Quotes About Ambiguity

Una superficie brillante puede tener encanto decorativo, pero lo que te hace voltear a ver un cuadro es la profundidad de campo, una ambigüedad inexpresable, una complejidad surreal.

Brecht, on the other hand, who had actually worked steadfastly for the Communist cause, played the opposite game: He answered questions with ambiguous generalities that defied easy interpretation. Call it the Campanella strategy. Brecht even wore a suit—a rare event for him-and made a point of smoking a cigar during the proceedings, knowing that a key committee member had a passion for cigars. In the end he charmed the committee members, who let him go scot-free.

Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals—just not your real ones.

An emphatic trait often conceals it's opposite

Never make it too clear what you are doing or about to do.

People are enthralled by mystery; because it invites constant interpretation, they never tire of it. The mysterious cannot be grasped. And what cannot be seized and consumed creates power.

vita umbratilis

The line between accident and suicide isn't always clearly defined. You could kill yourself without really making up your mind.

What a day in prospect: the sort of day one waded through with no aim higher than to reach the other end intact.

She was my—? I never knew what to call her. To say she was my girlfriend was absurd; no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend. Partner wasn't right either, as we didn't live under the same roof. Lover? How could one keep a straight face? Mistress? Do me a favor. Fiancée? Certainly not. I suppose I ought to have realized it was ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.

let me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end........Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.

Knowing serves no real purpose, but then, neither does not knowing. Myself, I always prefer knowing to not.

Juilin, she asked hesitantly, what were you going to do with the salt and cooking oil? Not exactly, she added more quickly. Just a general idea. He looked at her for a moment. I do not know. But they did not, either. That is the trick of it; their minds made up worse then I ever could. I have seen a tough man break when I sent for a basket of figs and some mice.

Sometimes six and six make a dozen, and sometimes they make a mess

Why, that's like being told to go up in the hills to find lions, only you do not know whether there are any lions, but if there are, they may be hunting you, and they may be disguised as bushes. Oh, and if you find any lions, try not to let them eat you before you can tell where they are. -Elayne

Humankind is made for uncertainty, struggle, choice and change.

A woman would do a thing until you were sure she always would, then do something else just to fuddle you.

Tuon looked at him, squatting there by the map, moving his fingers over its surface, and suddenly she saw him in a new light. A buffoon? No. A lion stuffed into a horse-stall might look like a peculiar joke, but a lion on the high plains was something very different. Toy was loose on the high plains, now. She felt a chill. What sort of man had she entangled herself with? After all this time, she realized, she had hardly a clue.

As many roads down as up, and the roads down as slippery as the others.

I kept telling them I didn't know anything about it, but half of them seemed to think that I was lying, and the other half that I was hinting at something.

people often did not like hearing about their futures, even when they said they wanted to.

As sure as peaches are poison.

He was a soldier. He was a shepherd. He was a beggar, and a king. He was a farmer, gleeman, sailor, carpenter. He was born, lived, and died Aiel. He died mad, he died rotting, he died of sickness, accident, age. He was executed, and multitudes cheered his death. He proclaimed himself the Dragon Reborn and flung his banner across the sky; he ran from the Power and hid; he lived and died never knowing.

In his opinion, prophecy set the conditions that had to be met for a thing to happen; only, meeting them did not mean the thing would happen, just that it could.