Quotes About Contrast

I once stirred thunder in the skies, And now, unlike the days of yore - Just tears in a drunken poet's eyes And laughter - from some whore.

They had the faces of angels and the determination of demons.

Every life has dark tracts and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas.

I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists.

Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom,Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!

And he himself one vile antithesis.

A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead.

Woman's at best a contradiction still.

Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair.

Celia" Celia, we know, is sixty-five, Yet Celia's face is seventeen; Thus winter in her breast must live, While summer in her face is seen. How cruel Celia's fate, who hence Our heart's devotion cannot try; Too pretty for our reverence, Too ancient for our gallantry!

Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast,   When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last;   Or when rich China vessels fall'n from high,   In glitt'ring dust and painted fragments lie! 160

It should not be possible to get from the banks of the Pepani River to Wyoming in less than two days, because mentally and emotionally it is impossible. The shock is too much, the contrast too raw. We should sail or swim or walk from Africa, letting bits of her drop out of us, and gradually, in this way, assimilate the excesses and liberties of the States in tiny, incremental sips.... p 72

But this is africa, so hardly anything is normal.

Are you kidding me? The woman leaves priceless Ming vases and Picassos lying about like they came off a sale rack at some discount store and she fills a hidden safe with musty old books?

It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.

Night is irregular. What is not done in the daytime becomes possible at night: murder and sex and thought. Simple men are driven to early beds by tomorrow's daytime demands and by fear of the dark, and never dream of the irregular world outside. And all the while, a viscount and a spaceport baggage boy might be passing the night rolling bok ball in the city park. That's more than unusual -- that is irregular.

It is shades that clash, not colors.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.

The Light Stays Bright When it doesn't Avoid the Shadow.

Sometimes the alternative to black and white isn't gray; it's, say, orange.

This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks... but nobody loved it.

Le mal existe, mais pas sans le bien, comme l'ombre existe, mais pas sans la lumière. Evil exists, but not without the good, as the shadow exists, but not without the light. (III, 3)

Vous êtes comme les roses du Bengale, Marianne, sans épines et sans parfum.

Je suis rongé d'une tristesse auprès de laquelle la nuit la plus sombre est une lumière éblouissante