Quotes About Paradox

From earliest childhood the boy was accustomed to feel that, for him, life was double. Winter and summer, town and country, law and liberty, were hostile, and the man who pretended they were not, was in his eyes a schoolmaster -- that is, a man employed to tell lies to little boys.

Good men do the most harm.

Man can either be less than man or more than man, and both are monsters, the last more dread.

Yet a surfeit of information may paradoxically inhibit the acquisition of knowledge and push wisdom even further away than it was before. The poet T. S. Eliot captured this in his "Choruses from 'The Rock'":   Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.

To know one thing, you must know the opposite.

Life forgets me but will not let me forget Holds me down and tells me that I'm free.

whereas the philosopher seeks unity of principle, and consistency of method at the risk of paradox, the unphilosophic man is apt to hold different principles at once, and to apply different methods in more or less confused combination.

If you strive to do your best in all things, people will take it as being the worst thing possible from you. And those whom you strive to treat most circumspectly will reward you most ungraciously. No one can please everyone to the same degree. If, however, you want to try it, you will be out of step with God and the truth. Base people's rebukes are the praises of good people.

Cunning iz very apt tew outwit itself. The man who turned the boat over and got under it tew keep out ov the rain, waz one ov this kind.

How strange it was to think that he, who such a short time ago dared not believe in the happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much!

I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them -- that is, I wish to destroy that by which I live.

One might murder and steal and yet be happy

Nekhludoff laughed as he compared himself to the ass in the fable who, while deciding which of the two bales of hay before him he should have his meal from, starved himself.

By faith it appears that in order to understand the meaning of life I must renounce my reason, the very thing for which alone a meaning is required.

living riddle.

The solution of all the possible questions of life could evidently not satisfy me, for my question, simple as it at first appeared, included a demand for an explanation of the finite in terms of the infinite, and vice versa.

He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a previous occasion, yet both would be right.

In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and their proximity to the head of the government may be.

Caio é um homem,os homens são mortais, logo Caio é mortal", parecera-lhe a vida toda muito lógico e natural se aplicado a Caio, mas certamente não quando aplicado a ele próprio.

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. (a reference to a Tom Paine quote)

Vrea s? muÈ™te din fructul amar, dar f?r? s?-i guste am?reala. S? lucrezi în lume, dar s? nu simÈ›i nici un fel de dragoste pentru lume.

even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.

I raise my glass to the Awful Truth, Which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth, Except to say it isn't worth a dime, And the whole damn place goes crazy twice, And it's once for the Devil and once for Christ