Quotes About Paradox

Out of slavery, freedom --yes, & roses from the pig's behind.

One of the most profound truths that Mahayana Buddhism teaches is that nirvana is samsara (the troubled world). [...] The same truth is expressed most beautifully in the Christian image of the Incarnation: God descends to reascend. There can be no ascension without descent. We must realize that Zen and Christianity are not telling two different stories but one story.

When you can do nothing, what can you do? [...] This is the most amazing, yet most obvious and logical answer: that in the certainty of death, one should get as much out of life as possible. Paradoxically it is the absence of choice in this matter that allows us to have more inner freedom.

It's always the people who don't want things who get them.

No Indian prince has to his palace More followers than a thief to the gallows.

There is a solitide in seeing you, Followed by your company when you are gone. You are like heaven's veins of lightning. I cannot see till afterward How beautiful you are. There is a blindness in seeing you, Followed by the sight of you when you are gone.

Take two from one you can't, that's very true; But any person can take one from two.

There is this paradox in pride - it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.

I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once, and cannot add up the sum.

In principle, the positive advantages of knowledge work specifically to the disadvantage of understanding, the judgment resulting in therefrom is likely to be something of a paradox.

I can't decide whether I'm a good girl wrapped up in a bad girl, or if I'm a bad girl wrapped up in a good girl. And that's how I know I'm a woman!

Washington is the only place where sound travels faster than light.

The sad truth is that man's real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites—day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.

the paradox is one of our most valued spiritual possessions...

The highest truth is one and the same with the absurd.

theologians are different in this respect, at any rate; at least they are sure that God exists, even though they make contradictory statements about Him.

Numinous experience elevates and humiliates simultaneously.

We had forgotten that God is terrible...Christ taught; God is love. But you should know that love is also terrible.

I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden throne, high above the world—and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder.

The words that oscillate between nonsense and supreme meaning are the oldest and truest.

opposites, no judgment can be considered to be final

Eine große Wahrheit ist eine Wahrheit, deren Gegenteil immer noch eine Wahrheit ist." ---- "La verdad suprema es una y la misma con lo contrario al sentido.

La verdad suprema es una y la misma con lo contrario al sentido.

I am an orphan, alone; nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of aeons.