Contradiction Quotes - Page 40

• The same chemicals were used in the cooking as were used on the composition of her own being: only those which caused the most violent reaction, contradiction, and teasing, the refusal to answer questions but the love of putting them, and all the strong spices of human relationship which bore a relation to black pepper, paprika, soybean sauce, ketchup and red peppers.

  Anais Nin

  Strong, Cooking, Black

  11 Copy quote

• Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm.

  Alice Walker

  Stones, Outcast, Darling

  Alice Walker (2012). “Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism”, p.137, Ballantine Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy of being No-one's sleep under so many lids.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Sleep, Rose, Joy

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2015). “Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke”, p.260, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is in every truth a wise saying, and in every contradiction, two wise sayings.

  Robert Breault

  Wise, Two, Wise Sayings

  6 Copy quote

• There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea’, for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Country, Philosophy, Book

  17 Copy quote

• A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries.

  Tim O'Brien

  Dream, Struggle, Views

  6 Copy quote

• Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.

  Douglas Adams

  Men, Way, Century

  Douglas Adams (2009). “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”, p.51, Pan Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Inspirational, Science, Light

  53 Copy quote

• Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. Beautiful in the concept, if we're lucky, but frequently tedious or regrettable as we flesh ourselves out.

  Gregory Maguire

  Beautiful, Blessed, Saint

  4 Copy quote

• I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.

  C. S. Lewis

  Atheist, Creating, Religion

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.61, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Genuine heroism for man is still the power to support contradictions, no matter how glaring or hopeless they may seem.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Support, Heroism

  11 Copy quote

• The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink

  George Orwell

  War, Lying, Exercise

  George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.467, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• We might miss the sign or we may be unable to read the expression, but it is almost a contradiction in terms to say that a dog feels something but does not show it. What a dog feels, a dog shows, and, conversely, what a dog shows, a dog actually does feel.

  Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

  Dog, Expression, Missing

  Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1998). “Dogs Never Lie about Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs”, Broadway Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• At certain times in the revolutionary struggle, the difficulties outweigh the favorable conditions and so constitute the principal aspect of the contradiction and the favorable conditions constitute the secondary aspect. But through their efforts the revolutionaries can overcome the difficulties step by step and open up a favorable new situation, thus a difficult situation yields place to a favorable one.

  Mao Zedong

  Struggle, Yield, Difficult Situations

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.104, Lulu.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think they're very attractive,' Abe agreed. 'I just don't think they're attractive, that's all.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Thinking, Attractive, Abe

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.322, e-artnow

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• From the first time he'd met her, he'd sensed an air of contradiction about her. She was very much a woman, but still retained a waiflike quality. She could be brash, and at times deliberately suggestive, yet she was painfully shy. She was incredibly easy to get along with, yet she had few friends. She was a talented artist in her own right, but so self-conscious about her work that she rarely completed a piece and preferred to work with other people's art and ideas.

  Charles de Lint

  Art, Ideas, Air

  5 Copy quote

• It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!

  Ralph Ellison

  Inspirational, Being Yourself, Men

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.40, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Free Love, Term, Verses

  4 Copy quote