45 Ironic Quotes

In a world filled with earnest advice and sincere sentiments, sometimes it's refreshing to encounter a bit of irony. Whether it's a clever twist of words or a statement that cuts against the grain, ironic quotes have a unique way of making us think and, often, laugh. In this collection, we've curated the top 45 ironic quotes that showcase the wit and wisdom of some of the sharpest minds. Get ready to see life from a different, perhaps slightly skewed, perspective as we delve into these gems of irony.

1. “O, wonder!How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,That has such people in't!” - William Shakespeare

2. “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.” - Moses Hadas

3. “Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

4. “There is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.” - Hugh MacLennan

5. “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” - Voltaire

6. “Food is an important part of a balanced diet.” - Fran Lebowitz

7. “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours,Yours are the eyes through which to look out Christ's compassion to the worldYours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.” - St. Teresa of Avila

8. “Nobody steals books but your friends.” - Roger Zelazny

9. “I will never lie again.” - William Faulkner

10. “Give the People what they want - and they'll get what they deserve.” - The Kinks

11. “During the first day, curious at having outsiders among them, a long stream of inmates came over and talked with me. Remarkably, according to what they told me, nearly every inmate in the prison didn't do it. Several thousand people had been locked up unjustly and, by an incredible coincidence, all in the same prison.On the other hand, they knew an awful lot about how to knife somebody.” - Alan Alda

12. “Do you work for the government, any government?”"I pay taxes, which means I work for the government, part of the time. Yes.” - Roger Zelazny

13. “Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry.” - Charles Baudelaire

14. “When I'm 33, I quit.” - Mick Jagger

15. “Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan—'a land without a people for a people without a land'—disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea?” - Christopher Hitchens

16. “Jesus Christ was innocent too,' said Svejk, 'and all the same they crucified him. No one anywhere has ever worried about a man being innocent. Maul halten und weiter dienen ['Grin and bear it and get on with the job'] - as they used to tell us in the army. That's the best and finest thing of all.” - Jaroslav Hasek

17. “Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or too deeply inured to mind it. She always grinned at him and fobbed him off with pleasantries, whether he was amorous or acrid.'God Almighty,' he would groan, 'she is not good for me, this Marie. What can I do for her? She is burning me alive and the Skaggerack could not quench me, not all of it. The devil! What can I do with this? Some day I shall smash her across the eyes, yes, across the eyes.' So you see the man really loved her.("The Tiger")” - A.E. Coppard

18. “to travel faster than a speeding bullet is not much help if you and it are heading straight towards each other” - John Brunner

19. “What are all these?" Clary asked."Vials of holy water, blessed knives, steel and silver blades," Jace said, piling the weapons on the floor beside him, "electrum wire - not much use at the moment but it's always good to have spares - silver bullets, charms of protetion, crucifixes, stars of David-""Jesus," said Clary"I doubt he'd fit.""Jace." Clary was appalled.” - Cassandra Clare

20. “These were always the weirdest trips for me, when it was midnight or even later, and we pulled up to a dark house, trying to be quiet. Like a robbery in reverse, creeping around to leave something rather than take it.” - Sarah Dessen

21. “People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people.” - Terry Pratchett

22. “It would be dreadfullyironic, I mused, if once I earned a soul, I forgot everything about being fey, including all my memories of her. That sort of ending seemedappropriately tragic; the smitten fey creature becomes human but forgets why he wanted to in the first place. Old fairy tales loved that sort of irony.” - Julie Kagawa

23. “What would a racist call werewolves? Wargs? She kind of liked that one, but suspected that racist bastards didn't read Tolkien.” - Patricia Briggs

24. “Salcombe Hardy groaned: "How long, O Lord, how long shall we have to listen to all this tripe about commercial arsenic? Murderers learn it now at their mother's knee.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

25. “But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.” - Barack Obama

26. “...it’s just another one of those things I don’t understand: everyone impresses upon you how unique you are, encouraging you to cultivate your individuality while at the same time trying to squish you and everyone else into the same ridiculous mould. It’s an artist’s right to rebel against the world’s stupidity.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

27. “The worst mistake a writer can make is to assume everyone has an imagination.” - Andrew McEwan

28. “I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy” - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

29. “The thing about changing the world... Once you do it, the world's all different.” - Joss Whedon

30. “Religious people were big on saying "the tongue is a mighty weapon, so use it wisely," and then forsaking this claim when the music director slept with the minister's wife or when the youth minister did what he did.” - Tiffany King

31. “Seven pillars of wisdom propping the roof of the temple. Always remember what there's beyond the pillars.” - Lara Biyuts

32. “Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” - Mark Twain

33. “Don't we all hope to die with a smile on our faces?” - Jeff O'Brien

34. “Just as she was unaware of the hidden currents of politics running below the surface of College affairs, so the Scholars, for their part, would have been unable to see the rich seething stew of alliances and enmities and feuds and treaties which was a child’s life in Oxford. Children playing together: how pleasant to see! What could be more innocent and charming?” - Philip Pullman

35. “The Emperor, you see, protects... He protects mankind, through the Legions, through the Martial corps, through the war machines of the Mechanicum. He understands the dangers. The inconsistencies. He uses you, and all the instruments like you, to protect us from harm. To protect our physical bodies from murder and damage, to protect our minds from madness, to protect our souls... There are insane dangers in the cosmos, dangers that mankind is fundamentally unable to comprehend, let alone survive. So he protects us. There are truths out there that would drive us mad by one fleeting glimpse of them. So he chooses not to share them with us. That's why he made you... Remember, Garviel. The Emperor is our truth and out light. If we trust in him, he will protect.” - Dan Abnett

36. “You can put anything into words, except your own life” - Max Frisch

37. “Yup, believe it: I was born on March 28, yet my name is April.” - Sarah Mlynowski

38. “I don’t get you people. You watch the Godfather on television and tons of people are getting shot and stabbed to death, blood splattering everywhere and it is entertaining. But, when they killed a horse, people were outraged.” - Mario Stinger

39. “Where did you find construction guys swapping dirty jokes in proto-Númenorean?” Aura asked.“On construction sites. Is that coffee ready?” - john barnes

40. “I was just chased through St. Willibald’s, and you know why? Because I was kind to a quig. I scrupulously hide every legitimate reason for people to hate me, and then it turns out they don’t need legitimate reasons. Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.” - Rachel Hartman

41. “The Cinderella story in reverse. I only wish there were ashes in the fireplace so I could order you to sweep them out.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

42. “He smelled the smells of commerce and listened to the cursing of the sailors, both of which he admired: the former, as it reeked of wealth, and the latter because it combined his two other chief preoccupations, these being theology and anatomy.” - Roger Zelazny

43. “The world had been divided into two parts that sought to annihilate each other because they both desired the same thing, namely the liberation of the oppressed, the elimination of violence, and the establishment of permanent peace.” - Hermann Hesse

44. “My mouth was dry. Whispers carried on the wind as the maids around me bunched together in small groups, hysterical, morbid. I thought: who will clean the mess?” - A.E. Croft

45. “Most people willingly deceive themselves with a doubly false faith; they believe in eternal memory (of men, things, deeds, peoples) and in rectification (of deeds, errors, sins, injustice). Both are sham. The truth lies at the opposite end of the scale: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be rectified. All rectification (both vengeance and forgiveness) will be taken over by oblivion.” - Milan Kundera