Quotes About Contrast

America was the very definition of modernity; it was the country that Russia had failed to become.

It is easier to wax elegiac for the life of a peasant when you do not have to use a long-drop toilet.

Today, the drumbeat has become a cacophony. The generation that has experiences more peace, freedom, leisure time, education, medicine, travel, movies, mobile phones, and massages than any generation in history is lapping up gloom at every opportunity.

By striking contrast, there is not a single non-renewable resource that has run out yet: not coal, oil, gas, copper, iron, uranium, silicon, or stone.

I've been thinking about your Father a lot lately, and I've realized something. I married Gary specifically for the fact that he wasn't Curtis. If your Father has an opposite, it's Gary. I just need to decide if I want to spend the rest of my life with someone I married by default.

In all our family portraits growing up, I looked like a short, half-Jewish kid being held captive by a family of Vikings. "So

Avoid the Holy Grail, the heroic journeys, the pursuit of a legend--that is not the life of the bookaneer, who must keep his eyes on the ground while other book people live by dreaming.

Still the most intense pleasure's but a splinter of ice on the gallons of lava that gush from my cracked heart.

What do you expect me to do i am a pirate not a ninja! - Annie, The House of Mystery

Put black on white.

Nothing was quite like it was supposed to be.

It's funny when you smile, she said. It's like a rainbow on a cloudy day. Don't ever say that to me again.

Two students had approached Leonard while he was staring at the painting, a boy and a girl. The boy was beautiful - his hair genuinely golden, a color poets wrote about but rarely saw. The girl had a smile like a dangerous question. The first thing that struck Leo was how alive they looked. In contrast to the surroundings, they were bright and flushed.

The sky was white instead of the crazy pink of the night before.

Charles was dressed more casually than normal, in a heavy fleece and sweatpants. Dr. Quinn rose to the occasion in a rose-gray cashmere sweater, a sweeping wool skirt, black cashmere tights, and tall black boots. No amount of cold was going to rob her of her queenly graces. Charles had a look on his face that said, I'm not angry, but I am disappointed. Dr. Quinn's expression said, He's passive-aggressive. I'm not. I am aggressive. I have killed before.

She stood leaning against a column, a cocktail glass in her hand. She wore a suit of black velvet; the heavy cloth, which transmitted no light rays, held her anchored to reality by stopping the light that flowed too freely through the flesh of her hands, her neck, her face. A white spark of fire flashed like a cold metallic cross in the glass she held, as if it were a lens gathering the diffused radiance of her skin.

The faces of the others looked like aggregates of interchangeable features, every face oozing to blend into the anonymity of resembling all, and all looking as if they were melting. Rearden's face, with the sharp planes, the pale blue eyes, the ash-blond hair, had the firmness of ice; the uncompromising clarity of its lines made it look, among the others, as if he were moving through a fog, hit by a ray of light.

If a ray of light falls into a pigsty, it is the ray that shows us the muck and it is the ray that is offensive.

Do not expect consistency. Everything is a contradiction of everything else. Nothing exists but contradictions.

She did not mind this new background; she was indifferent to the slums as she had been indifferent to the drawing rooms.

Is it an inspiring sight to see a man commit a heroic gesture, and then learn that he goes to vaudeville shows for relaxation? Or see a man who's painted a magnificent canvas—and learn that he spends his time sleeping with every slut he meets?" "What do you want? Perfection?" "—or nothing. So, you see, I take the nothing.

Both of them smiled derisively. But Francisco seemed to laugh at things because he saw something much greater. Jim laughed as if he wanted to let nothing remain great.

Shall I tell you the difference between you and your statue? No. But I want to. It's startling to see the same elements used in two compositions with opposite themes. Everything about you in that statue is the theme of exaltation. But your own theme is suffering. Suffering? I'm not conscious of having shown that. You haven't. That's what I meant. No happy person can be quite so impervious to pain.

cardboard displayed a water-color perspective of a gray granite