“It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one's life for love.”
Andrew Sean Greer book The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Source: The Confessions of Max Tivoli
“It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one's life for love.”
Andrew Sean Greer book The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Source: The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)
Pages 65-66
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)
George Alec Effinger book A Fire in the Sun
Source: A Fire in the Sun (1989), Chapter 20 (p. 282).
Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Andre Norton (1912–2005) American writer of science fiction and fantasy
Source: Dragon Magic (1972), Chapter 5, “Shui Mien Lung—Slumbering Dragon” (p. 168)
“Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here”
Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5
Context: Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice and materialism.
Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat
The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic
Gardons-nous de l'ironie en jugeant. De toutes les dispositions de l'esprit, l'ironie est la moins intelligente.
Notebook entry, February 24, 1848, cited from Les cahiers de Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1876) p. 75; Christopher Prendergast The Classic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) p. 244.
“Irony is the glory of slaves.”
Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator