Quotes About Paradox

If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature.

Directly after copulation, the devil's laughter is heard.

No rose without a thorn. Yes, but many a thorn without a rose.

Aristotle's example is as follows: A Moor is black; but in regard to his teeth he is white; therefore, he is black and not black at the same moment.

The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity.... All laughter then is occasioned by a paradox.... This, briefly stated, is the true explanation of the ludicrous.

Hay épocas en que el progreso es reaccionario, y lo reaccionario es progresista.

Thrasymachos. Tell me now, in one word, what shall I be after my death? And mind you be clear and precise. Philalethes. All and nothing! Thrasymachos. I thought so! I gave you a problem, and you solve it by a contradiction. That's a very stale trick. Philalethes. Yes, but you raise transcendental questions, and you expect me to answer them in language that is only made for immanent knowledge. It's no wonder that a contradiction ensues.

The true emblem of causa sui is Baron Münchhausen, who, clamping his legs around his horse as it sinks in the water, pulls his pigtail up over his head and raises himself and the horse into the heights; under this emblem, put: causa sui.

Directly after copulation the devil's laughter is heard

Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear--civilization's fear of nature, men's fear of women, power's fear of powerlessness. Man's subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify.

But eventually, the Elixir of the Soul that had survived wars and the bloody birth of three new countries, was, like most things in the world, trumped by Coca-Cola.

Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest.

Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.

Gandhi actually said everything and it's opposite. To cherry pickers, he offers such a bewildering variety of cherries that you have to wonder if there was something the matter with the tree.

Sometimes. And sometimes not.

They had always fitted together like pieces of an unsolved (and perhaps unsolvable) puzzle—the smoke of her into the solidness of him, the solitariness of her into the gathering of him, the strangeness of her into the straightforwardness of him, the insouciance of her into the restraint of him. The quietness of her into the quietness of him.

Loyalty, said Royce, "solves the paradox of our ordinary existence by showing us outside of ourselves the cause which is to be served, and inside of ourselves the will which delights to do this service, and which is not thwarted but enriched and expressed in such service.

We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love." That remains the main problem and paradox for the frail. "Many of the things that we want for those we care about are things that we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe upon our sense of self.

That remains the main problem and paradox for the frail. "Many of the things that we want for those we care about are things that we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe upon our sense of self.

Yet—and this is the painful paradox—we have decided that they should be the ones who largely define how we live in our waning days.

We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love." That remains the main problem and paradox for the frail. "Many of the things that we want for those we care about are things that we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe upon our sense of self." She

I have often wondered why the farthest-out position always feels so right to me; why extremes, although difficult and sometimes painful to maintain, are always more comfortable than one plan running straight down a line in the unruffled middle.

Not the random, seemingly drunken hand of Mother Nature herself. That crazy old bitch gave us the California Redwoods - true, but right along with it she whipped up some naked mole rat.

Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.