#paradox

It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one's dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical. ↗

— Clive Barker

#believe #desire #dreams #goddesses #gods

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self. ↗

— Hugo Black

#condition #first #full #happiness #lasting

Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem. We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding. ↗

— Harold Evans

#always #complex #more #nuanced #paradox

As an actor, there's a bit of you that's decided you want to be looked at and watched, but there's a paradoxical bit that wants to run away. ↗

— Ralph Fiennes

#away #bit #decided #looked #paradoxical

Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want. ↗

— John Fowles

#end #marriages #most #paradox #passion

The words of truth are always paradoxical. ↗

— Lao Tzu

#paradoxical #truth #words

First she would try to kill him, but failing this give him food and her body, breast-feed him back to a state of childishness and even, perhaps, feel affection for him. Then, the moment he was asleep, cut his throat. The synopsis of the ideal marriage. ↗

— J.G. Ballard

#husband #j-g-ballard #james-graham-ballard #jg-ballard #marriage

There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success…Perhaps no other animal is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#paradox #age

To be complex does not mean to be fragmented. This is the paradox and the genius of our Canadian civilization. ↗

— Adrienne Clarkson

#civilization #complex #does #fragmented #genius

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor. ↗

— Soren Kierkegaard

#away #paradox #professor #take #thinker