Quotes About Contrast

This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending.

My parents were a sight gag. Opposites otherwise, too. One shy but given to monologues, one outgoing and inclined to listen. One with a temper; one affable, sometimes enragingly so. Opposite in every way but their bad habits, which is the secret to a happy marriage and also the makings of a catastrophe.

If a military life was long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror—as one of her instructors had said—then civilian life seemed to be long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of dismal reflection.

she arrived. For only someone with a heart as dark as mine could do something so evil to a girl with a heart as light as Aurora's.

Bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eating under a tree.

It was the tall white windmills that came to her mind. How their skinny long arms all turned, but never together, except for just once in a while two of them would be turning in unison, their arms poised at the same place in the sky.

La parete era interamente occupata da uno specchio alto e gigantesco. Susan fu costretta a vedere se stessa: una donna dalla faccia pallida e dai capelli grigi, dai calzoni neri cascanti. Al contrario, Helen allo specchio sembrava piccola, compatta, linda e ordinata, con addosso un vestito di maglia aderente e un paio di collant: dove aveva imparato a vestirsi così?

My wind is turned to bitter north, That was so soft a south before.

Conversely, the red plant itself burns a brighter red when set off by the green than when it grows among its peers. In the bed I always reserved for poinsettia seedlings, there was little to distinguish one plant from its neighbours. My poinsettia did not turn scarlet until I planted it in new surroundings. Colour is not something one has, colour is bestowed on one by others.

Gewenning. Het lijkt verraderlijk veel op tevredenheid maar is het tegenovergestelde.

The Yogi and the Commissar

She often used to think of the strangeness of very early life; one came, it seemed, from a dark cloud, there was a glow of light, but for a moment, and afterwards the night. It was as if one gazed at a velvet curtain, heavy, mysterious, impenetrable blackness, and then, for the twinkling of an eye, one spied through a pin-hole a storied town that flamed, with fire about its walls and pinnacles. And then again the folding darkness, so that sight became illusion, almost in the seeing.

Lourdes was an intoxicating place. I remember thinking that it was probably what Las Vegas would have been like if casinos and nightclubs had been replaced by Catholicism.

Delivered to oblivion...growing and flowering with incense and weeds to the sullen whine of nasty flies...I loved deserts, burned out orchards, faded boutiques...I dragged myself down stinking alleyways...General, if there's an old canon left, aim for the glass of splendid shops, into the living rooms...make the city eat its own dust.

Comme elle vous trouve immensément naïf, Tout en faisant trotter ses petites bottines, Elle se tourne, alerte et d'un mouvement vif.... Sur vos lèvres alors meurent les cavatines...

Children's laughter marks both beginning and end. This poison lingers in our veins even when we withdraw to the silence of prior discord.

Is there not in these words of our Lord a latent reference to the history of man's fall, and a designed contrast from the first tree? Just as by the act of "eating" man lost his spiritual life, so by an act of "eating" man now obtains spiritual and eternal life!

The development of wickedness is one thing; the presence of any measure of holiness or virtue is another.

Vegas means comedy, tragedy, happiness and sadness all at the same time.

a unas calles bajas de esta ciudad donde lo fastuoso de la urbe se entenebrece ante la sordidez de la vida de los más desfavorecidos, donde toda necesidad tiene su ejemplo y todo vicio su triste manifestación.

Y a fin de cuentas, recuerde el viejo dicho. Tarde o temprano, los extremos se tocan.

Triste España —comenta, desolado—. Basta alejarse unas leguas de cualquier ciudad para encontrarse entre bárbaros. —No faltan en otras naciones, don Hermes... Lo que pasa es que éstos duelen más porque son nuestros.

Hay zonas pobladas y hay desiertos. Hay países industrializados y países en las más atrasadas etapas de la vida económica. Hay naciones que nadan en la fantasía de la riqueza petrolera y naciones cubiertas por la oscura sombra del hambre. Y hay la pavorosa alternativa entre el hormiguero despiadadamente desorganizado y el hormiguero despiadadamente organizado.

Mrs. Bennington's dramatic expression faded, and she made a face, much like a girl who has been given porridge when she expected thick ham.