Quotes About Contradiction

I was too much of an extremist to be able to live under the eye of God and at the same time say both yes and no to life

What a relief! It is so tiring to hate someone you love.

The means, it is said, will be justified by the end; but it is the means which define it, and if it is contradicted at the moment that it is set up, the whole enterprise sinks into absurdity.

Paule n'en pas à une contradiction près, mais celle-ci agaçait particulièrement Henri : elle le voulait le plus glorieux de tous les hommes, et elle affectait de mépriser la gloire ; c'est qu'elle s'entêtait à se rêver telle qu'il l'avait rêvée, jadis : hautaine, sublime ; et en même temps, bien sûr, elle vivait sur terre, comme tout le monde.

C'est si fatigant de détester quelqu'un qu'on aime.

It is incontestable that the void which we grasp with the pincers of contradiction is from on high, for we grasp it the better the more we sharpen our natural faculties of intelligence, will and love. The void which is from below is that into which we fall when we allow our natural faculties to become atrophied.

When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.

Yet what is impossible in logic becomes true in life, and the contradiction lodged within the soul tears it to shreds.

Except, perhaps, that he was an atheist in theology, he was a strict orthodox Christian.

Is it just possible,' he sighed, 'that the most vigorous and boldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators?

Ironic, huh? To keep that part of me alive, I have to be close to that which kills it.

Bloody heads and hearts, never match up, do they?

It was nice to want you so badly it made me breathless yet at the same time hate myself.

Ungeheuer ist vieles, doch nichts ist ungeheurer als der Mensch.

One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker's passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

But one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow.

if god loves me, he is my mortal enemy

This is the profound secret of innocence, that at the same time it is dread.

Alcohol is a pervasive fact of life, but an extraordinary fact-pleasurable and destructive, anathematized and adulated, and deeply ambiguous ... the genie in the bottle.

We die, because we live.

Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.