Quotes About Paradox

This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending.

Aching for one thing and enjoying something else aren't mutually exclusive.

invisible and yet having a spotlight on

He would see civilization in danger of perishing under the oppression of a gigantic paradox: he would see multitudes of people starving in the midst of plenty, and nations preparing for war although pledged to peace.

There was a young lady named Bright,Whose speed was far faster than light;She set out one dayIn a relative way,And returned home the previous night.

crucial for understanding that more celebrated book. For in writing the Discourses, Machiavelli discovered a basic paradox: When it comes to liberty, nothing fails like success.

The credit for defining the artist as a person who can hold two inconsistent ideas at once goes to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The credit for realizing that that is precisely what all modern men can do—indeed, must be able to do— belongs to Sir Walter Scott.

The Pseudo-Dionysius begins with a seeming paradox. We see God nowhere, and yet God is everywhere. The skeptic and atheist get stuck at the first obvious truth; they fail to push on to the second. The secret is that God's presence is made visible to us not directly but symbolically, in a material world that bears the faint but still perceptible trace of a higher intelligible and spiritual realm.

Heraclitus is supposed to have said, while his most famous sayings of all, "All things change" (Panta rhei) and "You cannot step into the same river twice," make him the father of relativism:

And every day,' he went on, 'we lead two lives, and the half of our soul is madness, and half heaven is lit by a black sun. I say I am a man, but who is the other that hides in me?

your scepticism has defeated itself and become a monstrous credulity…

Look, we're all the same; a man is a fourteen-room house --in the bedroom he's asleep with his intelligent wife, in the living-room he's rolling around with some bareass girl, in the library he's paying his taxes, in the yard he's raising tomatoes, and in the cellar he's making a bomb to blow it all up.

Is it possible to become ecstatic amid destruction, rejuvenate oneself through cruelty?

I am hidden and I am not.

Il n'y a personne ici et il y a qeulqu'un: je ne voudrais pas répandre mon trésor.

Vegas means comedy, tragedy, happiness and sadness all at the same time.

Døden er det aller viktigste her i livet, og heller ikke den er særlig viktig (Folkelig visdomsord)

Love, Don Jaime, love," he went on after a moment of sad reflection. "That is the only thing that can make us happy and, paradoxically, it is also the thing that condemns us to our worst torments. To love is to be enslaved.

A ese tiempo infame lo llaman siglo de Oro. Mas lo cierto es que, quienes lo vivimos y sufrimos, de oro vimos poco; y de plata, la justa. Sacrificio estéril, gloriosas derrotas, corrupción, picaresca, miseria y poca vergüenza, de eso sí que tuvimos a espuertas. Lo que pasa es que luego uno va y mira un cuadro de Diego Velázquez, oye unos versos de Lope o de Calderón, lee un soneto de don Francisco de Quevedo, y se dice que bueno, que tal vez mereció la pena.

It's odd how, against all logic, one clings to life in inverse proportion to the quantity of life one has left to look forward to.

establecimientos públicos de moral relajada o equívoca, que en aquella España paradójica, singular e irrepetible, se veían tan frecuentados como las iglesias, y a menudo por la misma gente.

Because God and the devil could be one and the same thing, and everybody understood it in his own way.

Love. It is a word that means nothing and everything at the same time.

Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.