Quotes About Contradiction

Peter didn't answer. He pulled his legs up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, and put his chin on his knees. Ever the contradiction, Tanngnost thought. One moment a cold-hearted killer, the next a sentimental boy, always the eternal optimist despite a lifetime of tragedy. Of course, that's his glamour. The very thing that draws the children to him, makes them love him despite so many contradictions. (The Child Thief)

But smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad.

where they love they do not desire and where they desire they cannot love" (p. 183).

A fascinating quality of the human mind is its ability to hold firmly and simultaneously to contradictory ideas. Slave owners were a case in point. They

A fascinating quality of the human mind is its ability to hold firmly and simultaneously to contradictory ideas.

Your blessings and your curses often come in the same package.

The thrill of the uncanny lies in the piquancy of oxymoron.

Life is beyond the formal logic. For this reason it's not surprising that women who intuitively perceive the world seem illogical to us.

I suppose it's too bad people can't be a little more consistent. But if they were, maybe they would stop being people.

I enjoy the bad things that are said about me. It enhances sales and makes me feel evil. I don't like to feel good 'cause I am good. But evil? Yes. It gives me another dimension.

How wondrous familiar is a fool!

So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat.

Shall I call that Wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort of wiseish look to it.

because any human thing supposed to be complete must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.

Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.

And those same things that would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.

Bluntly put, a chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace serving in the host of the God of War—Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why, then, is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon; because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but brute Force. 25

As before, the Pequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale's head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight.

The wrath and the enmity of God are not for a moment in contradiction with God's reconciliatory will and love, and pointing to the wrath of God has the constant intention of disclosing to man God's grace and love in Christ. Indeed, the object even of the working of God's wrath itself is to cause his plan of redemption to triumph.

I have a heart of gold. My only faults are that I'm totally selfish and immoral.

Every time reason stands against the human, the human will stand against the reason

Tell me about a complicated man.

The [commercial] strip is marketed with the come-on of comfort (the Comfort Inn) and with the promise of a home on the road, a home where nobody knows your name and they're glad to see you as long as you can pay. The strip lives in the contradiction of the name Home Depot—domesticity on a gargantuan scale. Home—a person's native place, at ease, deep; to the heart, says the dictionary, and Depot, a storehouse or a 'warehouse.' (Warehouse of the Heart?)

Jefferson's personal distaste for slavery must be put alongside the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves to the day he died).