Stephen Merchant

I just always remember there being an ability to amuse schoolmates. Not in a kind of 'dance-around-at-the-front-of-the-room-with-his-trousers-off' way, but probably with a sardonic quip. I remember getting a school report that said something like, 'Steve's good, but he tries to see the funny side in everything.

English Writer

Sean Lock

There is this fallacy of the 'cool' comedian out there. You see the guys who take themselves very seriously and think they're being very suave and sardonic. But they're just jesters like the rest of us; they're just goons like we all are. The job is to make people laugh.

English Comedian

Tom Shales

Why, on my mother's birthday, am I thinking about 'Father Knows Best?' At our house, mother knew best at least as often as father did, but then the title of the old sitcom, a homogenized portrait of American family life, was meant to be slightly sardonic.

American Writer

Neil Patrick Harris

I enjoy darker sardonic wit more than knock-knock jokes. I spent the first healthy chunk of my career playing all-American, pleasant, average, nice people, so it's fun to have some complications there.

American Actor

Terry Eagleton

Most students of literature can pick apart a metaphor or spot an ethnic stereotype, but not many of them can say things like: 'The poem's sardonic tone is curiously at odds with its plodding syntax.

English Critic

Reid Scott

Obviously, when I first came to the land of blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer types, I was the sardonic, sarcastic, liquor-swilling, chain-smoking, dark-haired, dark-eyed guy from New York.

Jason Schreier

Though many of Obsidian's games have featured wry, sardonic humor, the developer has stuck to more serious fantasy and sci-fi themes.

Terence Young

Bond was how Fleming saw himself; the sardonic, cruel mouth, the hard, tight skinned face.

British Director

Michael Azerrad

Nine Inch Nails' sound is dominated by clanging synths and sardonic, shrieking vocals.

American Author

W. Somerset Maugham

Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.

British Playwright

The word 'sardonic' usually implies disapproval or criticism, not genuine humor.

Often Negative

Unlike outright insults, 'sardonic' can describe a more sophisticated, subtle form of mocking.

Subtle Mockery

'Sardonic' laughter or smiles are not from amusement but from disdain or irony.

Not Amused

 as we're trying to project ourselves to the world. Just remember that single acne spot that crippled you for several days. How long did you spend looking in the mirror every day, practicing your sardonic look, practicing your serious look, trying to look like Sean Connery, as I did,