"No man is able to make progress when he is wavering between opposite things."
Opposites quotes
Opposites
2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Opposites quotes (page 5 of 102)
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"Through your love existence and nonexistence merge. All opposites unite. All that is profane becomes sacred again."
"Fat people who want to reduce should take their exercise on an empty stomach and sit down to their food out of breath.... Thin people who want to get fat should do exactly the opposite and never take exercise on an empty stomach."
"If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite - the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment - is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our times."
"Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity."
"A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens-second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths."
"And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on."
"No, I don't think you're paranoid. I think you're the opposite of paranoid. I think you walk around with the insane delusion that people like you."
"Voidness is that which stands right in the middle between this and that. The void is all-inclusive, having no opposite--there is nothing which it excludes or opposes. It is living void, because all forms come out of it and whoever realizes the void is filled with life and power and the love of all beings."
"A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth."
"The true opposite of depression is not gaiety or absence of pain, but vitality: the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings."
"Confuse not love with the raptures of possession, which bring the cruellest of sufferings. For, notwithstanding the general opinion, love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite."
"Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy."
"Seriousness is not Calvinistic, it's not a renunciation, it's the very opposite of that."
"In meditating, meditate on your own divinity. The goal of life is to be a vehicle for something higher. Keep your eyes up there between the world of opposites watching your 'play' in the world.Let the world be as it is and learn to rock with the waves."
"Economy, prudence, and a simple life are the sure masters of need, and will often accomplish that which, their opposites, with a fortune at hand, will fail to do."
"Do not think you have gained a virtue unless you have first been tried by its opposite."
"There is something almost cruel about the Christian's being placed in a world which in every way wants to pressure him to do the opposite of what God bids him to do."
"I just want to finish what I'm doing and go home. I want to have a weekend. I want to have breakfast, a stack of pancakes. I don't want to not enjoy where I am at this very moment. So, every time I plan something the exact opposite happens."
"Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia."