β
You're lying through your fangs," Iggy accused.
Fang tried to play innocent--but "innocent Fang" is an oxymoron, so it didn't work.
β
β
James Patterson (Fang (Maximum Ride, #6))
β
A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.
β
β
Banksy (Wall and Piece)
β
Fun math is an oxymoron.
β
β
Kiera Cass (The Heir (The Selection, #4))
β
Dying isn't the only way into the Underworld, but it's the safest."
Well, that sounded like an oxymoron if I'd ever heard one.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Apollyon (Covenant, #4))
β
i find nothing more depressing than optimism.
β
β
Paul Fussell
β
Dead Max was the biggest oxymoron in history.
β
β
James Patterson (Nevermore (Maximum Ride, #8))
β
An honest politician is an oxymoron.
β
β
Mark Twain
β
From The Twelve Enlightenments
Observe your own body. It breathes. You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer conscious of your own ideas of self-identity. Who, then, is breathing? The collection of information that you mistakenly think itβs you is not the main protagonist in this drama called the breath. In fact, you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening to you. You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot purposely keep your own life going. The expression, βMy lifeβ is actually an oxymoron, a result of ignorance and mistaken assumption. You donβt posses life; life expresses itself through you. Your body is a flower that life let bloom, a phenomenon created by life.
β
β
Ilchi Lee
β
A Manifesto for Introverts
1. There's a word for 'people who are in their heads too much': thinkers.
2. Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.
3. The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths.
4. Sometimes it helps to be a pretend extrovert. There will always be time to be quiet later.
5. But in the long run, staying true to your temperament is key to finding work you love and work that matters.
6. One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards.
7. It's OK to cross the street to avoid making small talk.
8. 'Quiet leadership' is not an oxymoron.
9. Love is essential; gregariousness is optional.
10. 'In a gentle way, you can shake the world.' -Mahatma Gandhi
β
β
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
β
The very idea of "managing" a forest in the first place is oxymoronic, because a forest is an ecosystem that is by definition self-managing.
β
β
Bernd Heinrich (The Trees in My Forest)
β
Itβs, like, a safety bomb.β
-Iggy
β
β
James Patterson (The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride, #1))
β
It's sick and twisted and violent. Other than that it is totally G rated.
β
β
Elizabeth Cruickshank
β
See for me, itβs immediate. Silence is so freaking loud.' This seemed either deep or deeply oxymoronic. I wasnβt sure which.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)
β
Emotional intelligence, the perfect oxymoron!
β
β
David Nicholls (Us)
β
Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons.
β
β
Peter Kreeft (Jesus-Shock)
β
I'm still agnostic. But in the words of Elton Richards, I'm now a reverant agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance.
β
β
A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible)
β
Private property is redundant. "Public property" is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If property isn't private it's stolen.
β
β
Gustave de Molinari
β
It's just Jessica and Marcus, oxymoronically alone together.
β
β
Megan McCafferty (Perfect Fifths (Jessica Darling, #5))
β
In a society...
so madly in love with oxymoron's...
ask yourself this...
...when was the last time you ever bought anything for free?
β
β
Non Nomen (The Unwords)
β
A Bible-quoting erotica writer--you are quite the oxymoron.
β
β
Tiffany Reisz (The Siren (The Original Sinners, #1))
β
As long as one writes only for oneself, writing is a free act by means of which, to use an oxymoron, one secretly opens oneself.
β
β
Elena Ferrante (Fragments: Elena Ferrante on Writing, Reading, and Anonymity)
β
It seems almost oxymoronic to believe that this new idealism has led to a new pessimism about marriage, but that is exactly what has happened. In generations past there was far less talk about "compatibility" and finding the ideal soul mate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for.
β
β
Timothy J. Keller (The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God)
β
Suffering is an oxymoron. There is unfathomable peace and satisfaction in suffering for Christ. It is as though you have searched endlessly for your purpose in life and now found it in the most unexpected place: In the death of your flesh. It is certainly a moment worth of laughter and dance. And in the end it is not suffering at all. The apostle Paul recommended that we find joy in it. Was he mad?
β
β
Ted Dekker (When Heaven Weeps (Martyr's Song, #2))
β
Letβs get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, Iβm pleased that the racist folks of Arizona have
officially declared, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. Iβm also strangely pleased that the folks of Arizona
have officially announced their fear of an educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change the world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now.
β
β
Sherman Alexie
β
Small thinking and big dreams is an oxymoron
β
β
John Paul Warren
β
Twenty-three stories up and all I could see out the windows was grey smog. They could call it the City of the Angels if they wanted to, but if there were angels out there, they had to be flying blind.
β
β
Laurell K. Hamilton (A Kiss of Shadows (Merry Gentry, #1))
β
What is conditional love?
Conditional love is an oxymoron.
Conditional love is an imposter of love.
Conditional love is something other than love,
because you cannot conditionalize the un-conditional.
β
β
Donald L. Hicks (Look into the stillness)
β
I mean she doesnβtβ¦ understand the thingsβ¦β No, he knew that wasnβt true. He knew she understood. Too much maybe. βI donβt want her in my shit, Mom.β βOh honey, thatβs too fucking bad,β she said matter-of-factly. βSheβs not going anywhere, you can hang that up. And that woman loves you. I see it and I thank God for that! And do you know why?β βNo, I donβt know why. Itβs a mystery to me whyβa fuckingβ¦ oxymoron.β βBecause she sees the good man in you, baby!β she squealed. βThere is no good man in me,β he argued, his frustration mounting. βYouβre stupid if you think youβll convince her or me of that.
β
β
Lucian Bane (Beg For Mercy (Mercy, #3))
β
Piper directed me into downtown Los Angeles.
I considered this a bad sign. "Downtown Los Angeles" had always struck me as an oxymoron, like "hot ice cream" or "military intelligence". (Yes, Ares, that was an insult.)
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo, #3))
β
It's not unsporting to thrash a cowardly cad,' said Simmons. 'Everyone knows you don't fight like a gentleman.'
'That might be called an oxymoron,' Ramses said. 'Oh--sorry. Bad form to use long words. Look it up when you get home.'
The poor devil didn't know how to fight, like a gentleman or otherwise.
β
β
Elizabeth Peters (He Shall Thunder in the Sky (Amelia Peabody, #12))
β
Oxymoron Magic
In life it takes personal courage and inner strength to ask for help.
β
β
Donavan Nelson Butler
β
If something is unbearable, then how do you bear it? Itβs an oxymoron. And yet I was here, wasnβt I? Somehow I was bearing it.
β
β
Paula Garner (Phantom Limbs)
β
Writers make everybody nervous but we terrify Silly Service workers. Our apartments always look like a front for something, and no matter how carefully we tidy up for guests we always seem to miss the note card that says, "Margaret has to die soon." We own the kind of books that spies use to construct codes, like The Letters of Mme. de Sevigne, and we are the only people in the world who write oxymoron in the margin of the Bible. Manuscripts in the fridge in case of fire, Strunk's Elements in the bathroom, the Laramie City Directory explained away with "It might come in handy," all strike fear in the GS-7 heart. Nobody really wants to sleep with a writer, but Silly Service workers won't even talk to us.
β
β
Florence King (Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady: A Memoir)
β
In a sane world, a term like "chronic crisis" would be instantly seen by anone as an oxymoron. Nevertheless, that's the state that many of us Western Worlders live in, provoking crisis after crisis so that we can justify our dis-ease rather than addressing that directly.
β
β
Anthony Ravenscroft (Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless & Hopeful)
β
As a rule, we don't like to feel to sad or lonely or depressed. So why do we like music (or books or movies) that evoke in us those same negative emotions? Why do we choose to experience in art the very feelings we avoid in real life?
Aristotle deals with a similar question in his analysis of tragedy. Tragedy, after all, is pretty gruesome. [β¦] There's Sophocles's Oedipus, who blinds himself after learning that he has killed his father and slept with his mother. Why would anyone watch this stuff? Wouldn't it be sick to enjoy watching it? [β¦] Tragedy's pleasure doesn't make us feel "good" in any straightforward sense. On the contrary, Aristotle says, the real goal of tragedy is to evoke pity and fear in the audience. Now, to speak of the pleasure of pity and fear is almost oxymoronic. But the point of bringing about these emotions is to achieve catharsis of them - a cleansing, a purification, a purging, or release. Catharsis is at the core of tragedy's appeal.
β
β
Brandon W. Forbes (Radiohead and Philosophy: Fitter, Happier, More Deductive (Popular Culture and Philosophy) (Popular Culture & Philosophy))
β
Did you know that you can be killed by a benign tumor?
Imagine that news headline: Native American poet killed by oxymoron.
β
β
Sherman Alexie (You Don't Have to Say You Love Me)
β
Sometimes, Lord, one is tempted to say that if you wanted us to behave like the lilies of the field you might have given us an organization more like theirs. But that, I suppose, is just your...grand enterprise. To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a βspiritual animal.β To take a poor primate, a beast with nerve-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, βNow get on with it. Become a god.
β
β
C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)
β
Honest dishonesty. Thatβs quite the oxymoron β but I like the originality that youβve brought to bear in the art of rationalization. Maybe you should consider becoming a lawyer,β he added jokingly.
β
β
Zack Love (The Syrian Virgin (The Syrian Virgin, #1))
β
And then I go over to the Delta Help Desk, which is an oxymoron, and I go, "Can I please go home on an airplane?" and they go "No! In fact, we"re gonna frame you for murder, and you're gonna go to jail for thirty years!"
And I go, "Why are you doing this to me?!"
And they go, "Because we're Delta Airlines, and life is a fucking nightmare!
β
β
John Mulaney
β
Squatting' in a Smith machine is an oxymoron. A Smith machine is not a squat rack, no matter what the girls at the front desk tell you. A squat cannot be performed on a Smith machine any more than it can be performed in a small closet with a hamster. Sorry. There is a gigantic difference between a machine that makes the bar path vertical for you and a squat that is executed correctly enough to have a vertical bar path. The job of keeping the bar path vertical should be done by the muscles, skeleton, and nervous system, not by grease fittings, rails, and floor bolts.
β
β
Mark Rippetoe (Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training)
β
Oh, don't be so wise and stupid.
β
β
Elizabeth Gaskell (Wives and Daughters)
β
Isn't a gay Mormon like an oxymoron?'
'Do I look like an oxymoron to you?'
'An oxymormon.
β
β
David Ebershoff (The 19th Wife)
β
Fresh ideas from this group was virtually an oxymoron, Marlys thought, wriggling her butt against the comfortless chair.
β
β
John Sandford (Extreme Prey (Lucas Davenport, #26))
β
There is neither a Heaven nor a Hell. Life after Death is an oxymoron. Life is just another word for existence, and Death is just another word for non-existence.
β
β
Oliver Markus Malloy (Bad Choices Make Good Stories)
β
But what is "public property" if not an oxymoron?
β
β
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins)
β
Simulated consciousness" was as oxymoronic as "simulated addition.
β
β
Greg Egan (Permutation City)
β
THE ORIGINAL PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE, much like the Constitution itself, did not acknowledge the existence of God. Its author, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister from Rome, New York, was a decidedly religious man, but when he wrote the pledge in the 1890s he described himself as something that would seem an oxymoron in Eisenhowerβs America: a βChristian socialist.
β
β
Kevin M. Kruse (One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America)
β
One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us β we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system!
γγγγγγγγγγγ
β
μΉ΄ν‘:kodak8β
ν
λ κ·Έλ¨:Komen68β
γγγγγγγγγγγ
There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope β it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate Americaβs disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.β
골λμμ, λ리λ리, λ°μ€λ©μ΄, λΈλ£¨μμ λ, μΉμ€λλ‘, μμ€ν°μν맀, μνλΉ,
β
β
λμλ¬μ¬ννΌνλκ³³+νκ°μ ννΌν맀β³β
μΉ΄ν‘%3Akodak8β
ν
λ κ·Έλ¨%3AKomen68β
+ννΌ+νλλ€+ννΌμ½λλ€+ννΌν맀
β
One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us β we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system!
γγγγγγγγγγγ
β
μΉ΄ν‘:kodak8β
ν
λ κ·Έλ¨:Komen68β
γγγγγγγγγγγ
There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope β it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate Americaβs disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.β
골λμμ, λ리λ리, λ°μ€λ©μ΄, λΈλ£¨μμ λ, μΉμ€λλ‘, μμ€ν°μν맀, μνλΉ,
β
β
μ¬μ±μ΅μμ κ΅¬λ§€λ°©λ² μ΅μμ νλκ³³,γβ³β
μΉ΄ν‘:kodak8β
ν
λ κ·Έλ¨:Komen68β
β³μ¬μ±μ΅μμ μ’
λ₯,β β£κ°λ ₯μ΅μμ νλκ³³
β
dark light. [Not actually an oxymoron. It's the color past ultra-violet. The technical term for it is infrablack. It can be seen quite easily under experimental conditions. To perform the experiment simply select a healthy brick wall with a good run-up, and, lowering your head, charge. The color that flashes in bursts behind your eyes, behind the pain, just before you die, is infra-black.]
β
β
Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
β
A computer model which manipulated data about itself and its βsurroundingsβ in essentially the same way as an organic brain would have to possess essentially the same mental states. βSimulated consciousnessβ was as oxymoronic as βsimulated addition.
β
β
Greg Egan (Permutation City)
β
One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us β we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system!
γγγγγγγγγγγ
β
μΉ΄ν‘:kodak8β
ν
λ κ·Έλ¨:Komen68β
γγγγγγγγγγγ
There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope β it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate Americaβs disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.β
골λμμ, λ리λ리, λ°μ€λ©μ΄, λΈλ£¨μμ λ, μΉμ€λλ‘, μμ€ν°μν맀, μνλΉ,
β
β
μ νμ¬μ±μ΅μμ κ΅¬λ§€λ°©λ² μ΅μμ νλκ³³,γβ³β
μΉ΄ν‘:kodak8β
ν
λ κ·Έλ¨:Komen68β
β³μ¬μ±μ΅μμ μ’
λ₯,β β£κ°λ ₯μ΅μμ νλκ³³
β
Wearing: shorts + a jersey = a visual oxymoron.
β
β
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
β
The expression βpleasant weatherβ may be an oxymoron for Chennai, where the climate is famously split between hot, hotter and hottest,
β
β
Bishwanath Ghosh (Tamarind City)
β
The Term βa Criminal Lawyerβ Is the Opposite of an Oxymoron
β
β
Carsten Stroud (The Homecoming (Niceville #2))
β
Levi Myers, ladies and gents. The biggest oxymoron of them all.
β
β
Brittainy C. Cherry (Art & Soul)
β
She believed that βBritish cuisineβ was an oxymoron,
β
β
Daniel Silva (The Mark Of The Assassin (Michael Osbourne, #1))
β
A short-haired Barbie would be an oxymoron.
β
β
Joan Gould (Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life)
β
Cultural purity is an oxymoron (Saunders just quoted this).
β
β
Doug Saunders (Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World)
β
No Muslim is a terrorist. The moment they become terrorists, they are not Muslims anymore, whatever they call themselves. A ' Muslim terrorist' is an oxymoron.
β
β
M.T. Panchal (Karma and Redemption)
β
By its durability this settlement proved that conservative liberty is an oxymoron, not a contradiction in terms.
β
β
Timothy C.W. Blanning (The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815)
β
mandating innovation is an oxymoron, maybe not as absurd as βscheduling spontaneity,β but perilously close. I
β
β
Eric Weiner (The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley (Creative Lessons in History))
β
A balance between sustainable ecology and sustainable human life, on the one hand, and the unfettered drive for profit, on the other, is just an oxymoron.
β
β
David Suzuki (From Naked Ape to Superspecies: Humanity and the Global Eco-Crisis)
β
Grown children (an oxymoron, I realize) veer instinctively to extremes: the young scholar is much more a pedant than his older counterpart. And I, being young myself, took these pronouncements of Henry's very seriously. I doubt if Milton himself could have impressed me more.
β
β
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
β
See, itβs just a matter of looking at the lines and doing the math.β βUgh, more math. I do enough of that as it is.β He laughed. βBut this is fun math.β βFun math is an oxymoron.β Kile
β
β
Kiera Cass (The Heir (The Selection, #4))
β
Sometimes things don't turn out like we would like. So it is wise to prepare for the worst. I know this sounds like an oxymoron, to expect the best, but prepare for the worst, but it isn't.
β
β
Bohdi Sanders (Modern Bushido: Living a Life of Excellence)
β
For Tozer, entertainment was simply the Church synchronizing with the world and succumbing to it. It was utter nonsense to him that the Church wanted to bring itself βup to speedβ with the world around it. A worldly church was, in Tozerβs thinking, an oxymoron and completely anathema.
β
β
A.W. Tozer (The Dangers of a Shallow Faith: Awakening from Spiritual Lethargy)
β
Doesn't an Indian tribe finally surrender to colonization by becoming as capitalistic as our conquerors? Isn't indigenous economic sovereignty one of the sneakiest damn oxymorons of all time?
β
β
Sherman Alexie (You Don't Have to Say You Love Me)
β
American can mean anything you want it to mean. It can mean that you live in America. It can mean that you are privileged. Being American can also mean that you are diverse. In many ways, the title American is an oxymoron because one may look it on the outside but not feel it on the inside.
β
β
Ciore Taylor (The Conversation Starts Here: A Perspective of Self, Culture, and the American Society)
β
An oxymoronic combination of the tough and tender, [Of Mice and Men] will appeal to sentimental cynics, cynical sentimentalists...Readers less easily thrown off their trolley will still prefer Hans Andersen.
[Time 1937]
β
β
Time-Life Books
β
The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.
β
β
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will And Representation, Volume 1)
β
The silver fish flashed in the sun like new knives, transforming their asphyxiation into a display of beauty as they flicked and leapt against each other and died.
β
β
Louis de Bernières (Captain Corelli's Mandolin filmscript)
β
One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us β we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system!
γγγγγγγγγγγ
β
μΉ΄ν‘:kodak8β
ν
λ κ·Έλ¨:Komen68β
γγγγγγγγγγγ
There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope β it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate Americaβs disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.β
골λμμ, λ리λ리, λ°μ€λ©μ΄, λΈλ£¨μμ λ, μΉμ€λλ‘, μμ€ν°μν맀, μνλΉ,
β
β
μ νμμ€ν°μν맀ν©λλ€ "μ½λ¦¬μν" μμ€ν°μꡬμ
λ°©λ²,β³β
μΉ΄ν‘:kodak8β
ν
λ κ·Έλ¨:Komen68β
β³μμ€ν°μμ νν맀,μμ€ν°μν맀,μ νλͺ°λ¦¬κ΅¬μ
λ°©λ²,
β
The human race is one of the few creatures whom can cry tears. If you look at us we are running around like small insectsβall submerged in our own important errands. Everyone blind of whats going on underneath their own noses. We can be compassionate as well as evil. We can love and we can destroy. I will always wonder how the same creature can do both. Oxymoron.β Everything Changes, Always.
β
β
Adrian Sandvaer (Bright Moments - A Journey In The Human Mind)
β
In the randomness of thoughts I couldn't help but think that at times of adversity most of us compromise our greatest talents and run after what we perceive to be more achievable success and in this paradox we end up with a discontented settlement.
Safely cocooned in our comfort zone . Stable .... Without any progression ! Am I the only disbeliever to believe that two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer...oxymoron !
β
β
BinYamin Gulzar
β
BLOOM: I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron.
INTERVIEWER: Itβs always interminable?
BLOOM: I do not know anyone who has ever benefited from Freudian or any other mode of analysis, except by being, to use the popular trope for it, so badly shrunk, that they become quite dried out. That is to say, all passion spent. Perhaps they become better people, but they also become stale and uninteresting people with very few exceptions. Like dried-out cheese, or wilted flowers.
β
β
Harold Bloom
β
One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us β we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system!
γγγγγγγγγγγ
ν
- KrTop "μ½λ¦¬μν"
γγγγγγγγγγγ
There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope β it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate Americaβs disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.
β
β
ν
- KrTop "μ½λ¦¬μν"λ¨,λ¨ν맀,λ¨ν맀맀,λ¨νλλ€,μμ€ν°μꡬμ
λ°©λ²,μμ€ν°μμ νν맀,μμ€ν°μν맀,μ νλͺ°λ¦¬κ΅¬μ
λ°©λ²,
β
. . . my fear, my joy more horrible than my fear, my obscene words, my words which are keys locking me into a mirror, with you, but ever alone.
β
β
Alejandra Pizarnik (The Galloping Hour: French Poems)
β
Life is indeed precious and I believe the death penalty helps to affirm that fact.
β
β
Edward I. Koch
β
You are a foreigner in an actual world, a human co-worker, a truth, a divine word, and a perfect mistake.
β
β
Michael Bassey Johnson
β
-perhaps by sitting down to enjoy one of the microwavable organic TV dinners(four words I never expected to see conjoined)stacked in the frozen food case.
β
β
Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals)
β
Don't fuckin' swear.
β
β
Trent Dalton (Boy Swallows Universe)
β
Rescuing myselfβ is an oxymoron that will leave me in the perpetual need of being rescued βfrom myselfβ.
β
β
Craig D. Lounsbrough
β
Mothering Oxymoron: Reminding the kids to not talk with food in their mouths, yet I have food in my mouth while trying to correct them in the moment.
β
β
Mommy Moo Moo
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There is neither a Heaven for a Hell. Life after Death is an oxymoron. Life is just another word for existence, and Death is just another word for non-existence.
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Oliver Markus Malloy (Bad Choices Make Good Stories)
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A November stillness was settling like a deadly oxymoron on the April landscape.
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Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
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A poet without memory, said Marconi, is like a criminal and nearly undone by feelings of decency. A poet without memory is an oxymoron. Because the poet is the memory of the language.
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Ricardo Piglia (RespiraciΓ³n artificial)
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Indeed, within Castroβs periphery there evolved a bizarre mutation known oxymoronically as βliberation theology,β where priests and even some bishops adopted βalternativeβ liturgies enshrining the ludicrous notion that Jesus of Nazareth was really a dues-paying socialist. For a combination of good and bad reasons (Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a man of courage and principle, in the way that some Nicaraguan βbase communityβ clerics were not), the papacy put this down as a heresy. Would that it could have condemned fascism and Nazism in the same unhesitating and unambiguous tones.
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Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)
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DPRK translates to Democratic Peopleβs Republic of Koreaβand if the words Democratic and Republic sound like a good thing, well, itβs oxymoronic because the Korea weβre talking about here is the communist one in the North, and when I said the pastorβs father was their guest, what I really meant is he was shot down, captured, tortured, and held prisoner by a depraved enemy in what today can only be described as a failed state.
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Tucker Elliot (The Day Before 9/11)
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Outward spiritual pursuitβ - This is an oxymoron but these days I see a lot of young men and women on βOutward spiritual pursuitβ. Your mind can create an exact replica of everything your soul has to offer. It can make you feel like you are on spiritual path. But mindβs replica of solitude is depression. Mindβs replica of No-thingness (non-existence) is Nothing-ness (pessimistic outlook). Mindβs replica of Samadhi is suicide.
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Shunya
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I am willing to contribute for a grand tombstone for Political Correctness (PC). This mouthplug has made us cowards, afraid to exercise our freedom of expression. It has stifled frank exchange of ideas and has made debates one-sided and pre-concluded. It has given strength to ideas which cannot defend themselves in an open debate. PC may be acceptable in private space but it is diastrous in public space as it makes that public space an oxymoron by making it restricted to only the "acceptable". Democracy is about competitive ideas and PC is undemocratic as it discounts the possibility of a level playing field. All growth of ideas is through cross fertilisation and PC leads to degeneration of ideas by restricting the process to inbreeding. Only those who use weakness as leverage to gain advantage without effort or have an hidden agenda will root for PC. It is the tool of the lazy and the devious. My offer for its tombstone stands.
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R.N. Prasher
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The finger-wagging admonition, βRape more gently,β is oxymoronic. Rape is the opposite of gentle, the opposite of moral. This is how many anarchists view the proposition that the existing system of political violence should be reformed somehow from within, rather than fundamentally opposed on moral terms, as an absolute evil, based on coercion and brutality, particularly towards children β with the inevitable consequence that its only salvation can come from being utterly abolished.
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Stefan Molyneux (Everyday Anarchy: The Freedom of Now)
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Even the word 'unconditional' is superfluous, because love, by its true definition, is unconditional. 'Conditional love' is an oxymoron -- a contradiction in terms. As soon as we put a condition on love, it become something else entirely.... unconditional love is a state of being, not a emotion. It means it has no opposite. Human love is an emotion, and as with all other emotions, it's part of duality. An opposite emotion, such as fear or hate, balances it out. But unconditional love just IS. It's not one side of the coin -- it's the WHOLE coin.
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Anita Moorjani (What if THIS is Heaven?)
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An ironic religion -- one that never claims to be absolutely true but only professes to be relatively beautiful, and never promises salvation but only proposes it as a salubrious idea. A century ago there were people who thought art was the thing that could fuse the terms of this seemingly insuperable oxymoron, and no doubt art is part of the formula. But maybe consumerism also has something to teach us about forging an ironic religion -- a lesson about learning to choose, about learning the power and consequences, for good or ill, of our ever-expanding palette of choices. Perhaps . . . the day will come when the true ironic religion is found, the day when humanity is filled with enough love and imagination and responsibility to become its own god and make a paradise of its world, a paradise of all the right choices.
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Alex Shakar (The Savage Girl)
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In 1997, the NCI director, Richard Klausner, responding to reports that cancer mortality had remained disappointingly static through the nineties, argued that the medical realities of one decade had little bearing on the realities of the next. βThere are far more good historians than there are good prophets,β Klausner wrote. βIt is extraordinarily difficult to predict scientific discovery, which is often propelled by seminal insights coming from unexpected directions. The classic exampleβFlemingβs discovery of penicillin on moldy bread and the monumental impact of that accidental findingβcould not easily have been predicted, nor could the sudden demise of iron-lung technology when evolving techniques in virology allowed the growth of poliovirus and the preparation of vaccine. Any extrapolation of history into the future presupposes an environment of static discoveryβan oxymoron.
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Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer)
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Thereβs an abyss, okay? Sometimes I dream about it. It goes down forever, and itβs full of all the things I donβt know. I donβt know how an abyss can be fullβitβs an oxymoronβbut it is. It makes me feel small and stupid. But thereβs a bridge over it, and I want to walk on it. I want to stand in the middle of it, and raise my handsβ¦
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Stephen King (The Institute)
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And where did this insane notion of buying loyalty come from? Itβs a contradiction in terms.
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Steven Erikson (Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #9))
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I bump into a group of girls congregating around a locker. Jessica, Willow (who is notably the only Willow enrolled in our 397-student class and in our 1,579-student school), and Abby. Miney has labeled them in my notebook, in block letters and underlined with a Sharpie:THE POPULAR BITCHES.
When she first used this designation, Miney had to give me a long lecture about how this wasnβt an oxymoron, how someone could be both popular, which I presumed meant that lots of people liked you, and at the same time also be a bitch, which I presumed would have the opposite outcome. Apparently popularity in the context of high school has a negative correlation with people actually liking you but a high correlation with people wanting to be your friend. After careful consideration, this makes sense, though in my case, I am both an outlier and a great example of the fact that correlation does not imply causation. I am nice to everyone but without any upside: People neither like me nor want to be my friend.
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Julie Buxbaum (What to Say Next)
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Sometimes, Lord, one is tempted to say that if you wanted us to behave like the lilies of the field you might have given us an organization more like theirs. But that, I suppose, is just your grand experiment. Or no; not an experiment, for you have no need to find things out. Rather your grand enterprise. To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a 'spiritual animal.' To take a poor primate, a beast with nerve-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, 'Now get on with it. Become a god.
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C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)
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We also have to consider the many different kinds of rape we have learned about over the past few years as conservative politicians blunder through trying to explain their stances on sexual violence and abortion.
For instance, Indiana treasurer Richard Mourdock, running for the US Senate in 2012, said, in a debate, "I struggled with it myself for a long time, and I realized that life is a gift from God, and I think even when life begins int hat horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen." I've been obsessing over these words, and trying to understand how someone who purports to believe in God can also believe that anything born of rape is God-intended. Just as there are many different kinds of rape, there are many different kinds of God. I am also reminded that women, more often than not, are the recipient of God's intentions and must also bear the burdens of these intentions.
Mourdock is certainly not alone in offering up opinions about rape. Former Missouri representative Todd Akin believes in "legitimate rape" and the oxymoronic "forcible rape," not to be confused with all that illegitimate rape going on. Ron Paul believes in the existence of "honest rape," but turns a blind eye to the dishonest rapes out there. Former Wisconsin State representative Roger Rivard believes some girls, "they rape so easy." Lest you think these new definitions of rape are only the purview of men, failed Senate candidate Linda McMahon of Connecticut has introduced us to the idea of "emergency rape." Given this bizarre array of new rape definitions, it is hard to reconcile the belief that women are rising when there is still so much in our cultural climate working to hold women down. We can, I suppose, take comfort in knowing that none of these people is in a position of power anymore.
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Roxane Gay