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More "Ironic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... head, around, to speak to the woman behind him. 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 so well, beginning with the ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... favourite instrument, the dialogue, to its highest splendour, and to this day he remains by far its most distinguished proficient. In the 2nd century a.d. Lucian of Samosata achieved a brilliant success with his ironic dialogues "Of the Gods," "Of the Dead," "Of Love" and "Of the Courtesans." In some of them he attacks superstition and philosophical error with the sharpness of his wit; in others he merely paints scenes of modern life. The title of Lucian's most famous collection ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... it both feared and fascinated. Whenever he was not looking, she could not take her eyes away. In the pictures in her mind, it showed itself most often in ironic rage; yet he could look at her with an expression that wooed the softest of thoughts in her heart. Then she felt a slave, and would have given him the world, held in her fingers, the gift would have ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... of the ordinary seaman who sat at Singleton's feet. Young Charley was lean and long-necked. The ridge of his backbone made a chain of small hills under the old shirt. His face of a street-boy—a face precocious, sagacious, and ironic, with deep downward folds on each side of the thin, wide mouth—hung low over his bony knees. He was learning to make a lanyard knot with a bit of an old rope. Small drops of perspiration stood out on his bulging forehead; he sniffed strongly from time to time, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... of this cow one is able, indeed one is almost obliged, to feel the soul of a goddess. The incredible is accomplished. The dead Egyptian makes the ironic, the skeptical modern world feel deity in a limestone cow. How is it done? I know not; but it is done. Genius can do nearly everything, it seems. Under the chin of the cow there is a standing statue of the King Mentu-Hotep, and beneath her the king kneels ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... left in her mind, of the child's initiative and executive ability, was destined to be dissipated by the rather heroic measures sometimes resorted to by a superior agency taking an ironic hand in the game of which we have been too ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... of being insolent. Her simple statement that her employer's death had left "Nothing" and "Nobody" was prompted by no consciously ironic realization of the diaphanousness of Feather. As for the rest she had been professionally trained to take care of her interests as well as to cook and the ethics of the days of her grandmother when there had been servants with actual affections ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... relish the story the papers would make of it. So he and the physician devised a statement for the press to the effect that the Weblings died of something they had eaten. The stomach of Europe was all deranged, and Sir Joseph had been famous for his dinners; there was a kind of ironic logic in his epitaph. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the most ironic strength of these kinds of archival electronic resources is that many of the teachers AM interviewed were desperate, it is no exaggeration to say, not only for primary materials but for unstructured primary materials. These would, they thought, foster personally motivated research, ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... 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 in hand. He prided himself upon his iron will ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... four weeks. At length—what was bound to happen—the weakest snapped. A week went by, and Charlie did not come. Emily haunted the porch in an ironic appearance of freedom. Mrs. Drainger, in some subtle way, knew that she had won, that the girl was eternally hers. Emily's face was pitifully white: she was suffering. Was it love? Or was it her passionate hatred of the prison ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... not imagine what he had misinterpreted so flatteringly to himself. But what did it matter? How like ironic fate, to pierce him with a chance shaft when all the shafts she ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... stimulate efficiency, or calculatingly and in cold blood put other agents in to wreck a concern in the interests of a rival. It was a matter of fees. Mern could defend the ethics of such procedure with interesting arguments; he had been an inspector of police and held ironic views of human nature; he had invented an anticipatory system, so he called it, by which he "hothoused" criminal proclivities in a person in order to show the person's latent possibilities up to an employer before damage had been wrought to the employer's business or ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... to arrest him. And while his friend tries desperately to resist the agents of the force, he contemplates the brutal scene with an ironic smile. ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... the remembrance that he was the 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 ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... a failure; he stood for nothing in the world of achievement; for all the difference that his going made, he might never have been born. Then a thought as startling as the tangible appearance of some ironic, grinning imp flashed to his mind. Who was he, Bruce Burt, to criticise his partner, Slim? What more had he accomplished? How much more difference would his own death make in anybody's life? His ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... rival? This is becoming dramatic!' Lady Bridget's voice was amusedly ironic, but she carried her head erect. 'Tell me about the woman at the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... been simple enough to admit his premises. Towards men who have some logical capacity his tone is that of respectful impatience; but as he goads on the reluctant and resentful victims of his reasoning, who loiter and limp painfully in the steps of his rapid deductions, he seems to say, with ironic scorn, "A little faster, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... considered ingratiating. He sauntered up to the three younger men, who stood in a group smoking as they waited for their hostess, and introduced himself with a little too evident assurance—nevertheless it is to be doubted whether he received the intended impression of faint and ironic chill: there was no hint of understanding ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... his lips as he saw them fade into the yawning gulf of moonlit distance,—going in different directions toward their ranches—an ironic smile, ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... details of the visit, when Alzugaray came home, and seeing a light in Caesar's room, went in there. Alzugaray was quite lively. The two friends passed the persons met that day in ironic review, and in general they were agreed about everything, except about valuing ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... way? Somehow, the dream had faded, the bright goal vanished and was lost. After a year of pre-med at the University of Southern Cal, he had given up medicine; he had become discouraged and quit college to take a laborer's job with a construction company. How ironic that this move should have saved his life! He'd wanted to work with his hands, to sweat and labor with the muscles of his body. He'd wanted to earn enough to marry Joan and then, later perhaps, he would have returned to finish his courses. It all seemed so far away now, his reason for ...
— Small World • William F. Nolan
... to the smoking-room. He himself mixed the cocktails. He talked to me. We discovered that we had mutual acquaintances. Never shall I forget that face, that ironic and distant look, that sad and melodious voice. Ah! Colonel, gentlemen, I don't know what they may say at the Geographic Office, or in the posts of the Soudan.... There can be nothing in it but a horrible suspicion. Such a man, capable of such a ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... Girls, that we sat and strove, even though we drew the line at playing with them and at knowing them, when not of the swarming cousinship, at home—if that felt awkwardness didn't exactly coincide with the ironic effect of "Gussy's" appearances, his emergence from rich mystery and his return to it, our state was but comparatively the braver: he always had so much more to tell us than we could possibly have to tell him. On reflection I see that the most completely rueful period couldn't after all greatly ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Drop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt, While a car at the end of the street goes by with a laugh; As by degrees The poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt, And the stars can chaff The ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old church Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts that lurch In ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... for Jane. The only thing that seemed possible to her in her simple reasoning, was to prevent such catastrophes for the future. It was not that pity was misplaced when shipwreck came, nor that charity ever failed. She understood, without being conscious of it, the ironic severity of Jesus, who would have no sudden pity and heart-searching on account of His poor. He had come into the world for righteousness and for judgment, and the judgment and righteousness both declared, not at the time of disaster or human appeal, nor with sudden loud ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... just at this season, is a most inhospitable looking pasturage, and the 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
... suspected that Pan had silken cords to draw him. He had always averted his eyes from the god—that is to say, within reason. Yet now Daniel, on perhaps a couple of fine mornings a week, in full Square, with Fan sitting behind on the cold stones, and Mr. Critchlow ironic at his door in a long white apron, would entertain Samuel Povey for half an hour with Pan's most intimate lore, and Samuel Povey would not blench. He would, on the contrary, stand up to Daniel like a little man, and pretend with all his might to be, potentially, a perfect arch-priest ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Partly the change was owing to disappointment: life had not become so highly cultured, literature had not prospered so much, nor displayed so broad a diffusion of intelligence and taste, as had been expected. Pope's Dunciad, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, and ironic satire on the state of literature under "Augustus" (George II, the "snuffy old drone from the German hive"), brilliantly express this indignation with the intellectual and ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... said Staniford, listening in ironic safety, "you overawe us all. I never did sing, but I think I should want to make an effort ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... of the above drama was suggested by two or three rather meagre pages of the 'Islendingasaga' of Sturla Thordsson (ed. Vigfusson, ch. 146). To my notion, the poet has succeeded admirably in reproducing the cool coloring, the ironic-pessimistic attitude, that uncompromisingly masculine sentiment we know so well in their refreshing acerbity from the best sagas. Not the least meritorious thing in the play, by the way, is the very slight insistence on Thorolf's relations to Helga, notwithstanding ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... 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 ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... that the House would appreciate the course which had induced him to seat himself below the gangway. The House cheered very loudly, and Mr. Boffin was the hero of ten minutes. Mr. Daubeny detracted something from this triumph by the overstrained and perhaps ironic pathos with which he deplored the loss of his right honourable friend's services. Now this right honourable gentleman had never been ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... meeting the other's ironic fence with crude thwacks. 'Do you think a God-fearing congregation would offer office ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... 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 is ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... straight on home, and had been within an ace of doing so. An omen, wasn't it? Five minutes she and Mr. Canning had talked, over so-called horses' necks provided by his sedate host, and before the end of that time she had perceived an interest dawning in the young man's somewhat ironic eyes. With the usual of his sex one could have counted pretty definitely on the thing's being followed up. However, Mr. Canning, the difficult, had merely saluted her fascinatingly, and retired to re-maroon himself in the rural villa of his kinsmen, the Allison ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... he know that he was the danger in the case? If he did he did not show any apprehension. His white face, typically French, with its rather long nose, slightly flattened temples, faintly cynical and ironic lips and small but obstinate chin, was almost ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... a surprisingly accurate statement. Kendall gave the exact answer. He meant to give an ironic comment. For the mathematics had been perfectly correct, only Buck ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... pretty 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 ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... implacable enemy. She was not tender any more. She was the Christine who had faced bailiffs and his father's strange, gay friends—ice-cold and bitter and relentless. She took the pictures from him. With a terrible ironic calm she sorted them from his pockets, and spread them out on the table like a pack of cards. He dared not look at her. He was afraid to see what she was seeing. She had torn open the door of his secret chamber, and there in that blasting light was his treasure, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... saying, "I had to come over to see Isabelle married, but I shall go back after a look around—not the place for me!" He laughed and waved his cane towards the company with an ironic sense of his inappropriateness to an ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... flared once more with the name of Larrabee Harman, and we read that there was "no hope of his surviving." Ironic phrase! There was not a soul on earth that day who could have hoped for his recovery, or who—for his sake—cared two straws whether he lived or died. And the dancer had been right; one of her legs was badly broken: ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... superior to anything of Beyle's and equal to anything of Flaubert's or Maupassant's. But the real cause of admiration is the nature of the grasp itself. Here, and perhaps here only—certainly here in transcendence—Balzac grapples with, and vanquishes, the bare, stern, unadorned, unbaited, ironic facts of life. It is not an intensely interesting book; it is certainly not a delightful one; you do not want to read it very often. Still, when you have read it you have come to one of the ultimate things: the flammantia moenia ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... through, the dominating fact is that it is "Henry James" speaking—Henry James, with whose delicate, ironic mind and most human heart we are in contact. There is much that can be learned in fiction; the resources of mere imitation, which we are pleased to call realism, are endless; we see them in scores of modern ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and a small chin. The other was much more solidly built—a girl of seventeen, in a plump phase, which however an intelligent eye would have read as not likely to last; a complexion of red and brown tanned by exercise; an expression in her clear eyes which was alternately frank and ironic; and an inconvenient mass of golden ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the secretary with ironic seriousness. "Takes your mind off that silly trouble. At your ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the faintest interest in the debate. Yet he knew all about it, and that I had to open it." But he was glad that his father showed no interest in the debate. Clara had mentioned it in the presence of Maggie, with her usual ironic intent, and Edwin had ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... 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
... a certain ironic aspect in his position as the dictator of this famous New England magazine. The fact that his manner was impatiently energetic and somewhat startling to the placid atmosphere of Park Street was not the thing that really signified its break with its past. But here was a Southerner ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... act as an angel". There is a sub-ironic touch in this phrase which should not be overlooked. Cf. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... philosopher; he is highly imaginative and picturesque; many of his passages might be styled, like those of Macaulay, "purple," for at times he rises to a high pitch of feeling and oratory. Yet this has been urged against him by some critics. The ironic remark has been repeated, in regard to Bergson, which was originally made of William James, by Dr. Schiller, that his work was "so lacking in the familiar philosophic catch-words, that it may be doubted whether any professor has quite understood it." There is in his works ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... uncontesting that 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 pitched helplessly head first into a hollow, and a door flew open under ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... 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 ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... had turned his face away and was plucking the lobes from a frond of fern. "A brave resolve, Father," he said, with an ironic note. "But you have not yet told me what brings you off ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... sentiments which direct his powers are not so fine as Heywood's. He depresses the mind, rather than invigorates it. The eye he cast on human life was not the eye of a sympathizing poet, but rather that of a sagacious cynic. His observation, though sharp, close, and vigilant, is somewhat ironic and unfeeling. His penetrating, incisive intellect cuts its way to the heart of a character as with a knife; and if he lays bare its throbs of guilt and weakness, and lets you into the secrets of its organization, he conceives his whole work is performed. This criticism ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... "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 by Charlotte Bront or George Eliot. In reading, it ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... 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 on ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... 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
... thought contrary to the form 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, ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... was a clean-minded little person, her people were of the clean-minded type, therefore she did not understand all that this ironic speech implied, but she gathered enough of its significance to cause her to turn first red and then pale and then to burst into tears. She was crying and trying to conceal the fact when Hannah returned. She bent her head and touched her ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... very great Clamour against some late Performances of Authorship, and the unprecedented Criticisms introduc'd" make such an essay as he writes "absolutely necessary." Yet there is no clear indication of just what works occasion this necessity. The ironic reference to Mr. Dennis at the end of the first paragraph, taken together with the praise of Mr. Pope's translation of Homer and the allusion to "the malicious and violent Criticisms of a certain Gentleman ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... 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 contemplate, ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... and tragic duality of all 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 unlike the rooster is the most spiritual part of love. All ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... God's; that St. Peter was 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 this it was ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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
... politely and hospitably, but with every moment that passed I grew more acutely conscious of something deterrent behind his courtesy. A sense of a strong personality in the background, not actually hostile as yet, but ironic and critical, set me instinctively and instantly on guard. Not that I actually suspected the man; but to take him straightway into my confidence was simply impossible. A man of another temperament might have done so—and quite possibly have ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... a gift of beautiful buildings and grounds, "regretted they could not take any of the children, as their orphanage was exclusively for their denomination." The mother did not respond to the doctor's ironic suggestion that she should "turncoat" ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... or go into 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 ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... he was lost he knew! A single glance at his judges made him certain of it, and from this moment his features wore a calm and contemptuous smile, an unchangeable expression of scorn. With an ironic curiosity he followed his judges through the labyrinth of artfully contrived captious questions by which they hoped to entangle him; occasionally he gave himself, as it were for his own amusement, the appearance of voluntarily being caught in their nets, until ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... woman-kissed, my life that seemed to me as bright, every second of it, as bright ducats rushing in a pleasant plenteous stream from one hand to another, was after all intended to be no more than a kind of ironic commentary on, and petty contrast to, the life of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to stand with his offering held out Allerton had no choice but to take up the letter and break the seal. He read it with little grunts intended to signify ironic laughter, but which betrayed no ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... 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, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... with glee. The aboriginal sense of humor may not be highly developed, but it is easily aroused. The friends of the outraged brave stamped up and down the dirt floor in spasms of mirth. They clapped him on the back and jabbered ironic inquiries as to his well-being. For the moment, at least, Dud was as popular as a funny clown ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... have been!" 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 indignantly. He raised ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... 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 ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... had passed. His men respected but did not understand him. They wove a legend about his name. They said he had come to France wanting to be killed, but that no bullet could touch him. And even those who scoffed, when they saw him, unruffled and strangely solitary, moving about with almost ironic contempt of danger, wondered if there might not be ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... generation of 1850." Now mere discouragement, except as a passing mood, though extremely natural, is also a little contemptible—pessimism-and-water, mere peevishness to the "fierce indignation," mere whining compared with the great ironic despair. As for Consolation, which in form as in matter strongly resembles part of the Strayed Reveller, I must say, at the risk of the charge of Philistinism, that I cannot see why most of it should not have been printed ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Armine might guess at a bitter truth of his nature, and shrink from him, despite the powerful attraction he possessed for her, despite her own freedom from scruple, her own ironic and even cruel ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... of blood-brothers," assented Maggard with an ironic flash in his eyes, "an' now Blood-brother Bas, go over ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... 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 unshaven face ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... burst with stitches in the side had a brilliant organizer of the fete stuffed them full with preliminary meat. Oh, droll! oh, delicious! oh, rare for Antony! And now a young man noticeable by his emaciated face and his premature baldness was drawing to the front amid ironic cheers. When the grotesque racers had passed by, noble cavaliers displayed their dexterity at the quintain, and beautiful ladies at the balconies—not masked, as in France, but radiantly revealed—changed their broad smiles to the subtler smiles of dalliance. And then suddenly the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a fairly tall man, with a big head, big features, and a beard. His characteristic expression denoted benevolence based on an ironic realisation of the humanity of human nature. He was forty-six years of age and looked it. He had been for more than twenty years at the Treasury, in which organism he had now attained a certain importance. He ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... ironic slant in the words or not, he paused a moment before he said: "Want to start her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... themselves that we 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 modern spirit ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... When 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 that I hated ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... 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
... problem incapable of solution, or, rather, of 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 ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... concerned himself more to beat the Federalists than he ever exerted himself to defeat the British. In his opinion, campaigning ought to have its regular alternations of activity and repose, but he never knew when activity should begin. To make the condition more supremely ironic, Morgan Lewis, now in his fifty-ninth year, whose knowledge of war, like Dearborn's, had been learned as a deputy quartermaster-general thirty years before, was ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... "Miss 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 ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... 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
... guessed in him a man whom an incurable habit of investigation and analysis had made gentle and indulgent; inapt for action, and more sensitive to the thoughts than to the events of existence. Withal not crushed, sub-ironic without a trace of acidity, and with a simple manner which put people at ease quickly. They had a long conversation on the terrace commanding an extended view of the town ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... naked feet; that was how you could tell you were awake. The door of the Morfe drawing-room opened into Mamma's old bedroom at Five Elms, and when she came to the foot of the bed she saw her father standing there. He looked at her with a mocking, ironic animosity, so that she knew he was alive. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... unable to deny this chronometry, felt that an ironic Providence was punishing him for his attentions to ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... world, repletion, extravagance, disorders, disease, warfare, and death. In reality Abbot Epicurus had captured all the best things the world can hold and established them at Beeleigh, leaving only the dregs. And at the same time, by a supreme master-stroke of ironic skill, he persuaded those stupid dregs that in spurning them he had ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... the 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. I don't know as I ever told you about it, but we had to drive ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... of fire and meaning, of laughter and friendliness; his mouth curved into the finest sweet smile in the world, as also it could curl into a look of scorn which could scathe as finely. He had a keen wit, and could be ironic and biting when he chose, but 'twas not his habit to use his power malevolently. Even those who envied his great fortunes, and whose spite would have maligned him had he been of different nature, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... majority were present when the opinion was delivered, the fifth being indisposed. Remarks Justice Jackson in his concurring opinion in United States v. Bryan (339 U.S. 323 (1950)), in which the ruling in Christoffel was held to be inapplicable: "It is ironic that this interference with legislative procedures was promulgated by exercise within the Court of the very right of absentee participation denied to Congressmen." Ibid. 344. It seems unlikely that the Christoffel decision seriously ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... served 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 humor. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... In ironic response to the pleas of the Regulators, the Governor of North Carolina summoned a force of one thousand militia men and led them into the western settlements. At the end of the day, May 16, 1771, two hundred and fifty of the two thousand Regulators who had gathered with ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... found his handwriting difficult to read at the best of times, and undecipherable in hard pencil on thin paper, handed the letter over to the faithful Bakkus, who read it aloud with a running commentary of ironic humour. This Andrew did not know ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... 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 ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... JERRY!" exclaimed Mrs. Carew in ironic scorn. "But why stop with Jerry? I'm sure Jerry has hosts of friends who would love to ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... 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 modern ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... caught were excellent. His trick was often to begin by taking some one urbanely and caressingly by the chin and complimenting him on the intelligenza della sua fisionomia. I kept near him as long as I could; for he struck me as a real ironic artist, cherishing a disinterested, and yet at the same time a motived and a moral, passion for the grotesque. I should have liked, however—if indeed I shouldn't have feared—to see him the next morning, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... a profound gesture of resignation and a single word: "Kismet!" and Gourou, with his most ironic smile, added: "You may count on us to support the crown, highness, even though we ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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. italiano ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... Perhaps the most ironic strength of these kinds of archival electronic resources is that many of the teachers AM interviewed were desperate, it is no exaggeration to say, not only for primary materials but for unstructured primary materials. These would, they thought, foster personally motivated research, ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... courses had not, he reflected, reconciled her to the frontiersman's necessarily simple mode of living—which was ironic, considering that one of her original attractions for him had been her apparent suitability for the pioneer life. She was a big girl, radiantly healthy, even though a little green at ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... names they received when christened. They were young, rich, lovely and apparently heart-whole. Charley Whistler, being newly-wedded, wanted every one else in the world to get married. He was continually saying that there was "nothing like it," and resented some of the ironic rejoinders of men who had been married all their lives, to hear them talk about it. So he made haste to introduce the twins to the beautiful ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... from their fellows, and invents a legend to which it then attaches a fanatical belief. It is the protest of romance against the commonplace of life. The incidents of the legend become the hero's surest passport to immortality. The ironic philosopher reflects with a smile that Sir Walter Raleigh is more safely inshrined in the memory of mankind because he set his cloak for the Virgin Queen to walk on than because he carried the English name to undiscovered countries. Charles Strickland lived obscurely. ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... 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 be ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... Shakespeare bring into dazzling relief the irony which governs the being of kings. Want of logic and defiance of ethical principle underlie their pride in magnificent ceremonial and pageantry. The ironic contrast between the pretensions of a king and the actual limits of human destiny is a text which Shakespeare repeatedly clothes ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... returned, and he still wore his ironic smile—"Well, I know what you mean all the time. You say I only know Oriental women, but, by Allah, there's not a pin to choose between the lot of you, except that there's less humbug about them, and over here you're a set ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... period, is more than doubtful. But Tiberius cannot be acquitted of all blame. The cynical humour with which it pleased him to mark the steady advance of autocracy, the lentae maxillae which Augustus attributed to his adopted son,[3] the icy and ironic cruelty which was—on the most favourable estimate—a not inconsiderable element in his character, no doubt all exercised a chilling influence, not only on politics but on all spontaneous expression of ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... back to the smoking-room. He himself mixed the cocktails. He talked to me. We discovered that we had mutual acquaintances. Never shall I forget that face, that ironic and distant look, that sad and melodious voice. Ah! Colonel, gentlemen, I don't know what they may say at the Geographic Office, or in the posts of the Soudan.... There can be nothing in it but a horrible suspicion. Such a man, capable of such a crime,—believe ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... good," suggested the secretary with ironic seriousness. "Takes your mind off that silly trouble. At your ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... 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 city, where the debris of civilization piles up ramshackle suburbs in which starve ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... mind. As no delusive hope, that might be excited here, has the slightest attraction for me, I gain by my absolutely unimpassioned position towards these surroundings a calmness which—let me say it with a certain ironic humour—will probably be of advantage to me in gaining that for which I strove here in my early days, and which now, as it has become indifferent to me, I ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the shelf 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 ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... 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 ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Gallic love of wit and laughter. To joke and quip seemed to him beneath the dignity of men. It is, rather, the safety-valve of a highly intelligent people—the outlet for their ironic perceptions of life. The most amusing songs of the war that I have heard were given by the poilus on a little stage near Commercy while the cannon thundered a few miles away. This ability to turn upon himself and see his life in a humorous light is an invaluable ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... them, and from the complete lack of what she could distinguish as either discipline or reverence. Yet Gerrit, a part of this, would be unable to share her attitude; she had heard him praise the appearance of women so insipid that she had turned expecting vainly an ironic smile. ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... difficult to read at the best of times, and undecipherable in hard pencil on thin paper, handed the letter over to the faithful Bakkus, who read it aloud with a running commentary of ironic humour. This Andrew did not ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... introduction. In what spirit is the introduction treated? There are as many different treatments as there are human feelings and sentiments. The spirit may be serious, informative, dignified, scoffing, argumentative, conversational, startling, humorous, ironic. The student should lengthen this list by adding as many other adjectives as ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... fell; an indefinable change had come over his aspect; he bowed and seemed about to utter an ironic apology. She felt puzzled and unconsciously she began to think. What was lacking in her statement? Something. Could she remember what? Something which he had expected; something which as presiding judge over John's trial he had been made aware of and now recalled to render her story ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... cheers I won a prize. A cynic watched me, with ironic eyes; An open foe, in open hatred, sneered; I cared for neither. Then my friend appeared. Eager, I listened for his glad 'Well done.' But sudden shadow seemed to shroud my sun. He praised me: yet each slow, unwilling word Forced ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... through again and sat quietly as the hand of Polyphemus closed over him. He even smiled a little—a weary, ironic smile. ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... 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 is prose in ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... idea came to me it was as if some ironic hand had touched an electric button, and all my fatuous phrases had leapt out on ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... allowing yourself to be obsessed by the fact that what you are reading is "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 by Charlotte Bront or George Eliot. In reading, it would ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... 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 her narrow ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... 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, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Gallatin had labored disinterestedly for the land of his adoption and now he was recrossing the ocean to the home of his ancestors with the taunts of his enemies ringing in his ears. Would the Federalists never forget that he was a "foreigner"? He reflected with a sad, ironic smile that as a "foreigner with a French accent" he would have distinct advantages in the world of European diplomacy upon which he was entering. He counted many distinguished personages among his friends, from Madame de Stael to Alexander Baring ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... scattered. He invited his former secretary, a Roman Catholic, to join the new society, but he made it clear that Orange, a man of real distinction, was in no sense a prominent member. The precise dogmata of Mirafloreanism—a nickname given, I believe, in ironic sympathy by Mr. Disraeli—were undefined, but the term gradually became associated with those ideals of conduct, government, and Art which poets imagine, heroes realise, and the ignorant destroy. Men of all, sundry, and opposing beliefs presumed to its credentials. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the one ironic touch the situation had lacked. It pierced the heart of Carleton Roberts and started him in anguish ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 make you ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... delirium of the last period set in. All his afternoons must have been those of a faun—a faun who with impeccable solicitude put on paper what he saw in the heart of the bosk or down by the banks of secret rivers. The sad turpitudes, the casuistry of concupiscence, the ironic discolourations and feverish delving into subterranean moral stratifications were as yet afar. He was young, handsome, with a lithe, vigorous body and the head of an aristocratic Mephistopheles, a head ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... upon us a new internationalism. To-day the world is united by starvation, disease and misery. We are enjoying the ironic internationalism of hatred. The victors are forced to shoulder the burden of the vanquished. International philanthropies and charities are organized. The great flux of immigration and emigration has recommenced. Prosperity is a myth; ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... 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. I don't know as I ever told you about it, but we had ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... shops and offices of the Five Towns closed? Did not every member of his family, save those detained by illness, attend the historic spectacle of the Centenary? He alone had sacrificed pleasure to work. Thus Janet's loving, ironic smiles foretold, would the father of the brood discourse during the next ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to bring up various extracts which had been collected from the Belgrade Press. If every organ of this Press were filled with a permanent sense of high responsibility, and if Mr. Fisher had made inquiries as to the existence in Belgrade of humorous and ironic writers, one is still rather at a loss to understand why these miscellaneous cuttings were placed before the League, which could scarcely be expected to treat them as evidence. The delegate added that he did not think a single nation was animated by unfriendly sentiments towards ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... spirited, ironic poem on the follies of idolatry which bears both in style and substance marks of ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... growing seriousness and acerbity. Partly the change was owing to disappointment: life had not become so highly cultured, literature had not prospered so much, nor displayed so broad a diffusion of intelligence and taste, as had been expected. Pope's Dunciad, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, and ironic satire on the state of literature under "Augustus" (George II, the "snuffy old drone from the German hive"), brilliantly express this indignation with the intellectual and literary shortcomings ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... would sit 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 ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... lifted the club an inch or two, and with it his eyebrows—and after it his stalwart frame as the club crashed back into the fender. And as he stood at his full height, a courteous but ironic smile under the cropped moustache, he looked what he ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... not sure, Dagaeoga. Look at the bird with the red crest, perched on the topmost tip of the tall, green bush directly in front of us. I can distinguish his song from those of the others, and it seems that the note contains something saucy and ironic." ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem, "the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on"—without ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... finding of himself alone at forty was hardly what he had intended. There was something actually comic about it. That for which he had striven had been secured, but for what? Success unshared is of all things ironic, and soon not even General would be here to greet him when the day's work was done. He blew out a thin thread of smoke and followed its curvings with half-shut eyes. He had made money, made it honestly, and it had brought him that which it ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... groaning inwardly, and unable to deny this chronometry, felt that an ironic Providence was punishing him for his attentions to ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... 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 ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... him. Something in the boy's devotion seemed to move him, for his eyes were very kindly though his laugh was ironic. "You'll have an almighty awakening one of these days, my son," he said. "By the way, if we are going to be brothers, you had better call me by ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... woman's face. Something quite different there, lurking under the soft gaiety. Was it consciousness of this being the second time during the evening that she had employed the too common vaunt of the woman of that particular world? Did some ironic echo reach her of that same boast (often as mirthless and as pitiful as the painted smile on the cruder face), the 'I'm afraid I'm rather frivolous' of the well-to-do woman, whose frivolity—invaluable asset!—is ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... 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 ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... book she had laid down and turned it. His eyes examined the title page. Their pathos lightened and softened; it became compassion; they smiled at her with a little pitiful smile, half tender, half ironic, as if they said, "Poor Gwenda, is ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... the dramatic movement has been more interesting and none has been more important than this building-up of an audience to appreciate the plays. Whether with the poetic plays of Mr. Yeats and the ironic extravaganzas of Synge alone, such an audience as has been built up—an audience estimated by Mr. Yeats in 1906 to consist of four thousand young men and women—could have been won is problematical; that is, it may be doubted that the very best the movement has produced ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... autumn was threatened by winter, with so little change 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
... that, more than anything else, is irritating to women. If, as a German thinker says, every woman is a courtezan or a mother, it is obvious that the artists and thinkers who refuse alike the beguilements of the one and the ironic tenderness of the other, are not people to be "loved." Dante refuses neither; and he has, further, that peculiar mixture of harsh strength and touching weakness, which is so especially appealing to women. They are reluctantly overcome—not without pleasure—by ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... 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 in hand. He prided himself upon his iron will and turned uneasily from the weeds growing ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... no reply; and Kitty decided that the younger man had gone on. Silence; or rather, she no longer heard the speakers. Then a low chuckle came to her and this chuckle broadened into ironic laughter; and she knew that Mephisto was abroad. What had been the wager; and what was the meaning of the six months? It is instinctive in woman to interpret the human voice correctly, especially when the eyes are not distracted by physical presentations. This man outside, ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... not a happy smile, but there was a certain ironic humor in the situation. The idea of anyone's seeking my "permission" in any matter concerning Frances Morley. He noticed the smile and was, I think, inclined ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... banquet scene. Planned by the King in an attempt to achieve reconciliation and remove the threat of Onaelia by marrying her off, it represents a means of bringing almost the entire cast on stage in order to witness the meeting out of justice. It is ironic that the King's scheme is undermined, not by his political rivals but by his allies, The Queen and Malateste, who do not believe that the marriage will provide a stable settlement and instead seek to pursue a deadlier course of action. The banquet provides the context for the unwinding of this ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... not long cleared away the tea, and brought in a paraffin lamp, small but cheerful. She was a middle-aged woman, much younger than her husband—with an ironic half-dreamy eye, and a native intelligence much superior to her surroundings. She was suffering from a chronic abscess in the neck, which had strange periodic swellings and subsidences, all of which were endlessly ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... An ironic smile came over my face as I read. This letter to me seemed like an echo of the one I had sent to Viola that morning. Well, I would wait for her answer, and then, perhaps, if she would not return to me, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... these instances. Our own knowledge supplies them by the score. Our personal lives are full of them. God's Will, God's Love, God's Mercy, become strangely ironic forces, grim beyond any open enmity. They remind us of the "love," the "pity," the "mercy," in which the orthodox sent the heretic to the hangman or the stake, destroying the body ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... on a brilliant sunlit day, somewhere on Earth's North American continent. Barrent had planned on waiting for darkness before leaving; but the control room screens flashed an ancient and ironic warning: All passengers and crew must disembark at once. Ship rigged for full decontamination procedure. ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... 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 humor. Carr ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... keen sickle, yet is held back, while before his eyes the fields are white with the harvest which threatens, unreaped, to perish,—how shall he reconcile himself to his lot? How escape the thought that he and all mankind are but playthings in the grasp of cruel and ironic fate? ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... clean-minded little person, her people were of the clean-minded type, therefore she did not understand all that this ironic speech implied, but she gathered enough of its significance to cause her to turn first red and then pale and then to burst into tears. She was crying and trying to conceal the fact when Hannah returned. She bent her head and touched ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the United States were treated to an ironic sight. Here was a man who only eight years before had been shown up in Congress as an arch plunderer; a man who had bought his railroads largely with his looted millions; a man who, if the laws had been drafted ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... His was an ironic, throaty human voice! It was deep and mellow, yet there was a queer rasp to it. Mary and I stood transfixed. Migul seemed to sag. The metal columns of its ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... your 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. ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... scattered all about the stage. The four of us sat as solemn as statues—I don't think one of us smiled. It was during the second Act that I suddenly laughed. I don't know that anything very comic was happening on the stage, but I was aware, with a kind of ironic subconsciousness, that some of the superior spirits in their superior Heaven must be deriving a great deal of fun from our situation. There was Vera thinking, I suppose, of nothing but Lawrence, and Lawrence thinking of nothing but Vera, and Nina thinking of nothing but ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... and woman-kissed, my life that seemed to me as bright, every second of it, as bright ducats rushing in a pleasant plenteous stream from one hand to another, was after all intended to be no more than a kind of ironic commentary on, and petty contrast to, the life ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the braided smoking coat he wore over his evening clothes was new and handsome. "No wonder," he thought bitterly, "the fellow has been living on me for a week!" He stood by the cue-rack looking at him for some time, and then he said with a cold ironic dignity that (if he had known it) came oddly from his boyish lips: "I hope you are making yourself ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... a 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 ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... feared and fascinated. Whenever he was not looking, she could not take her eyes away. In the pictures in her mind, it showed itself most often in ironic rage; yet he could look at her with an expression that wooed the softest of thoughts in her heart. Then she felt a slave, and would have given him the world, held in her fingers, the gift ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... four scenes, with the heart or essence of it. The piece is not drama for the stage, nor intended to be seen or heard outside the pages of a book; but it is meant to be, and is, a great, brief, dramatic poem, a lyric almost, of hate, ambition, fear, desire, and the conquest of ironic evil. Swinburne has written nothing like it before. The manner of it is new, or anticipated only in the far less effectual Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards; the style, speech, and cadence are tightened, restrained, full of sullen fierceness. Lucrezia, strangely, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... wind-bag it is, to be sure!" thought his companion, as he smoked and listened, in a gently ironic silence, to abuse of the Government. He knew—or thought ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... forcing themselves to pervert their divine instinct for perfect artistic execution to the effective handling of these diabolical things, and their economic faculty for organization to the contriving of ruin and slaughter. For it gave an ironic edge to their tragedy that the very talents they were forced to prostitute made the prostitution not only effective, but even interesting; so that some of them were rapidly promoted, and found themselves actually ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... papers flared once more with the name of Larrabee Harman, and we read that there was "no hope of his surviving." Ironic phrase! There was not a soul on earth that day who could have hoped for his recovery, or who—for his sake—cared two straws whether he lived or died. And the dancer had been right; one of her legs was badly broken: she would ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Oliver was a shrewd fellow ("cunning as twenty devils," is my Lord Henry's phrase) and he was also a man of some not inconsiderable learning. Yet neither his natural wit nor his acquired endowments appear to have taught him that of all the gods that rule the destinies of mankind there is none more ironic and malicious than that same Dan Cupid in whose honour, as it were, he was now burning the incense of that pipe of his. The ancients knew that innocent-seeming boy for a cruel, impish knave, and they mistrusted him. Sir ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... most wondrous—yet who will dare to say they take precedence over the wondrous ways of the stomach? And the ways are ironic; is it not conceivable that the two should align in devious fruition? For Gral found answer, not in his groping hands, but tangled about ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... my reverie 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
... the Ancient Spirit and Chorus of the Years, the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirit Ironic, the Spirit Sinister, Rumours, Spirit-Messengers, and the ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... motored straight on home, and had been within an ace of doing so. An omen, wasn't it? Five minutes she and Mr. Canning had talked, over so-called horses' necks provided by his sedate host, and before the end of that time she had perceived an interest dawning in the young man's somewhat ironic eyes. With the usual of his sex one could have counted pretty definitely on the thing's being followed up. However, Mr. Canning, the difficult, had merely saluted her fascinatingly, and retired to re-maroon ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... lost in the midst of the crowds hurrying about me. It was all over, gone like one of those old dreams of my childhood. I could never forget it—never forget Selda—but it was gone. It had never existed. It had been cruel of Melbourne, cruel and ironic, to put Selda in the dream. But perhaps he had never realized that it ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... Madame France of the attitude struck By this confident slip of good stock histrionic? Though dames swear their dear Petit Duc is a duck, The smile of old stagers is somewhat ironic. But "Bravas!" resound. A lad's "resolute will," The "wisdom of twenty years," stir admiration, The political Cafe Chantant pluck will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... sat; and so delightful did I feel the situation to be, that I was almost vexed to be challenged to renew our interrupted debate. The challenge, rather to my surprise, came from Audubon, who suddenly said to me, a propos of nothing, in a tone at once ironic and genial: ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... jejune credulity as to the absolute validity of his ideals and the unworthiness of the world in disregarding them, his wincings and mockeries under the sting of the petty disillusions which every hour spent among men brings to his infallibly quick observation, he has acquired the half tragic, half ironic air, the mysterious moodiness, the suggestion of a strange and terrible history that has left him nothing but undying remorse, by which Childe Harold fascinated the grandmothers of his English contemporaries. ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... How ironic if his choice should prove fatal! As the thought flashed through Tom's brain, the missile came streaking into view through the sub's ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... the other's ironic fence with crude thwacks. 'Do you think a God-fearing congregation would offer ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... With passionate prodigalities of praise, With wreaths of daisied words and quaint caresses, Adore me not in charming childish ways. This pastoral is beautiful enough: But never shall it antidote my drouth: I want a reticent ironic Love With smiling eyes and faintly mocking mouth. Sweetness is best when bitterly 'tis bought: So in Love's deadly duel I would not be Victorious, and the peace I long have sought, Sure knowledge of his great supremacy, Would buy with pangs, like that bright cuirassier, The queen-at-arms that ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... result, however, has been a fine and vigorous colony. Some will see in its record of early struggles, difficulties and mistakes endured, paid for and surmounted, a signal instance of the overruling care of Providence. To the cynic the tale must be merely a minor portion of the "supreme ironic procession with laughter of gods in the background." To the writer it seems, at least, to give a very notable proof of the collective ability of a colonizing race to overcome obstacles and repair blunders. The Colony of New Zealand is not a monument of the genius of any one man or group ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... The Philosopher, who had not yet begun to feel in his bones the heat of the old tropical fever which afterwards made him toss at nights and call out strange words, shook his head and spoke with the enormous gravity which gives an air of prophecy and awful wisdom to a man whose sense of humour and ironic wit have often twisted me into painful knots of mirth. But there was no glint of humour in the Philosopher's eyes when he stared at the greyness of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... down to Wendover, Laura talked to Jane. Nina did not talk. Her queer eyes, when they looked at him, had a light in them of ironic devilry and suspicion. They left him speculating on the extent to which he was cutting himself off. This journey down to Wendover was a stage in the process. He was going down to tell Nicholson, to ask Nicholson ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... with his 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 ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... 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 ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... undoubtedly more tender and more gentle; but Lady Mary had qualities all her own. She had powers of observation and the gift of description, which qualities are especially to be remarked in the letters she wrote when abroad with her husband on his Mission to the Porte. She had an ironic wit which gave point to the many society scandals she narrated, a happy knack of gossip, and a style so easy as to make reading ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... his best when he unchained his fancy. His musical grotesques are a survival from the Hoffmann period, but written so as to throw an ironic light upon the artistic tendencies of our time. Need I add that he did not care for the vaporous tonal experiments of Debussy and the new school! But then he was an indifferent critic ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... 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
... Pertaining to 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 ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... more Piteous than to Witness a proud and haughty Income tottering along the Street, searching in vain for a Workingman's Appetite? When one with a spending possibility of $2 a Minute is told by a Specialist to drink plenty of Hot Water, the Words seem almost Ironic. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... of sending ironic post-cards to Indiana, and discovering that she could more than hold her own against the youth and beauty of the other visitors. Then she made the acquaintance of a pretty woman from Richmond, whose husband, a mining engineer, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... to be a popular bill, too," Mr. Schemer was saying, with a smile of ironic appreciation at the thought of demagogues advocating it. "We should have one of Lawler's friends ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... indomitable word by the indomitable bo'sun at the bunt, this time to "skin" it up, and each man clawed out again at the flat booming canvas, clawed at it with his crooked fingers as wrestlers claw for hold behind each others' backs. A wrinkle gave hold, we nipped it, and then the ironic devil in the gale shrieked with laughter and snatched even so small an advantage from us. We knew the "old man" and the mate were cursing us down below. Did they curse us, or the weather, or the owners, or our English ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... task was an ultimate certainty had been a consolation mighty and sustaining. Such an uninteresting undertaking could not last forever, he told himself over and over again; nothing ever did. And now with ironic conformity to law, his philosophy had turned on him, demonstrating beyond cavil that not only did the things one longed to be free of come to a sure finality but so did those one ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... right as they are called Lippo Lippi or Blougram; the personality of the supple ecclesiastic floods and takes possession of the entire scene; we see the situation and the persons through the brilliant ironic mirror of his mind. The Chiappino of the second act is Ogniben's Chiappino, as Gigadibs is Blougram's Gigadibs. His "tragedy" is one in which there is no room for terror or pity, only for contempt. All real stress of circumstance is excluded. Both ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... for the people. This prince of the Senate is invested with the tribunitian power. M. Anatole France is something of a Socialist; and in that respect he seems to depart from his sceptical philosophy. But as an illustrious statesman, now no more, a great prince too, with an ironic mind and a literary gift, has sarcastically remarked in one of his public speeches: "We are all Socialists now." And in the sense in which it may be said that we all in Europe are Christians that is true enough. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... chuckle. "I really must trouble you to obey my wishes," he replied, with ironic courtesy. "Otherwise I shall be compelled to do some damage to that car of yours, a proceeding I always try to ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... incalculable element in Perugia which raised a certain anger in Helen. The place seemed to defy her and make light of her pretensions. As during the siege of Paris, so now, echoes of the eternal laughter saluted her ears, ironic ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... he stood for nothing in the world of achievement; for all the difference that his going made, he might never have been born. Then a thought as startling as the tangible appearance of some ironic, grinning imp flashed to his mind. Who was he, Bruce Burt, to criticise his partner, Slim? What more had he accomplished? How much more difference would his own death make in anybody's life? His mother's labored words came back with ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... from her trips in evident bad humor. Ulysses surmised that she had been in Rome. At other times she would appear very gay, with an ironic and tedious gayety. "The mandolin-strummers appear to be coming to their senses. Germany is constantly receiving more support from their ranks. In Rome the 'German propaganda' is distributed ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... roughly. When 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 ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... must get out of the house before he saw Isabelle. What had seemed a melancholy happening, now seemed a tiresome anticlimax. He was dressed at half past, so he sat down by the window; felt that the sinews of his heart were twisted somewhat more than he had thought. What an ironic mockery the morning seemed!—bright and sunny, and full of the smell of the garden; hearing Mrs. Borge's voice in the sun-parlor below, he wondered where ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... matters running smoothly, her head throbbing all the while. When the Chases had been finally tucked away—still ironic—in their quarters, and the rest of the family had bestowed themselves in the space belonging to them, she sat down by the open window, too weary to undress. Here Bob, emerging from Uncle Timothy's room in search of belongings necessary to his ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... painful treatments like allopaths use, ones with such poor statistical outcomes like allopaths use, there would most certainly be witch hunts and all such irresponsible, greedy quacks would be safely imprisoned. I find it highly ironic that for at least the past twenty five hundred years the basic principle of good medicine has been that the treatment must first do no harm. This is such an obvious truism that even the AMA doctors ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... King Guntram, who fills so many indulgent pages in Gregory of Tours. He is a vaguely contemporary figure, a fat, voluble man, now purring with jovial good nature, now bursting into explosions of wrath and violence, a strange mixture of bonhomie and brutality. It is an ironic commentary on what has happened to civilization that Gregory should regard him with affection, that he should be known as 'Good King Guntram' and that the church should actually have canonized him after his death. Good King Guntram; Michelet has summed him up in a phrase ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... night after dinner, had surpassed himself. He always did, Wrayford reflected, when the small fry from Highfield came to dine. He, Cobham Stilling, who had to find his bearings and keep to his level in the big heedless ironic world of New York, dilated and grew vast in the congenial medium of Highfield. The Red House was the biggest house of the Highfield summer colony, and Cobham Stilling was its biggest man. No one else within a radius of a hundred miles (on a conservative estimate) ...
— The Choice - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... isolated region, but Alvarez posted sentinels, and ordered the others to sleep, when the time came, in a wide ring about the fire. Within the ring he and Paul and Wyatt sat, and the Spaniard, maintaining his light, ironic humor, talked much. Paul, if addressed directly by Alvarez, always answered, but he persistently ignored the renegade. Such a being filled him with horror, and once, when Wyatt gave him a look of deadly hate, Paul shot back one of his own, fully a match ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... newspapers," his tone took on a tinge of ironic resentment, "when they learn the broad character of the credentials that I shall give you in order that you may meet the crowned heads of Europe, will say that I am again lowering the dignity of my office. But I consider, Mr. Edestone, that I am, in ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... repeated with an ironic laugh—and suddenly grabbed Pale Face Harry's arm and shook him. "There's so much in it that I'm drunk with it, crazy with it—but I'm trying to make myself believe it isn't too good to be true. Get that? Get a grip on that, and hang on. Don't ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... 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 ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... with his offering held out Allerton had no choice but to take up the letter and break the seal. He read it with little grunts intended to signify ironic laughter, but which betrayed no more than ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... behind the curtains heard, And also laughed, amused at her word, And at her light-hearted view of him. "Let's get him made so—just for a whim!" Said the Phantom Ironic. "'Twould serve her right If we coaxed the Will to do it some night." "O pray not!" pleaded the younger one, The Sprite of the Pities. "She ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... of the check without the quiver of an eyelash. A faint, ironic smile curved the corners of his mouth as ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... above drama was suggested by two or three rather meagre pages of the 'Islendingasaga' of Sturla Thordsson (ed. Vigfusson, ch. 146). To my notion, the poet has succeeded admirably in reproducing the cool coloring, the ironic-pessimistic attitude, that uncompromisingly masculine sentiment we know so well in their refreshing acerbity from the best sagas. Not the least meritorious thing in the play, by the way, is the very slight insistence on Thorolf's relations to Helga, notwithstanding its temptation to the ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... has just had a gift of beautiful buildings and grounds, "regretted they could not take any of the children, as their orphanage was exclusively for their denomination." The mother did not respond to the doctor's ironic suggestion that she should "turncoat" under the press ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... importance. Suppose that, every morning, when we tore the wrapper off our paper with fevered hands, a transmutation were to take place, and we were to find inside it—oh! I don't know; shall we say Pascal's Pensees?" He articulated the title with an ironic emphasis so as not to appear pedantic. "And then, in the gilt and tooled volumes which we open once in ten years," he went on, shewing that contempt for the things of this world which some men of the world like to affect, "we should read that the Queen of the Hellenes had arrived at ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... move on; what you been doin' all day, dear child? They've been givin' your manager sal volatile to hold him still." He nodded at the agitated Dick in ironic commiseration. ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... His enemies had an ironic sense of humor, he thought. They meant to give him a choice of deaths, death at the door by flame and lead or death in the sluice by suffocation. Then an incredulous exclamation burst from his lips. Was there not a wild and wholly improbable chance that this opening of an avenue might ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... know, man presents himself in that aspect chiefly. Pauline, remarking of her lover's "idea" that it was perhaps as unintelligible to him as to her, is a tender exponent of this view; the girl in Youth and Art is gayer and more ironic. Here we have a woman, successful though (as I read the poem)[12:1] not famous, recalling to a successful and famous sculptor the days when they lived opposite one another—she as a young student of singing, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... himself extremely gracious to him. Renouard guessed in him a man whom an incurable habit of investigation and analysis had made gentle and indulgent; inapt for action, and more sensitive to the thoughts than to the events of existence. Withal not crushed, sub-ironic without a trace of acidity, and with a simple manner which put people at ease quickly. They had a long conversation on the terrace commanding an extended view of ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... his turn, but there was nothing ironic in the smile, nor in the look he turned on ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... that there have been certain limits to my knowledge. How extraordinary it is! This inner world of our own lives which we keep closely to ourselves! I have a friend, yes, a very good friend, a very dear friend,"—the ironic insistence upon this word gave Prosper the shock of a repeated blow,—"and I fancy, in the ignorance of my conceit, that this friend's life is sufficiently open to my understanding. I see him leave college, I see him go out on various adventures. I share ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... was something peremptory in the slightly ironic murmur. "Can you find it and get into ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... discursive level. His opening paragraph states that "The very great Clamour against some late Performances of Authorship, and the unprecedented Criticisms introduc'd" make such an essay as he writes "absolutely necessary." Yet there is no clear indication of just what works occasion this necessity. The ironic reference to Mr. Dennis at the end of the first paragraph, taken together with the praise of Mr. Pope's translation of Homer and the allusion to "the malicious and violent Criticisms of a certain ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... Falstaff in another play, the presence of the bastard Faulconbridge, with his physical energy and his unmistakable family likeness—"those limbs [188] which Sir Robert never holp to make"* contributes to an almost coarse assertion of the force of nature, of the somewhat ironic preponderance of nature and circumstance over men's artificial arrangements, to, the recognition of a certain potent natural aristocracy, which is far from being always identical with that more formal, heraldic one. And what is a coarse fact in the case of Faulconbridge ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... "Sweetheart"—besides two additions: a "Prologue" and "Epilogue." Here MacDowell is in one of his happiest moods. It was a fortunate and charming conceit which prompted the plan of the series, with its half-playful, half-ironic, yet lurkingly poetic suggestions; for in spite of the mood of bantering gaiety which placed the pieces in such mocking juxtaposition, there is, throughout, an undertone of grave and meditative tenderness which it is one of the peculiar properties ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... faint, ironic smile to her lips. "Thank you," she said calmly, and seated herself on the little horsehair sofa. If there was any uneasiness in the look she sent from one to the other of the young people it was not noticeable. "Hattie came in a little while ago," she said, "scared out of her wits. I ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... be back," Mills commented with ironic emphasis. "He'll be broke in a week and the first camp that pays his fare out will get him. There's no fool like a logger. Strong in the back and weak in ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... she was making up, not only for others but for herself, a sham person who did not exist. That Nan found infinitely oppressive. So did Pamela, but Pamela was more tolerant and sympathetic and less ill-tempered than Nan, and observed the ways of others with quiet, ironic humour, saying nothing unkind. Pamela, when she didn't like a way of talking—when Rosalind, for instance, was being malicious or indecent or both—would skilfully carry the talk somewhere else. She could be a rapid and good ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... 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 ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... all, the ignominious end. And still again the despairing Durkin was being confronted and challenged and mocked by this call to him from half way round the world. It maddened and sickened him, the very thought of his helplessness, so Aeschylean in its torturing complications, so ironic in its refinement of cruelty. It stung him into a spirit of blind revolt. It was unfair, too utterly unfair, he told himself, as he paced the faded carpet of his cheap hotel-room, and the mild Riviera sunlight crept in through the window-square and the serenely soft and alluring sea-air drifted ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... be expected of it in such a neighbourhood. It seemed as though the demon builder of the fantastic town, sporting with man's architectural ideals before his appearance on the earth, had hewn the red and yellow rocks above the Dourbie into the ironic semblance of feudal ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... distorting her swollen features and exaggerating the dark rings about her eyes. She snatched up the paper, her reassurance dissolving under his pitiless gaze, in which she seemed to read the grim perception of her state, and the ironic recollection of the day when, in that very room, he had offered to compel Harney to marry her. His look seemed to say that he knew she had taken the paper to write to her lover, who had left her as he had warned her she would be left. She remembered the scorn with which she had ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... 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 departure. ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... ridiculous fallibility people display when they imagine they have found the best substitute for that indiscoverable. This is what makes me impatient with sentimental talk about marriage. An educated man mustn't play so into the hands of ironic destiny. Let him think he wants to marry a woman; but don't let him exaggerate his feelings or ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... above, a 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
... remind her of his presence. When the paroxysm had passed, she crossed to the window; the blinds had not been drawn, and leaning her forehead on the glass, she looked out into the darkness. In spite of his trouble of mind, the young man could not but comment on the ironic fashion in which fate was treating him: not once, in all the hours he had spent on the pavement below, had Louise come, like this, to the window; now that she did so, he was in the room ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... over the details of the visit, when Alzugaray came home, and seeing a light in Caesar's room, went in there. Alzugaray was quite lively. The two friends passed the persons met that day in ironic review, and in general they were agreed about everything, except about valuing ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
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