Quotes About Paradox

The extent of a man's greatness is determined by his ability to follow his proper direction. We create our own destinies, and yet we do not. We forge a new path as we proceed, and yet the path already exists beforehand, though it is not always well marked. This is the paradox of life; and a paradox is not a riddle to be solved, but a place to dwell in, if only for a brief time.

no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed—but

no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed...

Life is unbearably perverse; that which we most seek to avoid always becomes unavoidable.

There is no possible line of conduct which has at some time and place been condemned, and which has not at some other time and place been enjoined as a duty.

This is a lovely world, he sighed. And yet it has suffered horror. Sometimes, so-called civilization seems bent on destroying those very things which it is sworn to protect.

They never get ahead an inch, because they are always hugging some coward maxim, which they can only interpret literally.... Of what use is it "to be sawing about a set of maxims to which there is a complete set of antagonist maxims"? Proverbs, it has been well said, should be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half-truth.

What is a crow but a dove dipped in pitch? And what is a man but a dog cursed with words?

It made her smile a little at how fitting it was to think that an entrance to Hades could be somewhere in the financial district of Manhattan.

Yet it looks as if the thing we use to solve our problems with is the source of our problems. It's like going to the doctor and having him make you ill. In fact, in 20% of medical cases we do apparently have that going on. But in the case of thought, its far over 20%.

Perhaps there is more sense in our nonsense and more nonsense in our 'sense' than we would care to believe.

All Cretans are liars, as a Cretan poet once told me.

Patience is a virtue but I don't have the time.

As a citizen, of course. As a parent, of course. But as an artist, that's where the paradox is - your responsibility is to be irresponsible. As soon as you talk about political or social responsibility, you've amputated the best limbs you've got as an artist.

the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

The criterion and the existing explanation are conflicting ideas. I shall call a situation in which we experience conflicting ideas a problem.

Isn't a gay Mormon like an oxymoron?' 'Do I look like an oxymoron to you?' 'An oxymormon.

the idea is that the infinite doesn't stand opposed to anything else—it is all-inclusive—while on the other hand, precisely what that is, is a way of contrasting the infinite with the finite. By definition, you can't contrast the infinite with the finite, although that's exactly what you want to do.

And the road is a villain And the road is a friend And the road is a story No beginning no end And the road is a question And the road is an answer And the road will transform you A sly necromancer And the road is a melody And the road is a howl And the road is a paradox A grin and a scowl And the road will not tell Where it's been where it leads And the road is alive It sings and it bleeds Who takes the road Can never return For the road is a fire All pilgrims will burn.

S?r?s sl?pjas k?ds pretrun?gs sp?ks, visvarens sp?ks, kas liek cilv?kam vienlaikus tiekties p?c p?rmai??m un taj? paš? laik? pieprasa no vi?a patolo?isku uztic?bu pag?tnei.

Make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us.

The stronger your grasp of every second of your life, including the paradoxical experience at the bottom of the spectrum, the stronger you are.

Life is full of little surprises. Time travel is full of big ones.

There is a fundamental irony at work. More and more of us keep pouring into the region, in no small part because it seems relatively empty compared to the rest of the country. What attracts us we then ruin.