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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #duality
For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality. ↗
We are all equal in the fact that we are all different. We are all the same in the fact that we will never be the same. We are united by the reality that all colours and all cultures are distinct & individual. We are harmonious in the reality that we are all held to this earth by the same gravity. We don't share blood, but we share the air that keeps us alive. I will not blind myself and say that my black brother is not different from me. I will not blind myself and say that my brown sister is not different from me. But my black brother is he as much as I am me. But my brown sister is she as much as I am me. ↗
The Taoists realized that no single concept or value could be considered absolute or superior. If being useful is beneficial, the being useless is also beneficial. The ease with which such opposites may change places is depicted in a Taoist story about a farmer whose horse ran away. His neighbor commiserated only to be told, "Who knows what's good or bad?" It was true. The next day the horse returned, bringing with it a drove of wild horses it had befriended in its wanderings. The neighbor came over again, this time to congratulate the farmer on his windfall. He was met with the same observation: "Who knows what is good or bad?" True this time too; the next day the farmer's son tried to mount one of the wild horses and fell off, breaking his leg. Back came the neighbor, this time with more commiserations, only to encounter for the third time the same response, "Who knows what is good or bad?" And once again the farmer's point was well taken, for the following day soldiers came by commandeering for the army and because of his injury, the son was not drafted. According to the Taoists, yang and yin, light and shadow, useful and useless are all different aspects of the whole, and the minute we choose one side and block out the other, we upset nature's balance. If we are to be whole and follow the way of nature, we must pursue the difficult process of embracing the opposites. ↗
You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing. ↗
[W]hat reasoning is this, to criticize an innocent majority who seldom make a slip, for a single act? This is not right. Why can't blame be borne individually for individual guilt? ... But for the love of Christ, those of you with some sense, do not blame the innocent without cause. For if, every time you see one man doing wrong, you're going to accuse all men likewise, it won't take long in any one day before you'll be saying that all men ought to be hung. If one man is a rogue, are all men too? No, there's no logic in that; you know what's true. Were a man hung or dismembered for theft, and they proposed to dish up the same treatment to you, you wouldn't consider it legal. You would look quite unamused, and take the liberty of bidding goodbye to all who pronounced that sort of judmgent. Think of others as you would have them think of you ... Let each bear guilt individually as is only right -- and as you'd wish to be upheld in your own case if you were innocent. ↗
