Quotes About Paradox

The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.

A sharp decline in actual deprivation may, paradoxically, have been accompanied by an ongoing and even escalating sense of fear of deprivation.

Men often want to love, without managing to do so: they seek their own ruin without being able to attain it, and, if I can put it thus, they are forced against their will to remain free.

Silence and clumsiness could of course be taken as rather pitiful proof of desire. It being easy enough to seduce someone towards whom one feels indifferent, the clumsiest seducers could generously be deemed the most genuine. Not to find the right words is paradoxically often the best proof that the right words are meant.

Hate is the hidden script in the letter of love; its foundations are shared with its opposite. The woman seduced by her partner's way of kissing her neck, turning the pages of a book, or telling a joke watches irritation collect at precisely these junctures. It is as if the end of love is already contained in its beginning, the ingredients of love's collapse eerily foreshadowed by those of its creation.

Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species.

It is one of the ironies of love that it is easiest confidently to seduce those we are least attracted to.

De ironie van de liefde wil dat we het gemakkelijkst en met de meeste zelfverzekerdheid de mensen verleiden tot wie we ons het minst aangetrokken voelen, aangezien we bij een intens verlangen niet in staat zijn de daarvoor vereiste onverschilligheid op te brengen en bij een aantrekkelijk iemand worden geplaagd door een gevoel van minderwaardigheid ten opzichte van de perfectie die we de aanbedene toedichten.

Although we belong to a species which spends an alarming amount of its time blowing things up, every now and then we are moved to add gargoyles or garlands, stars or wreaths, to our buildings for no practical reason whatever.

In moments of lucidity, we should be able to see for ourselves that untrammeled liberty can paradoxically trap us

In another paradox that des Esseintes would have appreciated, it seems we may best be able to inhabit a place when we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there.

If in order to love, we must believe that the beloved surpasses us in some way, does not a cruel paradox emerge when we witness this love returned? 'If s/he really is so wonderful, how could s/he could love someone like me?' 2.

Los hombres muchas veces desean el amor sin conseguirlo; buscan su propia ruina sin ser capaces de alcanzarla y de alguna manera, se ven forzados a permanecer libres en contra de su voluntad.

One has given one's white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood and conversed politely with men who have personally slaughtered children. One has waded through excrement and gore; to be Queen, I have often thought the one essential item of equipment a pair of thigh-length boots.

What people want to read often seems incongruous. A pair of biker-types taking away Thoughts of the Dalai Lama. People without access to instruments requesting sheet music. Aspiring poets sharing their work and then borrowing horror stories.

The human psyche is a strange creation. We believe that the known is always preferable to the unknown, even if the known sucks.

As often with older people he was both bored and unaccountably involved at the same time.

Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, and sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past effect in the future, but future and past are intertwined.

Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who

It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.

They claim their labours are to build a heaven yet their heaven is populated with horrors. Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. A clock without a craftsman. It's too late. Always has been, always will be…too late.

Nothing's that simple, not even things that are simply awful.

You see, there's the way things seemed and then there's the way things were and one is so often the total reverse of the other.

In the heart of darkness, a flower blossoms, enriching the shadows with its promise of hope... In the fields of light, an adder coils, and the radiant tranquility is lent savor by its sinister presence. Right and wrong, black and white, good and evil...all my existence I have looked from one to the other, fully embracing neither one...never before have I understood how much they depend on each other.