Contrast Quotes

Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy To kings that fear their subjects treachery?

He had a cringing manner, but a very harsh voice; and his blandest smiles were so extremely forbidding, that to have had his company under the least repulsive circumstances, one would have wished him to be out of temper that he might only scowl.

You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.

Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savagestands on the unelastic plank of famine.

Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front;And now, instead of mounting barbed steedsTo fright the souls of fearful adversaries,He capers nimbly in a lady's chamberTo the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep.

English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired.

Any color is more distinctly seen when opposed to its contrary: thus, black on white, blear near yellow, green near red, and so on.

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas

You are always training yourself to be, mind and body, as clear as crystal, and you always are, and never change; whereas I am a muddy, solitary, moping weed.

We sit in calm, airy, silent rooms opening upon sunlit and embowered lawns, not a sound except of summer and of husbandry disturbs the peace; but seven million men, any ten thousand of whom could have annihilated the ancient armies, are in ceaseless battle from the Alps to the Ocean.

Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land;Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

What a strange life I lead- a kind of Cinderella-life-half glitter in crystal shoes, half mice and cinders! But it is a wonderful life all the same.

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. Therefore having and not having arise together. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short contrast each other. High and low rest upon each other. Voice and sound harmonize each other. Front and back follow one another.

Hope rises and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain.

It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn't help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky.

Lawn as white as driven snow; Cyprus black as e'er was crow; Gloves as sweet as damask roses.

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.

Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?

To get everything you want is not a good thing. Disease makes health seem sweet. Hunger leads to the appreciation of being full-fed. Tiredness creates the enjoyment of resting

Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.

Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.

Her face was working and twitching with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad.

Happiness ain't a thing in itself - it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant.

Nobody loves the light like the blind man.

A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.

Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window.

A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.

strength is overcome by weakness/Joy is overcome by Pain/The night is overcome by Brightness/and Love-it remains the same.

You never know a line is crooked unless you have a straight one to put next to it.

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Winter, which, being full of care, makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare.

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together; Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care; Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare. Youth is full sport, age's breath is short; Youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, age is tame. Age, I do abhor thee; youth, I do adore thee.

At one side of the palette there is white, at the other black; and neither is ever used neat.

Day Play We play all day. Night Fight We fight all night.

And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.

The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

A few feet under the ground reigns so profound a silence, and yet so much tumult on the surface!

If there is always light, you don’t experience light anymore. You have to have the rhythm of light and darkness.

There's her cousin, an she were not possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty as the first of May doth the last of December.

The apprehension of the good Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.

I was the shyest human ever invented, but I had a lion inside me that wouldn't shut up.

The war made me poignantly aware of the beauty of the world.

The name of peace is sweet and the thing itself good, but between peace and slavery there is the greatest difference.

They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged steps, and are down in the Crypt. The lantern is not wanted, for the moonlight strikes in at the groined windows, bare of glass, the broken frames for which cast patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which support the roof engender masses of black shade, but between them there are lanes of light.

So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.

Logic ignores the almost, just as the sun ignores the candle.

The repose of darkness is deeper on the water than on the land.

If hers are the stars in the nighttime sky, mine are the haunted empty spaces in between.

So fair, so cold; like a morning of pale spring still clinging to winter's chill.

Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree.

What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? O yes!

It is because every one tinder Heaven recognizes beauty as beauty that the idea of ugliness exists.

The latter end of a fray, and the beginning of a feast, Fits a dull fighter, and a keen guest.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

It is by disease that health is pleasant; by evil that good is pleasant; by hunger, satiety; by weariness, rest.

It was a full moon and, shining on all the snow, it made everything almost as bright as day -- only the shadows were rather confusing.