Quotes About Complexity

Todos creemos saber del amor, todos creemos entender algo del amor. Y, sin embargo, continúa siendo una materia oscura, el reino de la confusión y lo enigmático.

Y pensé: si tú supieras la cantidad de vidas distintas que puede haber en una sola vida...

si tú supieras la cantidad de vidas distintas que puede haber en una sola vida...

Las palabras son como peces abisales que sólo te enseñan un destello de escamas entre las aguas negras. Si se desenganchan del anzuelo, lo más probable es que no puedas volverlas a pescar. Son mañosas las palabras, y rebeldes, y huidizas. No les gusta ser domesticadas.

Pero soy humana y, como tal, contradictoria y llena de inconsecuencias.

Me asustó tanta belleza, porque la belleza es la mezcla de lo hermoso y lo terrible.

Which was strange, like watching a tangle of loose threads unravel and plait themselves into a single braided cord, stretching ahead into the future.

If people take seriously doctrines such as the divinity of Christ, it is not primarily because they can treat them as if they were tidy conclusions to an argument, deductions from readily available evidence, but because – however obscurely they are grasped, however challenging the detail – they see that the language of doctrine holds together a set of intractably complex questions in a way that offers a coherent context for human living.

These are symptoms, and there are many more, of a deeply troubled society, and they are not new.

You can work it out by Fractions or by simple Rule of Three, But the way of Tweedle-dum is not the way of Tweedle-dee. You can twist it, you can turn it, you can plait it till you drop, But the way of Pilly Winky's not the way of Winkie Pop!

The woman I love burns with jealousy, leaps to conclusions, cries, and turns to ice... but when she laughs... the world is mine.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings. Like many millions of people, I am a bastard child of history. Perhaps we all are, black and brown and white, leaking into one another, as a character of mine once said, like flavours [sic] when you cook

Who can know anybody?' said the bookshop owner. 'Every person is like thousands of books. New, reprinting, in stock, out of stock, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, rubbish. The lot. Different every day. One's lucky to be able to put his hand on the one that's wanted, let alone know it.

The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, but that there are so many answers

The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers.

I don't know how to explain it, except that this one is like playing origami with time.

A paradox for sure, but such a relief.

Nothing is simple. There are many answers, none of them right, but some of them most definitely wrong.

I wonder if any of us ever really knows another person?" she replied, sounding wistful.

Nice person, bad person -- that's not the level this girl is at. I can see you're crazy about her and probably won't be able to hear this, Ao-chan, but I think you'd be better off staying away from someone like her. I can't read her exactly, but I can tell you she's either a saint or a monster. Maybe both extremes at once, but not somewhere in between.

This is natural: one must read Herodotus's book-and every great book-repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images, and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.

Life, they say, comes down to a few concrete things: A shovel. Payday. A movie. Wine. What else? Is everything else an aroma diffused on the air? It is, because you can smell it, but how can you grasp it?

Within every great book there are several others.

On aina arveluttavaa leimata absurdiksi, käsittämättömäksi jokin, minkä joku toinen voi selittää helposti ymmärrettäväksi.