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The Paradoxical Commandments
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
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Kent M. Keith (The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council)
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I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
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Daphne Rae (Love Until It Hurts: The Work of Mother Teresa and Her Missionaries of Charity)
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To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.
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Criss Jami (Venus in Arms)
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Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
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Oscar Wilde
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If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
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George Carlin
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Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
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Frank Herbert (Chapterhouse: Dune (Dune #6))
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We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)
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We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
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Oscar Wilde (Miscellaneous Aphorisms; The Soul of Man)
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Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
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Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
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The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
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Carl R. Rogers (On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy)
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I never wish to be easily defined. Iβd rather float over other peopleβs minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.
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Franz Kafka
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There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
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George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman)
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Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
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Mahatma Gandhi
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I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
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Plato (The Republic)
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The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of oneβs negative experience is itself a positive experience. (p.9)
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Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
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The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
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James Baldwin
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Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.
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Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)
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Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
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Rita Mae Brown (Alma Mater)
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It's weird not to be weird.
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John Lennon
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Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.
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Albert Einstein
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Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.
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Jon Stewart
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The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.
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Madeleine L'Engle
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Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox.
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Russell Brand (My Booky Wook)
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In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. (Mr. Dumby, Act III)
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Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)
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Procrastinate now, don't put it off.
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Ellen DeGeneres
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Truthfully, Professor Hawking? Why would we allow tourists from the future muck up the past when your contemporaries had the task well in Hand?"
Brigadier General Patrick E Buckwalder 2241C.E.
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Gabriel F.W. Koch (Paradox Effect: Time Travel and Purified DNA Merge to Halt the Collapse of Human Existence)
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The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.
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Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption)
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He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
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Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #3))
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Iβm almost never serious, and Iβm always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. Iβm like a collection of paradoxes.
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Ferdinand de Saussure
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I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Emile, or On Education)
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He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.
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Michel de Montaigne (The Complete Essays)
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The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
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Niels Bohr
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My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
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Bertrand Russell (The Philosophy of Logical Atomism)
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All wisdom ends in paradox.
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Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides)
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The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.
These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...
Remember, to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.
Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person might not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
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Bob Moorehead (Words Aptly Spoken)
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Life has three rules: Paradox, Humor, and Change.
- Paradox: Life is a mystery; don't waste your time trying to figure it out.
- Humor: Keep a sense of humor, especially about yourself. It is a strength beyond all measure
- Change: Know that nothing ever stays the same.
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Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives)
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The most exquisite paradox⦠as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.
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Ram Dass
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A paradox: The things you donβt need to liveβbooks, art, cinema, wine, and so onβare the things you need to live.
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Matt Haig (The Humans)
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Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.
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Douglas Adams
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Let go of certainty. The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.
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Tony Schwartz
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You are never too old to become younger!
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Mae West
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Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.
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Vince Lombardi
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One must not think slightingly of the paradoxicalβ¦for the paradox is the source of the thinkerβs passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.
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SΓΈren Kierkegaard
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Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.
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G.K. Chesterton (Brave New Family: G.K. Chesterton on Men and Women, Children, Sex, Divorce, Marriage and the Family)
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Evey Hammond: Who are you?
V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey Hammond: Well I can see that.
V: Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is
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Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)
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It's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.
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Andy Rooney
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When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
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Tennessee Williams (Camino Real)
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The Universe is very, very big.
It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules.
Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever.
Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies.
Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.
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Craig Ferguson (Between the Bridge and the River)
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Fighting for peace, is like f***ing for chastity
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Stephen King (Hearts in Atlantis)
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The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.
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Franz Kafka
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We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
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Konstantin JireΔek
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Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there.
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Jeanette Winterson (The Passion)
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Artemis felt like he was six again and caught hacking the school computers trying to make the test questions harder
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Eoin Colfer (The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl, #6))
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To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soulβs paradox of love.
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A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine)
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I am Dead, but it's not so bad. I've learned to live with it.
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Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1))
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We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.
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Frank Crane
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The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil - rich, fertile soil.
She wasn't a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn't run away from herself. She'd have to stay there and tend to that wasteland.
She could plant a forest inside herself.
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Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
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If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesnβt value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?
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Sam Harris
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Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
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SΓΈren Kierkegaard
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Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
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Lao Tzu
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The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.
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Osho
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A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.
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Banksy (Wall and Piece)
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Who are you?" he asked.
I am the future queen of this world, at the very least. You may refer to me as Mistress Koboi for the next five minutes. After that you may refer to me as Aaaaarrrrgh, hold your throat, die screaming, and so on.
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Eoin Colfer (The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl, #6))
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Sometimes, the only soul that can mend a broken heart is the one that broke it. For they are the ones holding all the pieces.
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Patti Roberts (The Angels Are Here (Paradox, #1))
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As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don't deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.
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Pema ChΓΆdrΓΆn (When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times)
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There is no need to search; achievement leads to nowhere. It makes no difference at all, so just be happy now! Love is the only reality of the world, because it is all One, you see. And the only laws are paradox, humor and change. There is no problem, never was, and never will be. Release your struggle, let go of your mind, throw away your concerns, and relax into the world. No need to resist life, just do your best. Open your eyes and see that you are far more than you imagine. You are the world, you are the universe; you are yourself and everyone else, too! It's all the marvelous Play of God. Wake up, regain your humor. Don't worry, just be happy. You are already free!
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Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives)
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Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from oneβs mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.
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Clarissa Pinkola EstΓ©s (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
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I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.
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Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus)
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Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't three lefts make a right? Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't two negatives make a positive?
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Andrew Clements (Things Not Seen (Things, #1))
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I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what.
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Madeleine L'Engle
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Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.
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Mark Twain
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There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.
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Jack London (The Call of the Wild)
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There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.
This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.
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Jack London (The Call of the Wild)
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Being open with your insecurities paradoxically makes you more confident and charismatic around others. The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships. Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perseverance. Seriously,
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Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
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The Second Rule is that the greatest harm can result from the best intentions. It sounds a paradox, but kindness and good intentions can be an insidious path to destruction. Sometimes doing what seems right is wrong, and can cause harm. The only counter to it is knowledge, wisdom, forethought, and understanding the First Rule. Even then, that is not always enough.
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Terry Goodkind (Stone of Tears (Sword of Truth, #2))
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Humm humm haaa. Rahmumm humm haaaa," intoned Opal, finishing her chant. "Peace be inside me, tolerance all around me, forgiveness in my path. Now, Mervall, show me where the filthy human is so that I may feed him his organs.
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Eoin Colfer (The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl, #6))
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As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.
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Charles Baudelaire (My Heart Laid Bare)
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All generalizations are false, including this one.
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Unknown - attributed to Mark Twain by Normand Baillargeon
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I am charging you with the protection of my mother and friends, not to mention keeping my younger self off the Internet. He is as dangerous as Opal.
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Eoin Colfer (The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl, #6))
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Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.
(Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)
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Blaise Pascal (Pascal's Pensees)
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I bet," said Mulch, "that you would set the world on fire just to watch it burn."
Opal tapped the suggestion into a small electronic notepad on her pocket computer.
Thanks for that. Now, tell me everything.
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Eoin Colfer (The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl, #6))
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Nobody comes here anymore, its too crowded
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Yogi Berra
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Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.
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Zsa Zsa Gabor
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It is so difficult - at least, I find it difficult - to understand people who speak the truth.
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E.M. Forster (A Room with a View)
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The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. β In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
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Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies)
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The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other lifeβanother hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigodβthereβs only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. Itβs the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.
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Liu Cixin (The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earthβs Past, #2))
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You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.
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Woody Allen
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To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.
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Eckhart Tolle
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I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.
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John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America)
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For the rest of the earthβs organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, deathβand nothing else. But we know too much to content ourselves with surviving, reproducing, dyingβand nothing else. We know we are alive and know we will die. We also know we will suffer during our lives before sufferingβslowly or quicklyβas we draw near to death. This is the knowledge we βenjoyβ as the most intelligent organisms to gush from the womb of nature. And being so, we feel shortchanged if there is nothing else for us than to survive, reproduce, and die. We want there to be more to it than that, or to think there is. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we areβhunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.
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Thomas Ligotti (The Conspiracy Against the Human Race)
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Immature people falling in love destroy each otherβs freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.
A mature person does not fall in love, he or she rises in love. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. Now they cannot manage and they cannot stand. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They donβt have the backbone, the spine; they donβt have the integrity to stand alone.
A mature person has the integrity to stand alone. And when a mature person gives love, he or she gives without any strings attached to it. When two mature persons are in love, one of the great paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone. They are together so much that they are almost one. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. Only freedom and love.
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Osho
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The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs... In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.
[Letter to James Smith discussing Jefferson's hate of the doctrine of the Christian trinity, December 8 1822]
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Thomas Jefferson (Letters of Thomas Jefferson)
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Glory: I look around at this world you're so eager to be a part of and all I see is six billion lunatics looking for the fastest ride out. Who's not crazy? Look around, everyone's drinking, smoking, shooting up, shooting each other, or just plain screwing their brains out 'cause they don't want 'em anymore. I'm crazy? Honey, I'm the original one-eyed chicklet in the kingdom of the blind, 'cause at least I admit the world makes me nuts.
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Doug Petrie
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To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.
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George Orwell (1984)
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Evey: Who are you?
V. : Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey: Well I can see that.
V. : Of course you can, Iβm not questioning your powers of observation, Iβm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.
Evey: Oh, right.
V. : But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace soubriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona. Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the βvox populiβ now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.
The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that itβs my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.
Evey: Are you like a crazy person?
V. : Iβm quite sure they will say so.
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Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)
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When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.
To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, "A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God."
The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours not by right but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God. While there is much we may have earned--our degree and our salary, our home and garden, a Miller Lite and a good night's sleep--all this is possible only because we have been given so much: life itself, eyes to see and hands to touch, a mind to shape ideas, and a heart to beat with love. We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. This and so much more is sheer gift; it is not reward for our faithfulness, our generous disposition, or our heroic life of prayer. Even our fidelity is a gift, "If we but turn to God," said St. Augustine, "that itself is a gift of God."
My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.
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Brennan Manning (The Ragamuffin Gospel)
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Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if we will risk it on the precipice.
He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying.
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G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
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In all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:
1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better storβd with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.
2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.
3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly producβd may be attended with much Inconvenience.
4. Because throβ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclinβd to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.
5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.
6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.
7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.
8thly and Lastly They are so grateful!!
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Benjamin Franklin
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The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.
The more indifferent people are to politics, to the interests of others, the more obsessed they become with their own faces. The individualism of our time.
Not being able to fall asleep and not allowing oneself to move: the marital bed.
If high culture is coming to an end, it is also the end of you and your paradoxical ideas, because paradox as such belongs to high culture and not to childish prattle. You remind me of the young men who supported the Nazis or communists not out of cowardice or out of opportunism but out of an excess of intelligence. For nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of nonthought⦠You are the brilliant ally of your own gravediggers.
In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.
How to live in a world with which you disagree? How to live with people when you neither share their suffering nor their joys? When you know that you donβt belong among them?... our century refuses to acknowledge anyoneβs right to disagree with the worldβ¦All that remains of such a place is the memory, the ideal of a cloister, the dream of a cloisterβ¦
Humor can only exist when people are still capable of recognizing some border between the important and the unimportant. And nowadays this border has become unrecognizable.
The majority of people lead their existence within a small idyllic circle bounded by their family, their home, and their work... They live in a secure realm somewhere between good and evil. They are sincerely horrified by the sight of a killer. And yet all you have to do is remove them from this peaceful circle and they, too, turn into murderers, without quite knowing how it happened.
The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order. Or to put it the other way around: the desire for order is a virtuous pretext, an excuse for virulent misanthropy.
A long time a go a certain Cynic philosopher proudly paraded around Athens in a moth-eaten coat, hoping that everyone would admire his contempt for convention. When Socrates met him, he said: Through the hole in your coat I see your vanity. Your dirt, too, dear sir, is self-indulgent and your self-indulgence is dirty.
You are always living below the level of true existence, you bitter weed, you anthropomorphized vat of vinegar! Youβre full of acid, which bubbles inside you like an alchemistβs brew. Your highest wish is to be able to see all around you the same ugliness as you carry inside yourself. Thatβs the only way you can feel for a few moments some kind of peace between yourself and the world. Thatβs because the world, which is beautiful, seems horrible to you, torments you and excludes you.
If the novel is successful, it must necessarily be wiser than its author. This is why many excellent French intellectuals write mediocre novels. They are always more intelligent than their books.
By a certain age, coincidences lose their magic, no longer surprise, become run-of-the-mill.
Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.
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Milan Kundera