here it did wonders incontrovertibly, and I am living on the site of one of the greatest crimes in human history.
— Albert Camus, The Fall
I had never seen a real live dead person.
— Jacqueline Kelly
Labour day is a great American holiday that peoplecelebrate by going out and buying products made in China
— David Letterman
It's the contradiction of life, if I were with them,I would only wish to be far away. Now that I am far away, all I do is wish for one more day surrounded by them
— Laura Fitzgerald, Veil of Roses
It’s more believable that a cop would get involved in solving these murders. I mean, you’re talking about writing a series. How believable is it that this Hollywood gossip columnist is going to keep stumbling on all these murders?
— Josh Lanyon, The Hell You Say
I will never lie again.
— William Faulkner, The Reivers
The cinema is an invention without any future.
— Louis Lumière
So such is life that it writes itself, trying to right itself, but there's nothing wrong with it.
— Robert Pollard
Gods can screw anything and anybody. For reference, see history.Atticus O'Sullivan
— Kevin Hearne, Clan Rathskeller
Irony is the word I forget the meaning of immediately after I look it up, but I kind of feel like I live in a constant state of it.
— Maureen Johnson, The Bermudez Triangle
Trapped. Sinking. Can't be myself. Made into what other people expect. Is that everyone's fate? Were the great individualists the products of their friends who wanted a great individualist as a friend?
— Michael Moorcock, Behold the Man
Corporate irony not only ridicules the thing it is selling but the very act of selling it. In the process it disarms critics by making anyone who goes against the flow of commerce seem clueless.
— David Denby
Irony takes nothing away from pathos.
— Gustave Flaubert, Selected Letters
The Tyr had tried. It had really tried. It must have gone over every element of human psychology, tried desperately to understand the nature of human aesthetic sense … and then failed, miserably, in every regard.
— C.S. Friedman, The Madness Season
As the ironist does not have the new within his power, it might be asked how he destroys the old, and to this it must be answered: he destroys the given actuality by the given actuality itself.
— Søren Kierkegaard
The rich and the poor truly are from different realms: one has adapted to become an expert in material forfeit; the other has forfeited all they are to material, and thus is enslaved, by it.
— Justin K. McFarlane Beau
She'd been a good nurse, and now she'd never be a nurse again. She was bitter about it and had turned herself into the slut bride from Planet X, as if even in human form, she wanted people to know what she was now: different, other. Trouble was, she looked like a thousand other teens and early twenties who also wanted to be different and stand out.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, Blue Moon
As learnèd commentators viewIn Homer more than Homer knew.
— Jonathan Swift, Jonathan Swift's on Poetry: A Rapsody--A Critical Edition with a Historical Introduction and Commentary
As soon as they leave, Leon says to me: "I disagree, sir. There are people who aren't insane, and I'm one of them. People who generalize are mentally ill.
— Milton Rokeach, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: A Psychological Study
In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.
— Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere
And yet Praecursoris is not punished the same way, only because it is not practical, and he is needed for breeding?
— Naomi Novik, His Majesty's Dragon
What is all this? Get him out of here, devil take me!” And that one, imagine, smiles and says: “Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!” And—bang!
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
The whole damn century would've made more sense backwards. Where we ended is worse than where we began.
— Rebecca Makkai, The Hundred-Year House
Inexplicably, I felt drops of icy sweat dripping up my back. I am aware that icy and sweat are contradictory by their very nature and should not be able to coexist in the same freakish bead of ICK WHAT IS THAT falling up my back. I am also aware things are not supposed to fall up. For that matter, criminals aren’t supposed to get it on with crimefighters. Yet here we were: Catwoman, Batman, icy, sweat, dripping, up. Sometimes life is like that.
— Chris Dee, Cat-Tales Book 3
I have associated myself with failed scientists in order to associate myself with failed irony. ("Metier: Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka")
— William S. Wilson, Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka
Irony of the day: arthritis medication with a cap that old people can't get off, because of their arthritis.
— Kelli Jae Baeli
Imagine the wizened quality of a life blanched of contradiction and double standard.p 44
— Michael Perry
Oh, my god. My non-committal boyfriend, who I was just fucking this morning, that I want to spend the rest of my life with, is your Mr. Wonderful. He’s your ‘nice,’ mystery man. Jesus.
— H. Raven Rose, Caffè Latte
I have learned that I, we, are a dollar-a-day people (which is terrible, they say, because a cow in Japan is worth $9 a day). This means that a Japanese cow would be a middle class Kenyan... a $9-a-day cow from Japan could very well head a humanitarian NGO in Kenya. Massages are very cheap in Nairobi, so the cow would be comfortable.
— Binyavanga Wainaina
sometimes there is too much irony all piled up in the barn, and you have to / pitchfork another steaming pile of irony on top of it all, and you have to / pitchfork another, and another, and another / when the world is shit-streaked with irony that is when beauty will emerge / love is irony / purists sure hate farce / but pushing against things is the only possible way to live
— Mark Leidner
He gave me the key, which I later discovered would open practically every door in the hotel. I thanked him, and I made a small mistake we irony collectors often make: I tried to share an irony with a stranger. It can’t be done. I told him I had been in the Arapahoe before—in Nineteen-hundred and Thirty-one. He was not interested. 
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Jailbird
Perhaps we can conceive of the ironist as the fetishist's apprentice, reaching out for all readers, ensnaring them in a tangle of ambiguity, uncertainty and indecision from which there is no escape. Irony, quite possibly, makes fetishists of us all.
— Janet Beizer
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
— John Barrymore
While appreciating the beauty around her, Eden considered the darkness that lay ahead. 
— Linda Lee Chaikin, The Spoils of Eden
During voir dire, the interviews for jury selection, each person is asked under oath about their experience with the criminal justice system, as defendant or victim, but usually not even the most elementary effort is made to corroborate those claims. One ADA [Associate District Attorney] told me about inheriting a murder case, after the first jury deadlocked. He checked the raps for the jurors and found that four had criminal records. None of those jurors were prosecuted. Nor was it policy to prosecute defense witnesses who were demonstrably lying--by providing false alibis, for example--because, as another ADA told me, if they win the case, they don't bother, and if they lose, "it looks like sour grapes." A cop told me about a brawl at court one day, when he saw court officers tackle a man who tried to escape from the Grand Jury. An undercover was testifying about a buy when the juror recognized him as someone he had sold to. Another cop told me about locking up a woman for buying crack, who begged for a Desk Appearance Ticket, because she had to get back to court, for jury duty--she was the forewoman on a Narcotics case, of course. The worst part about these stories is that when I told them to various ADAs, none were at all surprised; most of those I'd worked with I respected, but the institutionalized expectations were abysmal. They were too used to losing and it showed in how they played the game.
— Edward Conlon, Blue Blood
Scary discovery of the day: Most people who RT @yokoono's tweets do so without irony.
— James Taranto
They had supported him ... for freedom's sake, they would have said; meaning as do all men who mouth that catchword, freedom for themselves and their own class.
— Margaret Butler, The Lion of England
If we chose to refuse irony, we risk becoming irony's dupe.
— Janet Beizer
Now it turns out that a few broadsheet film critics in Britain do indeed belong to a category of people who would have resisted Hitler when he came to power. So the great shame is, clearly film critics should have been running Austria at the time, because Hitler would have represented no problem to them at all. [The Guardian's] Peter Bradshaw would have known exactly what to do, and he would not have been remotely fallible to any Nazi who threatened his life. No, he would have died in heroic acts of individual resistance. So it's a privilege to live among people who enjoy such moral certainty.
— David Hare
how can it be that the modern human mind is capable of precise logical analysis, and yet simultaneously permits us to accept religious beliefs that should crumble beneath even the slightest rational scrutiny?
— Dan Brown, Origin
i've heard this called st. peter's square," arlene said. "but it isn't square. it's oval.
— David Morrell, The League of Night and Fog
Nothing incites failure more than success.
— Unknown
What a cruel irony it is, that we get to choose our thoughts but not our feelings.
— Justin Wetch, Bending The Universe
There is a great deal in choosing colours that go well with one's complexion. People think of that for their dresses, but not for their rooms., which are of so much more importance. I should have liked blue, but blue gets so soon tawdry. I think, (...) that I have enough complexion at present to venture upon a pale spring green.
— Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Marjoribanks
As she stepped into the steamboat at Dover which was to convey her to scenes so new, Lucilla felt more and more that she who held the reorganisation of society in Carlingford in her hands was a woman with a mission.
— Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Marjoribanks
Then there rose up before her a vision of a parish saved, a village reformed, a county reorganised, and a triumphant election at the end, the recompense and crown of all, which should put the government of the country itself, to a certain extent, into competent hands.
— Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Marjoribanks
... Miss Marjoribanks was of the numerous class of religionists who keep up civilities with heaven, and pay all the proper attentions, and show their respect for the divine government in a manner befitting persons who know the value of their own approbation.
— Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Marjoribanks
It's ironic how your comfort zone can be tiring sometimes.
— Ahmed Mostafa
Oooh, intrigue?' Sylvie said playfully. 'Want to know a secret? I am someone else. Nobody knows the real me.' Jess opened the door, sick of being toyed with, wanting to get away. Her voice was flat. 'You're a girl. It's the same for all of us.
— Kirsty Eagar
You are so lost to your higher self that you would resent me for my achievements, rather than celebrate them with me, sexually?
— Ayn Rand
He was notorious for cutting short extraneous verbiage from over-loquacious barristers".
— Bryce Courtenay
There is a great deal in choosing colours that go well with one's complexion. People think of that of that for their dresses, but not for their rooms., which are of so much more importance. I should have liked blue, but blue gets so soon tawdry. I think, (...) that I have enough complexion at present to venture upon a pale spring green.
— Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Marjoribanks
We think, therefore we should make everyone think what we think.
— Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
Hard times' is a phrase the English love to use, when speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africa's 'hard times' were made harder by them.
— Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.
— Eric Temple Bell
If you really have to get shot, Belfast is one of the best places to do it. After twenty years of the Troubles, and after thousands of assassination attempts and punishment shootings, Belfast has trained many of the best gunshot-trauma surgeons in the world.
— Adrian McKinty, Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly
The smell of hot popcorn drifted upward from the concourse below, lingering in the warm Californian air like an atmospheric irony, and a Jumbotron directly in front of me displayed a blandly handsome announcer seated behind a curved desk emblazoned with DARPA’s logo: a sports broadcast mise-en-scène from some speculative future, vaguely fascist, in which the machinery of national defense had become a spectacle of mass entertainment.
— Mark O'Connell, To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
I recalled with some discomfort that the man driving the vehicle had invented the sport of volcano boarding, presumably as a way of solving, in one deft move, the problems of the insufficient riskiness of both snowboarding and hanging out on the slopes of active volcanoes. Although I was not sure that I wanted to live forever, I was sure that I didn’t want to go down in a blaze of chintzy irony, plunging into a ravine strapped into the passenger seat of a thing called the Immortality Bus.
— Mark O'Connell, To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
But stronger and brighter than any other was his mate bond with Lana. She was in every beat of his heart, the very fire in his blood. How could anyone have ever doubted his feelings for her?
— DB Reynolds
Do you get the irony?Who is now talking about, who ain't serious?Oh, we gonna do that and that and that and that?… Yeah, yeah You just wanna trick me one more time….
— Deyth Banger
There's something inherently comical about the fact that most people want to change other people's lives, while they themselves remain stoic as they loiter in their own shortcomings.
— Antonio Kowatsch
Silence gives notice to the music of the senses that would otherwise not be heard.
— W Larsen Hughes
Understand yourself, accept yourself, but do not be yourself.
— Luke Rhinehart, The Dice Man
Blasphemy has always seemedto require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blasphemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play.
— Donna Haraway
I'm not a slave, man. I just gotta sign out, say where I'm going, what time I'll be back and then I gotta sign back in.
— Ben H. Winters, Underground Airlines
Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
The biggest irony in the history of India is the term, "Muslim Personal Law."Law of the land could never be personal.
— Ketan Waghmare
Once upon a time...long ago in a far-off place that everyone knows is not here or now or us.
— Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish
Irony can be tiresome when what you really need is a hug.
— Helen Klein Ross, What Was Mine
Those who meet objections to their forcing their religion on others with cries of 'Show respect!' clearly have no grasp of irony.
— Christina Engela, Autumn Burning: Dreadtime Stories for the Wicked Soul
Some two thousand stone-throwing protesters gathered in the street outside the school. They chanted, "We want fairness. There is no fairness if you don't let us cheat." It sounds like a joke, but they were absolutely serious.
— Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest.
— Diogenes Laërtius, Complete Works
Some irony. The girl who couldn't face her own bullshit . . . suddenly forcing everyone else to.
— Rick Remender, Tokyo Ghost, Vol. 2: Come Join Us
Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked.
— George Carlin
Moxie gave me a small smile. "Why do you always say that- which here means?""I'll probably outgrow it," I said.
— Lemony Snicket, Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
And it never even occurs to them their certainty that they are different is what makes them the same.
— David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
But I made an issue of the precise wording of the vows. I wanted liberalized ones, with no outmoded Pauline nonsense exacting from the bride the promise to 'obey' the groom. Here I put my foot down, rather in the manner of a husband determined to show at the outset who was boss. 'I'll have no obedience around here!' I said, banging the table. 'Is that clear?''Is it an order?''Yes.
— Peter De Vries, The Blood of the Lamb
It's extraordinary, the amount of misunderstandings there are even between two people who discuss a thing quite often - both of them assuming different things and neither of them discovering the discrepancy.
— Agatha Christie, Towards Zero
The book didn't want to be copied?I should introduce it to the house that doesn't want any occupants.
— A.W. Exley, Nefertiti's Heart
Colorless green ideas sleep furiouslythree old owls on a chest of drawerswere screwingthe daughter of the doctor.But then the mother called them,colorless green ideas slepp furiously.
— Umberto Eco, How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays
Erik wondered if they saw the irony of such a tiny complex expecting to find the cure from the very lives they minimized in comparison to the whole. If such small, little lives mattered not, how could they believe anything they did would matter?
— Ellie Lieberman, Solving for X
You said "Hi", I to be polite will say "Bye"!
— Deyth Banger
Two examples of irony:...a cheap knock-off of a Chinese Ming vase…made in China....getting murdered in a graveyard.
— Clifford Cohen
Peter sank. "I'd give anything to see time.
— Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily
How can you ask me to keep a secret... when you can't keep it yourself?
— Maya Berger
Jane, who is much better at reading guide books than I am (I always read them on the way back to see what I missed, it’s often quite a shock), discovered something wonderful in the book she was reading. Did I know, she asked, that Brisbane was originally founded as a penal colony for convicts who committed new offences after they had arrived in Australia ? I spent a good half hour enjoying this single piece of information. It was wonderful. There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures, huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dish cloth, busy sending those we wished to punish most severely to sit in bright sunlight on the coast of the Tasman Sea at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and maybe do some surfing too. No wonder the Australians have a particular kind of smile that they reserve exclusively for use on the British.
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
For I must tell you, gentle reader, that Geralt the Witcher was always a modest, prudent and composed man, with a soul as simple and uncomplicated as the shaft of a halberd.
— Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki
The universe loves irony even more than it loves futility.
— Paul Russell, Immaculate Blue
Mercy, how we do so often love to immortalize those despised and forgotten in life.
— Timothy Beal, The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book
The old Televisions had an off switch.
— Chris Bachelder
irony is for a traveler while traveling, happiness increases as the distance increases.
— shivangi lavaniya
If consultants followed their own advice, they wouldn't tell anyone.
— Grant McLachlan
Not every problem can be solved by you trying to get yourself killed.
— Martha Wells, The Edge of Worlds
What’s fair and what’s true often bear no resemblance to each other.
— Garon Whited, Nightlord: Shadows
quoted Lewis Hyde, whose pamphlet on John Berryman and alcohol he had read in his early months at Granada House: “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy the cage.” Then he continued: This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing….[I]rony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks.
— D.T. Max, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace
The days are numbered for those bums over in England."German Tank commander
— Leo McKinstry, Operation Sea Lion: The Failed Nazi Invasion that Turned the Tide of War
Endgame,” Sam muttered, not really expecting Caine to hear.“Yep,” Caine said. “That’s right. Endgame. The FAYZ barrier is coming down; at least that’s mybet. But there’s also a ninety percent chance you and me both end up dead. Ten percent chance weboth actually get out of here alive. In which case we end up sharing a cell somewhere.” He laughed.“Kind of unfair, really, what with me being evil and all, and you just so darned virtuous and heroic.
— Michael  Grant, Light
Inscriptions here of various Names I view'd,The greater part by hostile time subdu'd;Yet wide was spread their fame in ages past,And Poets once had promis'd they should last.
— Alexander Pope, The Temple of Fame
Every atom in your body spins and danceslike a bee around the queen,like a whirling dervish,like the stars spiraling in a galaxy.Yet why do you sit motionlessly watching Dancing With the Stars?
— Khang Kijarro Nguyen
Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief- that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never...intended. So they said to one another: "Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever that will mock the credulity of man...We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over- and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
imagine there's no heaven..." he said. "Apparently someone is taking that personally.
— E.J. Copperman
You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays