Paradox Quotes - Page 8

• The trick is the paradox - turning your story inside out. Now if it is something that appears to be of total normality and then suddenly turns inside out and is a different thing all together then that's fun to write.

  Nigel Kneale

  Fun, Writing, Together

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• You may remember the paradox of time we mentioned earlier: Whatever you do takes time, and yet it is always now. So while your inner purpose is to negate time, your outer purpose necessarily involves future and so could not exist without time. But it is always secondary. Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Taken, Sight

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• the translator, a lonely sort of acrobat, becomes confused in a labyrinth of paradox, or climbs a pyramid of dependent clauses and has to invent a way down from it in his own language.

  Lydia Davis

  Lonely, Confused, Pyramids

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• No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one's partiality.

  Wendell Berry

  Acceptance, Humanity, World

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.118, Counterpoint

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• The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Lying, Mean, Men

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007). “We”, p.103, Modern Library

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• Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.

  R. D. Laing

  Essentials, Aspect, Tragic

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• The paradox of love is that to have it is to want to preserve it because it's perfect in the moment but that preservation is impossible because the perfection is only ever an instant passed through. Love like travel is a series of moments that we immediately leave behind. Still we try to hold on and embalm against all evidence and common sense proclaiming our promises and plans. The more I loved him the more I felt hope. But hope acknowledges uncertainty and so I also felt my first premonitions of loss.

  Elisabeth Eaves

  Loss, Love Is, Perfect

  Elisabeth Eaves (2011). “Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents”, p.57, Seal Press

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• Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.

  Michael Moorcock

  Peace, Imperfect World, Opposites

  Michael Moorcock (2009). “Duke Elric”, p.127, Del Rey

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• It is a paradox that in our time of drastic rapid change, when the future is in our midst devouring the present before our eyes, we have never been less certain about what is ahead of us.

  Eric Hoffer

  Change, Time, Future

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• ...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Mercy, Primaries

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• Life is full of paradoxes, as roses are of thorns.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Rose, Thorns, Life Is

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.305, Profile Books

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• I am Dead, but it's not so bad. I've learned to live with it.

  Isaac Marion

  Acceptance, I've Learned

  Isaac Marion (2012). “Warm Bodies: A Novel”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

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• The individual - stupendous and beautiful paradox - is at once infinitesimal dust and the cause of all things.

  C. V. Wedgwood

  Beautiful, Dust, Causes

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• I figured being a bed salesman was a job of biblically bad paradox. I mean, here he was, forced to stand for eight or nine hours a day, and the whole time he’s surrounded by beds. And not only that, he’s surrounded by shoppers who see the beds and can’t help but think, Man, I’d love to lie down on that bed for a second. So not only does he have to stop himself from lying down, but he has to stop everyone else from doing it, too. I knew if I were him, I would be desperate for human company.

  Rachel Cohn

  Jobs, Lying, Mean

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• In a critical sense, doing nothing can mean doing something. Inaction can be action and embracing this paradox can save your life.

  Ben Sherwood

  Mean, Doing Nothing, Action

  Ben Sherwood (2009). “The Survivors Club: The secrets and science that could save your life”, p.14, Penguin UK

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• Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Past, Political, Reform

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.76

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• The paradox of romantic love -- that what one possesses, one can no longer desire -- was at work.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Romantic Love, Desire

  Elizabeth Bowen (1975). “Pictures and conversations”, Lane, Allen

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• It is a paradox. Life is that way. God designed it that way. I believe I met him once. He was full of mischief.

  Christopher Pike

  Believe, Way, Life Is

  Christopher Pike (2013). “Thirst: Thirst No. 1; Thirst No. 2; Thirst”, p.188, Simon and Schuster

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• But the paradox is here: when cultivated people do stay away from a certain portion of the population, when all social advantages are persistently withheld, it may be for years, the result itself is pointed to as a reason and is used as an argument for the continued withholding.

  Jane Addams

  Years, People, Population

  Jane Addams (2016). “Twenty Years at Hull House”, p.224, Open Road Media

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• To speak of the impotence of power is no longer a witty paradox.

  Hannah Arendt

  Witty, Power, Speak

  Hannah Arendt (1970). “On violence”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• The central paradox and challenge of marriage is that we have to make family out of someone we're not related to.

  Ruth Stout

  Challenges, Related

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• The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Heart, Men, Weakness

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• Society created the prison in its own image; will history, with its penchant for paradox, reverse those roles?

  Jessica Mitford

  Roles, Prison, Reverse

  Jessica Mitford (1973). “Kind and usual punishment: the prison business”, Not Avail

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• Like life and people, it is full of paradoxes. Etiquette is based on tradition, and yet it can change. Its ramifications are trivialities, but its roots are in great principles.

  Millicent Fenwick

  Roots, People, Principles

  Millicent Fenwick (1948). “Vogue's book of etiquette: a complete guide to traditional forms and modern usage”

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• It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.

  Anatole Broyard

  Love, Hygiene, Waiting

  Anatole Broyard (1974). “Aroused by Books”, Random House (NY)

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