Quotes About Contradiction

It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on the verge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit, to look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of human passions, and turns a nice young man with a profile like a gem's (Paul's was exquisite) into a bully with a crowbar (he was swaggering, he was insolent) in the Mile End Road.

The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings

How explain to him that she, who had been lapped like a lily in folds of paduasoy, had hacked heads off, and lain with loose women among treasure sacks in the holds of pirate ships?...

To be loved by Susan would be to be impaled by a bird's sharp beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door. Yet there are moments when I could wish to be speared by a beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door, positively, once and for all.

could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world. It

To follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by one's pencil, and the voice was her own voice saying without prompting undeniable, everlasting, contradictory things.

I fear, I hate, I love, I envy and despise you […]

light and evanescent but held together by bolts of iron

She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged.

Wharton thought no one could have freedom, but James knew no one wanted freedom.

We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.

I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t'aimais, je t'aimais!

He loved her in spite of her unlovableness. Armande had many trying, thought not necessarily rare, traits, all of which he accepted as absurd clues in a clever puzzle.

photographs of girl-children; some gaudy moth or butterfly, still alive, safely pinned to the wall.

I qualify it as pathetic. Pathetic--because despite the insatiable fire of my venereal appetite, I intended, with the most fervent force and foresight, to protect the purity of that twelve-year-old child.

Everything he said should be followed by a big sic

I adore her so horribly. No: 'horribly' is the wrong word. The elation with which the vision of new delights filled me was not horrible but pathetic. I qualify it as pathetic. Pathetic – because despite the insatiable fire of my venereal appetite, I intended, with the most fervent force and foresight, to protect the purity of that twelve-year-old child. And

O que me põe louco é a natureza dupla desta ninfeta - de todas as ninfetas, quiçá; esta mistura, na minha Lolita, de uma infantilidade terna e sonhadora com uma espécie de horripilante ordinarice, que provém das enfadonhas modelos fotográficas da publicidade e das revistas, com os seus narizinhos travessos...

the conjurer had poured milk, molasses, foaming champagne into a young lady's new white purse; and lo, the purse was intact

Je suis saine de corps, et absolument obscène dans mes pensées, ma parole, mes actes.

Ero un mostro pentapodo, ma ti amavo. Ero ignobile e brutale e turpido e tutto quello che vuoi, ma ti amavo, ti amavo! E c'erano momenti in cui sapevo come ti sentivi, e saperlo era l'inferno.

While my body knew what it craved for, my mind rejected my body's every plea. One moment I was ashamed and frightened, another recklessly optimistic. Taboos strangulated me.

All of us know that the gay and sparkling life of the so-called Negro Renaissance of the '20's was not so gay and sparkling beneath the surface as it looked.

Tears are my laughter. Laughter is my pain. Cry at my grinning mouth, If you will. Laugh at my sorrow's reign.