Quotes About Duality

Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above.

Twice Flush had done his utmost to kill his enemy; twice he had failed. And why had he failed, he asked himself? Because he loved Miss Barrett. Looking up at her from under his eyebrows as she lay, severe and silent on the sofa, he knew that he must love her for ever. Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.

These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters.

A light here required a shadow there.

Here was one room; there another. Did religion solve that, or love?

It was long before they moved, and when they moved it was with great reluctance. They stood together in front of the looking-glass, and with a brush tried to make themselves look as if they had been feeling nothing all the morning, neither pain nor happiness. But it chilled them to see themselves in the glass, for instead of being vast and indivisible they were really very small and separate, the size of the glass leaving a large space for the reflection of other things.

For in all she said, however open she seemed and voluptuous, there was something hidden; in all she did, however daring, there was something concealed. So the green flame seems hidden in the emerald, or the sun prisoned in a hill. The clearness was only outward; within was a wandering flame.

The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

How explain to him that she, who had been lapped like a lily in folds of paduasoy, had hacked heads off, and lain with loose women among treasure sacks in the holds of pirate ships?...

It was a case of two dogs playing on a hearth-rug; one worrying a paper screw, snarling, snapping, giving a pinch, now and then, at the old dog's ear; the other lying somnolent, blinking at the fire, raising a paw, turning and growling good-temperedly. They had to be together, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel with each other.

For Love, to which we may now return, has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two tails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together that you cannot separate them.

O verde na natureza é uma coisa, o verde na literatura é outra. A natureza e as letras parecem ter uma antipatia visceral; junte as duas, e se estraçalham mutuamente.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate: Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass Hang all the furniture above the grass, And how delightful when a fall of snow Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so As to make chair and bed exactly stand Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!

Era Lo, sencillamente Lo, por la mañana, un metro cuarenta y ocho de estatura con pies descalzos. Era Lola con pantalones. Era Dolly en la escuela. Era Dolores cuando firmaba. Pero en mis brazos era siempre Lolita.

Yo me empecinaba en mi paraíso escogido: Un paraíso cuyos cielos tenían el color de las llamas infernales, pero con todo un paraiso

nale?aÅ'a jednak do tych kobiet, które Å'Ä…czÄ… w sobie zdrowÄ… urodÄ™ z histerycznÄ… Å'zawliwoÅ›ciÄ…, wybuchy liryczne z bardzo praktycznym, banalnym myÅ›leniem, podÅ'y charakter z sentymentalizmem, ospaÅ'Ä… bierno?? z trze?wÄ… umiejÄ™tnoÅ›ciÄ… wysyÅ'ania bli?nich na poszukiwanie wiatru w polu.

The beastly and beautiful merged at one point, and it is that borderline I would like to fix, and I feel I fail to do so utterly.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul, my Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

The greater part of him was in a quite different place, while only an insignificant portion of it was wandering, perplexed.

O que me põe louco é a natureza dupla desta ninfeta - de todas as ninfetas, quiçá; esta mistura, na minha Lolita, de uma infantilidade terna e sonhadora com uma espécie de horripilante ordinarice, que provém das enfadonhas modelos fotográficas da publicidade e das revistas, com os seus narizinhos travessos...

the beastly and beautiful merged at one point, and it is that borderline I would like to fix

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

When we talk about the foreign, the question becomes one of us versus them. But in the end, is one just the opposite side of the other?