Paradox Quotes

All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?

Intellect is a fire; rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it is the greatestgood, is the greatest harm.

Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

The fatal errors of life are not due to man's being unreasonable: an unreasonable moment may be one's finest moment. They are due to man's being logical.

The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.

Altogether, the task of estimating the length of human life is beyond our capacity, for directly we say that it is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground.

What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster... what a contradiction, what a prodigy

Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)

One can fall in love and still hate.

If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body, they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

I find it fascinating that a lot of business books that do well are from people who've never made any money in business.

And all the time - such is the tragic comedy of our situation - we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

Why are a 'wise man' and a 'wiseguy' opposites?

A country can get more real joy out of just hollering for their freedom than they can if they get it.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something else is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.

Sometimes gain comes from losing, and sometimes loss comes from gaining.

A man's behaviour may be quite harmless and even beneficial, when he ismorally behaving like a scoundrel. And he may do great harm when he is morally acting on the highest principles.

If I knew what the meaning of art was, I wouldn't tell you.

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.

It's interesting that stepping out of thought was actually triggered by a thought.

Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility.

What has no substance can penetrate what has no opening.

The farther you go, the less you know.

Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.

Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

Things are not worth attending to, yet they have to be attended to.

There is nothing softer and weaker than water, and yet there is nothing better for attacking hard and strong things.

There are no ugly loves nor handsome prisons.

Perfection is the willingness to be imperfect.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

If this were the time or the place to uphold a paradox, I am half inclined to state that Norfolk is one of the most beautiful of counties.

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.

Education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education.

I believe in the discipline of silence, and could talk for hours about it.

They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.

Every explicit duality is an implicit unity.

Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much.

She marking them begins a wailing note And sings extemporally a woeful ditty How love makes young men thrall and old men dote How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe, And still the choir of echoes answer so.

It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.

There is a point where in the mystery of existence contradictions meet; where movement is not all movement and stillness is not all stillness; where the idea and the form, the within and the without, are united; where infinite becomes finite, yet not losing its infinity. If this meeting is dissolved, then things become unreal.

I had to get rich so I could afford to sing like I was poor again.

True words seem false.

Perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it. The hypothesis has certain facts to support it. As far as peace (which is one ingredient in our idea of civilization)is concerned, I think many would now agree that a foreign policy dominated by desire for peace is one of the many roads that lead to war.

Just sick enough to be totally confident

For if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomable at the foundations of the Earth.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without a feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

Nobody walks this earth thinking he's better than I think I am - I think I'm great. At the same time, it's so obvious to me that I'm nobody.

Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends.

Instinct is like Nature herself - prodigiously conservative, and yet transcending her own historical conditions in her acts of creation.

Duality is always secretly unity.

Abandon benevolence, discard duty, and people will return to the family ties.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.