Quotes About Paradox

The paradox of communism in power was that it was conservative.

We have this history of impossible solutions to insoluble problems.

Money and women are the most sought after and the least known about of any two things we have.

We are sure living in a peculiar time. You get more for not working than you will for working, and more for not raising a hog than for raising it.

How many a world-embracing creed has sprung from a tiny contradiction in terms!

Paradox begets paradox; and we could scarcely have a wilder paradox than the assertion that none but a magnanimous man can act magnanimity, and that lovers alone can do justice to a love-scene.

To the average intellect, nothing is so alluring as a paradox. The reason is simple: in accepting a paradox, the average intellect feels that it has risen above the average. Any fool can believe what is possible and probable, but it demands no ordinary gifts, whether mental or spiritual, to believe what is absurd.

It is indeed curious: Although they would have been satisfied with next to nothing, they nevertheless strove for something. Here is how Stoics would explain this seeming paradox. Stoic philosophy, while teaching us to be satisfied with whatever we've got, also counsels us to seek certain things in life. We should, for example, strive to become better people—to become virtuous in the ancient sense of the word.

I ask'd a thief to steal me a peach:He turned up his eyes.I ask'd a lithe lady to lie her down:Holy and meek, she cries.As soon as I wentAn angel came.He wink'd at the thiefAnd smil'd at the dame—And without one word saidHad a peach from the tree,And still as a maidEnjoy'd the lady.

There is no idea so right that there is nothing wrong about it, And nothing so wrong that there isn't something right about it. ~William Blake~

Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.

I love to use these phrases - 'with the greatest respect', 'in all modest', 'I humbly submit' - which in fact always imply the complete opposite.

All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement; For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.

It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time.

In a fleshy tomb I am buried above ground.

Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.

You don't love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.

Sometimes I think you're just too sweet to die Sometimes I think you're just too sweet to die Another time I think you oughta be buried alive. —RICHARD "RABBIT" BROWN, James Alley Blues, 1927

The body of Our Saviour shat but Our Saviour shat not.

Cosmologist Stephen Hawking is reported to have said, "Whenever I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I want to reach for my gun.

We are right to trust descriptions of Jesus given by those most disrupted by Jesus.

Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure.

Life, she thought. Always a clash of opposites. Was there ever any real end to that great conflict?