Irony

ˈaɪərəni

noun

a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result

Irony is often described as a literary or rhetorical device used to convey a meaning opposite to its literal sense. It can add depth and complexity to writing by highlighting contradictions or incongruities in a clever and sometimes humorous way.

Before Ralph had time to reflect upon the irony of a man on a suicide mission taking pains to protect his hearing, the bottle shattered against Pickering's temple, dousing him with amber liquid and green glass.

Stephen King

Insomnia

She will never know that she has been Controlled, and will be all the better for it, since her Control involved the development of a precocious and intelligent personality.” The First Speaker laughed shortly, “In a sense, it is the irony of it all that is most amazing.

Asimov, Isaac

Foundation 3 - Second Foundation

It is to the credit of the devisers of it that they tried to conceal it—this comedy whose text and impulse are describable in two words.” The Chancellor spoke up with a fine irony in his manner: “Indeed?

Mark Twain

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“You meet so few men who value friendship over gold these days.” “Too true,” the fat man said, deaf to the irony.

George R. R. Martin

A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five

At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary with him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he came to describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he has lived through.

Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace

But it struck Fran with a tired sort of irony that the only person left in Ogunquit besides herself should be one of the very few people in town she honestly didn't like.

King, Stephen

The Stand

The irony was that such deadliness should come to flower here on Arrakis, the one source in the universe of melange, the prolonger of life, the giver of health.

Herbert, Frank

Dune

“I should imagine it did,” says Margarethe, missing the irony in Clara’s tone.

Gregory Maguire

Confessions of an Ugly Step Sister

As he answered me his face grew stern, and he said in quite a different tone:— “Oh, it was the grim irony of it all—this so lovely lady garlanded with flowers, that looked so fair as life, till one by one we wondered if she were truly dead; she laid in that so fine marble house in that lonely churchyard, where rest so many of her kin, laid there with the mother who loved her, and whom she loved; and that sacred bell going ‘Toll!

Bram Stoker

Dracula

Jurgis had once been among those who scoffed at the idea of these huge concerns cheating; and so now he could appreciate the bitter irony of the fact that it was precisely their size which enabled them to do it with impunity.

Upton Sinclair

The Jungle

154 Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil

Like a doper's place, he thought, appreciating the irony.

Dick, Philip K.

A Scanner Darkly

Fawkes the phoenix was gnawing a bit of cuttlebone.“Would you like me to do it now?” asked Snape, his voice heavy with irony.

J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“Show irony and pity.” I started out of the room with the tackle-bag, the nets, and the rod-case.

Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises

Edmond, it is not Madame de Morcerf who is come to you, it is Mercédès.” “Mercédès is dead, madame,” said Monte Cristo; “I know no one now of that name.” “Mercédès lives, sir, and she remembers, for she alone recognized you when she saw you, and even before she saw you, by your voice, Edmond—by the simple sound of your voice; and from that moment she has followed your steps, watched you, feared you, and she needs not to inquire what hand has dealt the blow which now strikes M. de Morcerf.” “Fernand, do you mean?” replied Monte Cristo, with bitter irony; “since we are recalling names, let us remember them all.” Monte Cristo had pronounced the name of Fernand with such an expression of hatred that Mercédès felt a thrill of horror run through every vein.

Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo

“Then within his distant castle, Home returned, he dreamed his days— Silent, sad—and when death took him He was mad, the legend says.” When recalling all this afterwards the prince could not for the life of him understand how to reconcile the beautiful, sincere, pure nature of the girl with the irony of this jest.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Idiot

The light became complete, and he acknowledged this to himself: That his place was empty in the galleys; that do what he would, it was still awaiting him; that the theft from little Gervais had led him back to it; that this vacant place would await him, and draw him on until he filled it; that this was inevitable and fatal; and then he said to himself, “that, at this moment, he had a substitute; that it appeared that a certain Champmathieu had that ill luck, and that, as regards himself, being present in the galleys in the person of that Champmathieu, present in society under the name of M. Madeleine, he had nothing more to fear, provided that he did not prevent men from sealing over the head of that Champmathieu this stone of infamy which, like the stone of the sepulchre, falls once, never to rise again.” All this was so strange and so violent, that there suddenly took place in him that indescribable movement, which no man feels more than two or three times in the course of his life, a sort of convulsion of the conscience which stirs up all that there is doubtful in the heart, which is composed of irony, of joy, and of despair, and which may be called an outburst of inward laughter.

Victor Hugo

Les Misérables

Like human receptionists, the daemon is especially bad at handling irony.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash

‘The irony is so great.

Vonnegut, Kurt

Slaughterhouse Five

The irony was in my loving objects before life or ideas; the incongruity in my answering the infectious call of action, which laid weight on the diversity of things.

T. E. Lawrence

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Indeed, he picked up the crowd’s response, saying: “Irony often masks the inability to think beyond one’s assumptions.

Frank Herbert

Children of Dune

“Of course they do,” said the marquis, mildly, the irony implicit in his words, not in his voice.

Gaiman, Neil

Neverwhere

“You meet so few men who value friendship over gold these days.” “Too true,” the fat man said, deaf to the irony.

Martin, George, R. R.

A Dance With Dragons

Lord Galloway, I understand, met you passing from the study to the drawing-room, and it was only some minutes afterwards that he found the garden and the Commandant still walking there.” “You have to remember,” replied Margaret, with a faint irony in her voice, “that I had just refused him, so we should scarcely have come back arm in arm.

G. K. Chesterton

The Innocence of Father Brown

It's a shade too sincere, but the subtleties of irony are often wasted in 13.

Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay

There was a humorless irony in the ludicrous panic of the man screaming for help to the police while policemen were all around him.

Heller, Joseph

Catch-22