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Opposites Quotes

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Opposites Quotes

“The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.”

World Light Opposites Praise Complexes Selfish Witness Immortality Afterlife Yearning Privileged Intervals

Book:Self-consciousness: memoirs

Source: Self-consciousness: memoirs

“What is there about polarity that is matter becoming more complex?”

Matter Becoming Opposites Complexes Becoming More Polarity

Author:Norman Mailer

“I have often been amused by our vulgar tendency to take complex issues, with solutions at neither extreme of a continuum of possibilities, and break them into dichotomies, assigning one group to one pole and the other to an opposite end, with no acknowledgment of subtleties and intermediate positions and nearly always with moral opprobrium attached to opponents.”

Source: The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History

“In the case of complex personalities the matter stands thus: one of these can understand other men better than they can understand themselves, because within himself he has not only the character he is grasping, but also its opposite. Duality is necessary for observation and comprehension.”

Men Matter Character Cases Personality Opposites Complexes Observation Comprehension Duality Grasping

Book:Sex & Character

Source: Sex & Character

“With a painting, you're taking basic building blocks and making something that's more complex than what you started with. It is a synthetic process. A photograph does the opposite: It takes the world, and puts an order on it, simplifies it.”

World Doe Order Process Building Painting Photography Opposites Complexes Photographer Photograph Block Simplify Building Blocks Synthetic

Author:Stephen Shore

“In fact we do not try to picture the afterlife, nor is it our selves in our nervous tics and optical flecks that we wish to perpetuate; it is the self as the window on the world that we can't bear to thinkof shutting. My mind when I was a boy of ten or eleven sent up its silent scream at the thought of future aeons -- at the thought of the cosmic party going on without me. The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise of the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.”

World Trying Mind Self Facts Light Wish Party Boys Bears Ten Window Opposites Praise Silent Complexes Selfish Nervous Witness Scream Cosmic Afterlife Yearning Privileged Eleven Intervals Tics

Author:John Updike

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.”

Thinking Men Should Looks Art Sometimes Problem Moving Used Simple Tree Crazy Fool Genius Smart Opposites Bigger Intelligent Complexes Solve Branches Art And Science Hazy Same Thinking

Author:Albert Einstein

“In order to write about the machine you have to know it, to live with it, to love it (or hate it). I think that true writing could be done on industrial subjects by people who work in industry, who are firmly linked with it. But ... and here is the opposite 'but', the technology of literary craftsmanship is itself a very fine and complex matter. Qualified specialists from industry prove themselves dilettantes in the field of literature. The needed synthesis is not yet in sight.”

“It is pure mythology that women cannot perform as well as men in science, engineering and mathematics. In my experience, the opposite is true: Women are often more adept and patient at untangling complex problems, multitasking, seeing the possibilities in new solutions and winning team support for collaborative action.”

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”

“I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don't think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex.”

Thinking Sometimes Reality Used Suffering Hate Given Easier Concepts Opposites Absolutes Embrace Complexes

Book:Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Planning complex, beautiful meals and investing one's heart and time in their preparation is the opposite of self-indulgence. Kitchen-based family gatherings are process-oriented, cooperative, and in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful. A lot of calories get used up before anyone sits down to consume. But more importantly, a lot of talk happens first, news exchanged, secrets revealed across generations, paths cleared with a touch on the arm. I have given and received some of my life's most important hugs with those big oven-mitt potholders on both hands.”

Source: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating

“The sad truth is that man's real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites - day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.”

Source: Man and His Symbols