Quotes About Contradiction

One of the most familiar weaknesses of the human mind is the wish to reconcile contrary principles and buy peace at the expense of logic.

Tienes razón – dijo sin mirarla –. Soy venenoso... Pero te amo. Soy el hombre equivocado, pero te amo. Es muy pronto, sólo unas horas, pero te amo. Odio demasiado, lastimo demasiado porque soy venenoso... y te amo. Es mejor que me vaya. Buenas noches»

That's the way love sounds, my mother told me. You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife.

Everyone knows a white blackbird is nothing more than a ghost, a shadow of what it ought to be.

What is made of water and fire -- for isn't that what a man whose nature opposes his responsibilities can be said to be? Does one quench the other, or do they combine to ignite the depths of the soul?

I am a woman of violent contradiction.

Peoples lives, in Jubilee and elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing and unfathomable - deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.

Poison and medicine are often the same thing, given in different proportions

but, he also said it because part of him wanted more of her, this cold woman who was not exactly cold, this rock who was not stone.

I was unable to recognize something that I would come up against time and time again. You could not be filled with hate and be beautiful. Like any girl, I wanted to be beautiful. But I was filled with hate. So how could I be both..?

It was ugly and precious all at once.

this cold woman who was not exactly cold, this rock who was not stone.

They had the look of people deliberately distancing themselves from the center of things, as their own cultures defined it. Seeking the edge, the fringe. But also, paradoxically, the heart.

I remember feeling very angry at Betty Friedan. AB: What? Why? Well... she hated housework and wanted women to be independent, but then she's hire other women to do her housework.

We are all more–and less–than what we seem.

relaxation is like drinking bourbon to get sober.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.

Optimist – A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.

DAWN, n. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.

Optimist , n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.