An emotional or linguistic carapace.

Friedrich Schlegel:
Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty: for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematical, irony ought to be produced and postulated; even the Stoics regarded urbanity as a virtue.  It is true, there is also a rhetorical irony which, if sparingly used, performs a very excellent function, especially in polemics, but compared to the lofty urbanity of the Socratic muse, rhetorical irony is like the splendor of the most brilliant oratory compared to ancient high tragedy.  In this respect, poetry alone can rise to the height of philosophy, since it is not, as oratory, based upon ironic passages. There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony.  In such poems there lives a real transcendental buffoonery.  Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet's own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo. 

Rainer Maria Rilke:
Irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in uncreative moments.  In creative moments try to make use of it as one more means of grasping life.  Cleanly used, it too is clean, and one need not be ashamed of it; and if you feel you are getting too familiar with it, if you fear this growing intimacy with it, then turn to great and serious objects, before which it becomes small and helpless.  Seek the depth of things: thither irony never descends—and when you come thus close to the edge of greatness, test out at the same time whether this ironic attitude springs from a necessity of your nature.  For under the influence of serious things either it will fall from you (if it is something fortuitous), or else it will (if it really innately belongs to you) strengthen into a stern instrument and take its place in the series of tools with which you will have to shape your art.

Nicholas Urfe:
In a minute he appeared, carrying something heavy draped in a white towel. . . . He put it carefully on the centre of the table. . . . Gravely he removed the cloth. It was a stone head, whether of a man or woman it was difficult to say. . . . But the power of the fragment was in the face. It was set in a triumphant smile, a smile that would have been smug if it had not been so full of the purest metaphysical good humor. . . . The mouth was beautifully modeled, timelessly intelligent, and timelessly amused.
   [Conchis said,] “That is the truth.  Not the hammer and sickle.  Not the stars and stripes.  Not the cross.  Not the sun.  Not gold.  Not yin  and yang.  But the smile.” . . .
   [I said,] “There’s something implacable in that smile.”
   “Implacable?”  He came behind my chair and looked down over my head.  “It is the truth.  Truth is implacable.  But the nature and meaning of this truth is not.” . . .
   “I wonder if it would have that smile if it knew of Belsen.”
   “Because they died, we know we still live.  Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is.  That is the smile: that what might not be, is.” . . .
   The little head watched our watching; bland, certain, and almost maliciously inscrutable. . . . I realized  exactly what I disliked about it.  It was above all the smile of dramatic irony, of those who have privileged information.

Wayne Booth:
Private interests or associations can lead to “ironic” reversals of any passage.  Especially in a time when critical reputations can be gained by discovering clever new readings that no one else would ever have thought of, temptations to reversals are for some critics hard to resist.  Any statement can easily be turned into its opposite and made more “interesting.”  Any work can be revised, turning the three little pigs into villains, the wolf into a tragic hero.

See:
Reservations Recommended: He spent a whole childhood moping because he didn't have the defensive shield of a sense of humor. 

A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy (so far) is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

All rights reserved. No part of this guide may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. 

Portions of A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy (so far) were first published by Voyager, Inc., as part of The Complete Peter Leroy (so far).

The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile.