Sardonic Quotes

“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (“The Medusa”)”
― Thomas Ligotti

“Roses," she thought sardonically, "All trash, m’dear.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Any man who has got himself set over others and don't have any responsibility to something bigger than him is a son of a bitch.”
― Oakley Hall, Warlock

“Kipling: Where's your sense of humor?
Rebis: We're working on reconstructing it...”
― Grant Morrison, Doom Patrol, Vol. 2: The Painting That Ate Paris

“Want to hear a joke? Life is beautiful.”
― Bana , 99 Days

“Thus, you see, he arrived at the same end, via supposed duty, that he was previously pledged to via interest. I fancy a good number of us, when any line of action will promote our own interest, can make ourselves believe that reasons exist which compel us to it as a duty.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, My Lady Ludlow and Other Stories

“Don't worry about it. If I'm wrong, Security is monitoring me every second."
"That just means they'll know who to charge with your murder," said Forrice.
"Are you always this optimistic?"
"I have to be an optimist," explained Forrice. "I won't have anyone to tease if they kill you.”
― Mike Resnick, Starship: Mutiny

“And he enjoyed listening to Caramon's gossip. Raistlin enjoyed proving to his own satisfaction that his fellow mortals were fools and idiots, while Caramon took immense pleasure in bringing a smile - albeit a sardonic smile - to his twin's lips.”
― Margaret Weiss, Brothers in Arms

“Feeling unable to maintain this detachment of attitude towards human- and, in especial, matrimonial- affairs, I asked whether it was not true that she had married Bob Duport. She nodded; not exactly conveying, it seemed to me, that by some happy chance their union had introduced her to an unexpected terrestrial paradise.”
― Anthony Powell, A Buyer's Market

“- Господь милостив, - тихо произнесла бабка.
Дед нахмурился. Сдвинул брови. Затем наставительно и раздельно
выговорил:
- Это не так. Зато милостив Беглар. Жаль, что он разбавляет напареули.”
― Сергей Довлатов, Собрание сочинений в трех томах. Том 1. Наши

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.'
'I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve.”
― Robert Frost, North of Boston

“Against a set of desolate scenery, amid spectral crags and livid mountains of ash, beneath the funereal daylight of slopes illuminated in blue, she personified the spirit of the witches' sabbat. Morbid and voluptuous, sometimes with extenuated grace and infinite lassitude, she seemed to carry the burden of a criminal beauty, a beauty charged with all the sins cf the multitude. She fell again and again upon her pliant legs, and as she outlined the symbolic gestures of her two beautiful dead arms she seemed to be towing them behind her. Then, the vertigo of the abyss took hold of her again, and like one possessed she stood on point, holding herself fully erect from top to toe, like a spike of flesh and shadows. Her arms, weighed down just a few moments earlier, became menacing, demoniac, and audacious. Twisting like a screw, she whirled around, like a winnowing-machine - no, like a great lily stirred by a storm-wind. Clownish and macabre, a nacreous gleam showed between her lips... oh, that cruel and sardonic smile, and the two deep pools of her terrible eyes!

Ize Kranile!”
― Jean Lorrain, Monsieur de Phocas

“Let me put it this way. Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples.”
― Mordecai Richler

“It's so warm it's almost friendly. A friendly work of art. I've never thought such a thing in my life. And look at it. It's never sentimental. It's generous, but it's sardonic too. And whenever it's sardonic, a moment later it's generous again.”
― Ali Smith, How to be Both

“Sidney's never makes a mistake, he said to himself. We know that, too. What else can we depend on?”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Se her, mine brødre, en menneskeskjebne blant mange andre, og erkjenn at et menneskes liv kan ta seg ut som en dårlig spøk!”
― August Strindberg, Inferno

“We live in an age where photography rains on us like sewage from above.”
― Grayson Perry, Playing to the Gallery

“I watched him, sardonic, cynical. A great poet, truly, yet unkind. The gifts of our nature seem not to modify the manner of our behaviour.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Frankissstein: A Love Story

“But,’ she continued, ‘the goddess is too strong. Her will too absolute. The poison that is indifference …and I well know that taste, L’oric. Ask any orphan, no matter how old they are now, and they will tell you the same. We all sucked at that same bitter tit.”
― Steven Erikson, The Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

“待って。わたしは……たんなる女子高生だったんだよ？”
― Fuyumi Ono, The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow

“(Gesture of incomprehension.)”
― Pierre Unik, Investigating Sex: Surrealist Discussions, 1928-1932

“It’s like selling people the American Dream and then telling them they can’t afford it.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Spares