#paradox

It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect. ↗

— John Ruskin

#fantastic #imperfect #important #most #nevertheless

Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America - that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. ↗

— Thomas Wolfe

#certain #fixed #haunting #here #movement

The fraudulence paradox was that the more time and effort you put into trying to appear impressive or attractive to other people, the less impressive or attractive you felt inside — you were a fraud. And the more of a fraud you felt like, the harder you tried to convey an impressive or likable image of yourself so that other people wouldn’t find out what a hollow, fraudulent person you really were. Logically, you would think that the moment a supposedly intelligent nineteen-year-old became aware of this paradox, he’d stop being a fraud and just settle for being himself (whatever that was) because he’d figured out that being a fraud was a vicious infinite regress that ultimately resulted in being frightened, lonely, alienated, etc. But here was the other, higher-order paradox, which didn’t even have a form or name — I didn’t, I couldn’t. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#fraudulence #paradox #poseur #posing #intelligence

No one knows for sure that that tomorrow won't come, but most people assume that tomorrow will still exist as usual. This is Toba's Paradox, which means, hope overcomes doubt. ↗

— Toba Beta

#hope #life #overcome #paradox #toba

Mom?" I said. She turned. "Can I talk to you about something?" "Of course, darling. Come here." I took a few steps into the room. There was so much I wanted to say. "I need you to be --" I said, and then I started to cry. "Be what?" she said, opening her arms. "Not sad," I said. ↗

— Nicole Krauss

#love

One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity. ↗

— Søren Kierkegaard

#paradox

The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind's eye. ↗

— Shana Alexander

#exists #eye #image #mind #only

The only way to be completely self-consistent is to be constantly uttering paradoxes. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #paradox #funny

Where consumption is both conspicuous and competitive, humanity will never run out of new wishes. All the while, industry creates new desires that are marketed, in the great fashion paradox, as both novelty and need. ↗

— James Buchan

#competitive #conspicuous #consumption #creates #desires

This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, and probably also a Western European, is that there are things we know are right, and good, and would be better for us to do, but constantly it's like "Yeah, but, you know, it's so much funnier and nicer to go do something else." and "Who cares?" and "It's all bullshit anyway. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#apathy #boredom #bullshit #europeans #goodness