“Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.”

In Lectures on Subjects Connected with Literature and Life (1859), Lecture III : Wit and Humor, p. 102

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Do you have more details about the quote "Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment." by Edwin Percy Whipple?

Edwin Percy Whipple2

American writer 1819–1886

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

“Nobody ever seemed quite clear whether the expression "drunk as a lord" should be taken as a compliment or an insult.”

Stormont Mancroft, 2nd Baron Mancroft (1914–1987) British politician

A Chinaman in My Bath

“I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Scopes Trial, Dayton, Tennessee (13 July 1925)

“Irony is a form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Aphorism 48, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968), p. 151

“Is is difficult to be angry with a gentleman who pays you compliments, even impertinent compliments. Especially impertinent compliments.”

Elizabeth Peters The Hippopotamus Pool

Source: The Hippopotamus Pool

“The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

“I own any form of humor shows fear and inferiority. Irony is simply a kind of guardedness. So is a twinkle. It keeps the reader from criticism.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=R8ksAAAAIAAJ&q=%22I+own+any+form+of+humor+shows+fear+and+inferiority+Irony+is+simply+a+kind+of+guardedness+So+is+a+twinkle+It+keeps+the+reader+from+criticism%22+%22Humor+is+the+most+engaging+cowardice%22&pg=PA166#v=onepage to Louis Untermeyer (10 March 1924) <br class="br">General sources <br class="br">Context: I own any form of humor shows fear and inferiority. Irony is simply a kind of guardedness. So is a twinkle. It keeps the reader from criticism. Whittier, when he shows any style at all is probably a greater person than Longfellow as he is lifted priestlike above consideration of the scornful. Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt, above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever. At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions: to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to this side of the standing argument. Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

“The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

“My talent lies in the expression of my life and creative power through light, colour and form. As a painter I can convey the essence of life.”

László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) Hungarian artist

Art of the 20th century, Part 1 by Karl Ruhrberg, Klaus Honnef, Manfred Schneckenburger, Ingo F. Walther, Christiane Fricke (2000) p. 178.

“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.

“Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.”

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Edwin Percy Whipple2

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