Quotessence
Home / Topics / Sardonic Quotes

Sardonic Quotes

Browse 34 quotes about Sardonic.

Sardonic Quotes

“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!”

DanceDecadenceCruelMacabreSardonic
Book:Monsieur de Phocas
Create image

“Freud, Jung thought, had been a great discoverer of facts about the mind, but far too inclined to leave the solid ground of "critical reason and common sense." Freud for his part criticized Jung for being gullible about occult phenomena and infatuated with Oriental religions; he viewed with sardonic and unmitigated skepticism Jung's defense of religious feelings as an integral element in mental health. For Freud, religion was a psychological need projected onto culture, the child's feeling of helplessness surviving in adults, to be analyzed rather than admired.”

NeedsMindChildrenReasonFactsFeelingsCultureReligiousCommonElementsAdultsMental HealthCriticalDefenseCommon SensePsychologicalSkepticismSurvivingHelplessnessOccultJungGullibleInfatuatedSardonicPsychological Needs
Author:Peter Gay
Create image

“I just play to progressive audiences. You know, if they're watching Discovery Channel, History Channel, that kind of thing, "Monty Python" have already laid the groundwork. They're known around the world. People like that kind of surrealist, left-field humor, and that's what I do. And "Saturday Night Live," a lot of American humor. "The Simpsons," above all, the weird, left-field humor, which I love. And sardonic. So that's all I'm doing. I find that audience, and they're in every developed country around the world.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWorldKindCountryPlayNightLeftKnownAudienceFieldsDiscoveryAround The WorldProgressiveSaturdaySaturday NightSaturday Night LivePythonDeveloped CountryMontySurrealistGroundworkSardonicLeft Field
Author:Eddie Izzard
Create image

“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.”

MenPersonsFeelingsMovingBeliefStrongQualityGreatnessMythThrivePermitOccasionalPretensionSardonic
Book:DUNE
Create image

“When Christopher finished, there was a moment of silence. Leo looked at Cam expectantly. “Well?” “Well what?” “Now is the time when you dredge up one of your blasted Romany sayings. Something about roosters laying eggs, or pigs dancing in the orchard. It’s what you always do. Let’s have it.” Cam gave him a sardonic glance. “I can’t think of one right now.” “By God, I’ve had to listen to hundreds of them. And Phelan doesn’t have to hear even one?”

ThinkingWellsI CanMomentsSilenceRight NowDancingFinishedEggsPigsGlancesOrchardRoostersMoment Of SilenceSardonic
Author:Lisa Kleypas
Create image

“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”)”

WayTwoJoyUniverseLeftSoundImaginationMemoriesDarkResponseObviousInsightBlissMysticismMelancholyEcstasyDistractionSaneIrrationalIdleSymptomsTranscendenceMundaneHeresyHysteriaElevationDeviationMedusaSardonic
Author:Thomas Ligotti
Create image

“Because when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart - have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face, or better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.”

IfsHeartHas BeensStillsHandsMightEyeFacesSawsFeetProudWeaponsShotsSilentBreastsConquestMight Have BeenArrowsSoftnessRochesterSardonicMr Rochester
Book:Jane Eyre: Englische Originalausgabe
Create image

“In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.”

HardTermStyleSuperiorsIronyNativeSunsetMinoritiesLoserIronicOutsidersOppressedGlancesDespisedNuanceSardonic
Book:Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere
Create image

“Big dreams are risky business. The psyche can be fiendish, puckish, exalted, imperious, tender, sardonic, faithful, pestilential--whatever rivets our attention upon the task of psychic growth. It is not so hard to find at least a little sympathy for theologian Martin Luther, who prayed to God not to send him any dreams at all, fearful he could not distinguish between those of divine origin and those sent by the Devil.”

LittlesHardDreamBigsGrowthAttentionDivineDevilTasksFaithfulFearfulPsychicsTheologianLutherExaltedSardonicRisky Business
Author:Marc Ian Barasch
Create image

“Nazi Literature in the Americas, a wicked invented encyclopedia of imaginary fascist writers and literary tastemakers, is Bolaño playing with sharp, twisting knives. As if he were Borges's wisecracking, sardonic son, Bolaño has meticulously created a tightly woven network of far-right litterateurs and purveyors of belles lettres for whom Hitler was beauty, truth, and the great lost hope.”

IfsLiteratureLostSonWickedKnivesImaginaryNaziFascistsWovenEncyclopediaBorgesLost HopeSardonic
Author:Stacey D'Erasmo
Create image