#paradox

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things. ↗

— George Eliot

#dead #fingers #handle #happen #make

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

The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent. ↗

— Erich Fromm

#away #become #child #fully #grow

It might seem paradoxical given my profession, but I'm not someone who likes to be in the limelight. ↗

— Audrey Tautou

#i #likes #limelight #might #paradoxical

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. ↗

— Jack London

#beyond #cannot #comes #complete #ecstasy

Procrastinate now, don't put it off. ↗

— Ellen DeGeneres

#paradox #procrastination #humor

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. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#paradox #religion #humor

Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either--he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days--since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other--with, of course, a day off each year for sheer solipsist debauchery. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#hypotheses #indecision #paradoxes #solipsism #the-universe

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. ↗

— Douglas Petrie

#honesty #humans #paradox #world #crazy

Love is such a tissue of paradoxes, and exists in such endless variety of forms and shades that you may say almost anything about it that you please, and it is likely to be correct. ↗

— Henry Theophilus Finck

#forms #love #paradoxes #shades #love