{"quotes":[{"text":"I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours.","author":"Oscar Wilde","tags":["dictatorship","irony","socialism"],"id":309,"author_id":"Oscar+Wilde"},{"text":"Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, 'I can't wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered,' and there were people around who knew that the veal marsala was poisoned and that you would die as soon as you took a bite, your situation would be one of dramatic irony.","author":"Lemony Snicket","tags":["humor","irony"],"id":473,"author_id":"Lemony+Snicket"},{"text":"It might seem to you that living in the woods on a riverbank would remove you from the modern world. But not if the river is navigable, as ours is. On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for - or maybe even see - an old man in a rowboat raising his lines...I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom.","author":"Wendell Berry","tags":["economy","freedom","irony","modernity","rest","restlessness","slavery"],"id":767,"author_id":"Wendell+Berry"},{"text":"TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORTTo make a long story shortI leave all my possessionsto the Municipal Slaughterhouseto the Special Unit of the Police Departmentto Lucky Dog LottoSo now if you want you can shoot.","author":"Nicanor Parra","tags":["irony","jab","police-state"],"id":776,"author_id":"Nicanor+Parra"},{"text":"Once you hold the hand of Death, the only thing in life that can scare you is a sense of humor.","author":"Lionel Suggs","tags":["death","irony"],"id":1594,"author_id":"Lionel+Suggs"},{"text":"They had supported him ... For freedom's sake, they would have said; meaning as do all men who mouth that catchword, freedom for themselves and their own class.","author":"Margaret Butler","tags":["irony","social-issues"],"id":1739,"author_id":"Margaret+Butler"},{"text":"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn.","author":"Joss Whedon","tags":["firefly","humour","irony","show-business","wit"],"id":2766,"author_id":"Joss+Whedon"},{"text":"She lived in fear of ifonic endings. (91).","author":"Anne Lamott","tags":["fear","irony"],"id":3205,"author_id":"Anne+Lamott"},{"text":"Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.","author":"John Barrymore","tags":["death","irony"],"id":3594,"author_id":"John+Barrymore"},{"text":"It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. (...) The 'Tell the truth!' imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even to a secret policeman.","author":"Milan Kundera","tags":["ethics","irony","philosophy-of-language"],"id":4894,"author_id":"Milan+Kundera"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":805,"pages":81,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}