Quotes About Balance

Beware the man (or jinni) of action when he finally seeks to better himself with thought. A little thinking is a dangerous thing.

To reflect is to regain a little, lost sense of proportion

It was always women who did the choosing, and men's place was to be grateful if they were lucky enough to be the chosen ones. Joseph Anton

what a leveller this remote-control gizmo was...it chopped down the heavyweight and stretched out the slight until all the set's emissions, commercials, murders, game-shows, the thousand and one varying joys and terrors of the real and the imagined, acquired an equal weight...

Why demons, when man himself is a demon?' the Nobel Laureate Singer's 'last demon' asked from his attic in Tishevitz. To which Chamcha's sense of balance, his much-to-be-said-for-and-against reflex, wished to add: 'And why angels, when man is angelic too?

it feels as if half your life is a sort of struggle toward the sunlight. Then you get five minutes in the sun and after that you're dragged down into the darkness again

How to dispense with Padma? How give up her ignorance and superstition, necessary counterweights to my miracle-laden omniscience? How to do without her paradoxical earthiness of spirit, which keeps—kept!—my feet on the ground? I have become, it seems to me, the apex of an isosceles triangle, supported equally by twin deities, the wild god of memory and the lotus-goddess of the present … but must I now become reconciled to the narrow one-dimensionality of a straight line?

Writers shouldn't have lives that are interesting. It gets in the way of your work. —Interview on Bravo Channel, Feb. 14, 1991

The more I see of the West, he says, the more I realize that the best things in life come from the East.

Anybody ever tries to tell you how this most beautiful and most evil of planets is somehow homogeneous, composed only of reconcilable elements, that it all adds up, you get on the phone to the straitjacket tailor.

Cuidado con el hombre de acción que por fin desea progresar por medio del pensamiento. Un poco de pensamiento es algo peligroso.

The question is, do you mean to do right by her? Do you mean well by her? Or is your desire so great that it overwhelms your sense of the right and the good?

I, too, have ropes around my neck, I have them to this day, pulling me this way and that, East and West, the nooses tightening, commanding, choose, choose. . . . Ropes, I do not choose between you. Lassoes, lariats, I choose neither of you, and both. Do you hear? I refuse to choose.

Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love

We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.

We cannot live by reason alone.

Ethical transgressions are generally divided into two categories: the bad things we do (acts of commission) and the good things we fail to do (acts of omission). We tend to judge the former far more harshly. The origin of this imbalance remains a mystery, but it surely relates to the value we place on a person's energy and intent.

WHICH way should the balance swing? Assuming that we want to maintain a coherent ethical position on these matters, this appears to be a circumstance of forced choice: if we are willing to drop bombs, or even risk that pistol rounds might go astray, we should be willing to torture a certain class of criminal suspects and military prisoners; if we are unwilling to torture, we should be unwilling to wage modern war.

You can accept what is in the present moment even while working to change it.

When you play defense you have to storm the fort or play cover - you can't do both.

I don't think I have ever been out of control.

Hockey is still my favourite sport. I think that might be part of what makes me successful. I don't live or die by racquetball, so I can detach from it when needed. I'm all about all sports.

When money comes in at the gate, sport flies out at the window.

That's basically what I'm doing when I'm tapping them - getting my toes to the end of my shoes.