#paradox

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

Men have two greatest fears: the first fear is the fear of being needed, and the second fear is the fear of not being needed. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#fears #life-and-living #men #men-s-fears #paradox

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

This book does not exist. And even if it did, it wouldn’t be worth buying or reading.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#buy #exist #existence #money #nonexistence

Music was a chain forged half of silences and half of sound, love was nothing without longing and loss, and were time not to have at its end the absence of time, and the absence of time not to have been preceded by time, neither would be of any consequence. ↗

— Mark Helprin

#love

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man? ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#organized-religion #paradox #religion #religion

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

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #paradox #funny

There is another interesting paradox here: by immersing ourselves in what we love, we find ourselves. We do not lose ourselves. One does not lose one's identity by falling in love. ↗

— Lukas Foss

#does #falling #falling in love #find #here

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. ↗

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh

#enough #found #growth #only #paradoxically

The Spartans were a paradoxical people. They were the biggest slave owners in Greece. But at the same time, Spartan women had an unusual level of rights. It's a paradox that they were a bunch of people who in many ways were fascist, but they were the bulwark against the fall of democracy. ↗

— Frank Miller

#biggest #bulwark #bunch #democracy #fall