Contrary Quotes - Page 38

• This truth I firmly hold, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding; my life has been a gift, a blessing to the world.

  Anthony de Mello

  Blessing, World, Evidence

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• We have been told over and over that "you can't change human nature", but the study of emic realities shows quite the contrary, that almost anything can become "human nature" if society defines it as such.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Reality, Study, Human Nature

  Robert Anton Wilson (1990). “Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World”, New Falcon Publications

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• Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form (this, in spite of suspicions to the contrary on the part of their wise men, was the ideal of the ancients). He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature, the mother. Between the two forces his life hangs tremulous and irresolute.

  Hermann Hesse

  Wise, Mother, Mean

  Hermann Hesse (1983). “Steppenwolf”, Bantam

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• Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Earth Day, Survival

  Ayn Rand (1999). “The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution”, p.226, Penguin

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• Let me first state forthright that contrary to what we've often read in books and heard from preachers, when you are a woman, you don't feel like the Devil.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Book, Devil, Firsts

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “My Name Is Red”, p.430, Faber & Faber

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• We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.

  Robertson Davies

  Thinking, Numbers, Grandparent

  Robertson Davies (1992). “The Cornish Trilogy”, Penguin Group USA

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• High school is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship - nor, contrary to popular belief, an anarchic state. High school is a divine-right monarchy. And when the queen goes on vacation, things change.

  John Green

  Funny, Senior, Queens

  John Green (2013). “The John Green Collection”, p.489, Penguin

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• The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Doe

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• I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Believe, People, Tolerance

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Essays”

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• My angel-boy is close now, as in five-feet-away close. There's no way I'm going to burst into song in front of him. But then the contrary part of me says, you're going to let a boy keep you from singing out loud? Sing, sister! Sing! So I do, and my angel-boy turns his head.

  Lauren Myracle

  Song, Angel, Boys

  Lauren Myracle (2013). “Bliss”, p.54, Abrams

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• My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Thinking, Humanity, Doe

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.88, Penguin

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• Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.

  David Mitchell

  Fog, Wind, Clouds

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• For very strangely his officers looked upon Jack Aubrey as a moral figure, in spite of all proofs of the contrary...

  Patrick O'Brian

  Moral, Proof, Figures

  "The Mauritius Command". Book by Patrick O'Brian, 1977.

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• Contrary to popular belief and hope, people don't usually come running when they hear a scream. That's not how humans work. Humans look at other humans and say, 'Did you hear a scream?' because the first scream might have been you screaming inside your head, or a horse backfiring.

  Terry Pratchett

  Running, Horse, People

  Terry Pratchett (2009). “Unseen Academicals: (Discworld Novel 37)”, p.365, Random House

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• Contrary to his infallibly "honest" image, Abe wasn't above lying so long as it served a noble purpose.

  Seth Grahame-Smith

  Lying, Long, Purpose

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• They dispute not in order to find or even to seek Truth, but for victory, and to appear the more learned and strenuous upholders of a contrary opinion. Such persons should be avoided by all who have not a good breastplate of patience.

  Giordano Bruno

  Order, Victory, Opinion

  Dorothea Waley Singer, Giordano Bruno (1968). “Giordano Bruno; his life and thought: With annotated translation of his work, On the infinite universe and worlds”, Greenwood Pub Group

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• There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back...

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Country, Men, Law

  "The Past Through Tomorrow" by Robert A. Heinlein, G. P. Putnam Inc., (p. 25), 1967.

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• Which doesn't mean, of course, that I'd stopped loving her, that I'd forgotten her, or that her image had paled; on the contrary; in the form of a quiet nostalgia she remained constantly within me; I longed for her as one longs for something definitively lost.

  Milan Kundera

  Mean, Nostalgia, Quiet

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• By proving contraries, truth is made manifest.

  Joseph Smith, Jr.

  Truth Is, Made, Manifest

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• She smiled darkly and shook her head. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not. Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That's the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you're not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point. Do you see what I'm saying?

  Dennis Lehane

  Crazy, People, Genius

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• [O]ne of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened before.

  Joan Didion

  Blessing, Twenties, Three

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 07, 2011

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• Listening to people espouse beliefs different from mine is informative, not threatening, because the only thing that can alter my worldview is a new and undeniable truth, and contrary to what Jack Nicholson says in 'A Few Good Men', "I CAN handle the truth.

  Michael J. Fox

  Men, People, Good Man

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• Maybe my sister and I shared more than we thought. We were both waiting and wishing for something we couldn't completely control: I wanted to be alone, and she the total opposite. It was weird, really, to have something so contrary in common. But at least it was something.

  Sarah Dessen

  Opposites, Waiting, Wish

  Sarah Dessen (2008). “Lock and Key”, p.98, Penguin

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• Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.

  Mitch Albom

  Travel, Mean, Tuesdays With Morrie

  Mitch Albom (2007). “Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson”, p.103, Broadway Books

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• Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.

  Paul Brunton

  Spiritual, Men, Faults

  Paul Brunton (1986). “The Notebooks of Paul Brunton: Practices for the Quest; Relax and Retreat”, Larson Publication

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