Contrary Quotes - Page 36

• People think that talking is a sign of thinking. It isn't, for the most part' on the contrary, it's a mechanical dodge of the body to relieve oneself of the strain of thinking, just as exercising the muscles helps the body to become temporarily unconscious of its weight, its pain, its weariness, and the foreknowledge of its doom.

  Aleister Crowley

  Pain, Exercise, Thinking

  Aleister Crowley (2010). “The Diary of a Drug Fiend”, p.7, Weiser Books

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• The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Men, May, Covenant

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• Never, ever regret or apologize for believing that when one man or one woman decides to risk addressing the world with truth, the world may stop what it is doing and hear. There is too much evidence to the contrary.

  Robert Fulghum

  Truth, Regret, Believe

  Robert Fulghum (2011). “Maybe (Maybe Not): Second Thoughts from a Secret Life”, p.228, Ballantine Books

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• If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrariwise, what it is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be it would. You see?

  Lewis Carroll

  Wise, Would Be, Wonderland

  "Fictional character: Alice". "Alice in Wonderland", 1951.

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• We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.

  Dorianne Laux

  Writing, Thinking, Artist

  Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux (2010). “The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry”, p.58, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.

  Donna Tartt

  Genuine

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.37, Vintage

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• But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

  Aldous Huxley

  Mean, Ends, Determine

  "Complete Essays: 1939-1956".

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• We did not lack modesty—on the contrary—but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.

  Georges Bataille

  Together, Modesty

  Georges Bataille (1977). “Story of the eye”

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• “Yes, the Gorgon has dried your tears,” he said. “Well, she opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say that she blinds people. What she does is just the contrary — she fastens their eyelids open, so that they're never again in the blessed darkness.”

  Edith Wharton

  Blessed, Eye, People

  "Literary Love: 5 Wild and Wanton Classics".

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• Error never shows itself in its naked reality, in order not to be discovered. On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself.

  Irenaeus of Lyons

  Believe, Reality, Order

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• I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe - what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in thetreatent, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing.

  Lance Armstrong

  Believe, Long, Shining

  "It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life". Book by Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins, May 22, 2000.

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• It occurred to me, then, how nearly real life resembles the first rehearsal of a play. We are all of us stumbling through it, doing our best to say the proper lines and make the proper moves, but not quite comfortable yet in the parts we've been given. Still, like players who trust that -despite all evidence to the contrary- the whole mess will make sense eventually, we keep on going, hoping that somehow things will work out for the best.

  Gary L. Blackwood

  Real, Moving, Player

  Gary L. Blackwood (2003). “Shakespeare's Spy”, Dutton Childrens Books

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• Let me tell you, though: being the smartest boy in the world wasn’t easy. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. On the contrary, it was a huge burden. First, there was the task of keeping my brain perfectly protected. My cerebral cortex was a national treasure, a masterpiece of the Sistine Chapel of brains. This was not something that could be treated frivolously. If I could have locked it in a safe, I would have. Instead, I became obsessed with brain damage.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Boys, Brain, Tasks

  A. J. Jacobs (2004). “The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Humanity, Truth Is

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• Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.

  Thornton Wilder

  Summer, Boys, Sparrows

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel”, p.9, Harper Collins

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• The people in the world, and the objects in it, and the world as a whole, are not absolute things, but on the contrary, are the phenomena of perception... If we were all alike: if we were millions of people saying do, re, mi, in unison, One poet would be enough... But we are not alone, and everything needs expounding all the time because, as people live and die, each one perceiving life and death for himself, and mostly by and in himself, there develops a curiosity about the perceptions of others. This is what makes it possible to go on saying new things about old things.

  Wallace Stevens

  Old Things, People, Life And Death

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• Contrary to what phenomenology- which is always phenomenology of perception- has tried to make us believe, contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always escapes.

  Jacques Derrida

  Believe, Perception, Desire

  Jacques Derrida (1978). “Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction”, p.9, U of Nebraska Press

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• Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against faith cannot be demonstrations, but are difficulties that can be answered.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Argument, Demonstration, Difficulty

  Saint Thomas Aquinas, Catholic Way Publishing (2014). “The Summa Theologica: Complete Edition”, p.68, Catholic Way Publishing

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• If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Thinking, World

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.45, HarperCollins UK

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• When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Mean, Eye, Thinking

  The Moon and Sixpence ch. 14 (1919)

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• The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Mirrors, Race

  Francis Bacon (2016). “New Atlantis and The Great Instauration”, p.36, John Wiley & Sons

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• Contrary to popular opinion, my dad was not a lazy man. He was not lazy at all, for instance, when it came to Going Places In His Truck. He was also very industrious about Preparing To Go Camping. And if something really interested him, he would work on it all day.

  Haven Kimmel

  Dad, Men, Lazy Man

  Haven Kimmel (2002). “A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana”, p.163, Broadway Books

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• Heart and head are contrary historians.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Heart, Historian, Head And Heart

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• Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Inspirational, Life, Art

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• I don't know what it is I'm doing. But it's not that. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

  Edward Gorey

  Evidence, Despite, Knows

  Edward Gorey (2001). “Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey : Interviews”, Houghton Mifflin

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