Quotes About Duality

In the inscriptions of Darius I, who came to the Persian throne after the death of Cyrus's son Cambyses in 522 BCE, we find a combination of three themes that would recur in the ideology of all successful empires: a dualistic worldview that pits the good of empire against evildoers who oppose it; a doctrine of election that sees the ruler as a divine agent; and a mission to save the world.

So I could see that Harlow was fundamentally untrustworthy. Simultaneously, she seemed like someone with whom I could be my true self. I had no intention of doing so and, with and equal and counterbalancing intensity, a great longing for it.

They were such an odd pairing on the face of it: Obi-Wan so self-contained, Anakin so reckless. But they'd found their balance, and now they were two halves of a whole.

Evil people can do good. Good people can do evil. Why does this happen sometimes? Because it's Tuesday.

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

Louise remembered that odd fluttery feeling of having a freewheeling baby inside you, independent and dependent at the same time, an eternal maternal dialectic.

One of the things Jackson liked about Julia was her independence, one of the things he didn't like about Julia was her independence.

Women are extreme; they are better than men, or worse.

Yet my great-grandfather was but a water-man, looking one way and rowing another: and I got most of my estate by the same occupation.

Men who ape the saint and play the sinner.

The mirror sees the man as beautiful, the mirror loves the man; another mirror sees the man as frightful and hates him; and it is always the same being who produces the impressions.

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.

Man is both strong and weak, both free and bound, both blind and far-seeing. He stands at the juncture of nature and spirit; and is involved in both freedom and necessity.

It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral.

Insight into the two selves within a man clears up many confusions and contradictions. It was our understanding that preceded our victory.

Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves; Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems; Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.

When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.

Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels.

Man is neither angel nor beast.

We were made to be neither cerebral men nor visceral men, but Men. Not beasts nor angels but Men - things at once rational and animal.

A good father and a good outlaw can't settle inside the same man.

So over violent, or over civil that every man with him was God or Devil.

The love between man and woman is the greatest and most complete passion the world will ever see, because it is dual, because it is of two opposing kinds.

To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.