Best opposites & extremes Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Vermilion alone could render the brilliant red of the tiles on the opposite slope. The orange of the soil, the harsh crude colors of the walls and greenery, the ultramarine and cobalt of the sky achieved an extreme harmony that was sensually and musically ordered.”

Sky Color Wall Red Opposites Harmony Extremes Brilliant Soil Harsh Orange Crude Slopes Tiles Greenery Cobalt

Author:Maurice de Vlaminck

“There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to recall and dare not seek to interpret.”

Horror Opposites Entrepreneur Series Dare Extremes Ecstasy Recalls Incidents

Book:Complete Collection Of H. P. Lovecraft - 150 eBooks With 100+ Audiobooks (Complete Collection Of Lovecraft's Fiction, Juvenilia, Poems, Essays And Collaborations)

Source: Complete Collection Of H. P. Lovecraft - 150 eBooks With 100+ Audiobooks (Complete Collection Of Lovecraft's Fiction, Juvenilia, Poems, Essays And Collaborations)

“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

“Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either/Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities.”

Thinking Reason Truth Belief Given Term Education Mankind Possibility Opposites Extremes Likes

Book:Experience and Education, 60th Anniversary Edition

Source: Experience and Education, 60th Anniversary Edition

“Futurism and Cubism are comparable in importance to the invention of perspective, for which they substituted a new concept of space. All subsequent movements were latent in them or brought about by them.. ..the two movements cannot be regarded as in opposition to each other, even though they started from opposite points; I maintain [an idea approved by Appolinaire and later by Matisse that they are two extremes of the same sign, tending to coincide at certain points which only the poetic instinct of the painter can discover: 'poetry' being the content and 'raison d'tre' of art.”

“Demand and supply are the opposite extremes of the beam, whence depend the scales of dearness and cheapness; the price is the point of equilibrium, where the momentum of the one ceases, and that of the other begins.”

Depends Demand Opposites Extremes Scales Cease Momentum Beam Equilibrium Cheapness

Book:A treatise on political economy

Source: A treatise on political economy

“I think Christine and Chad are on the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Christine is a model victim, and Chad is a model perpetrator, and Howard is closer to the middle.”

Thinking Middle Models Opposites Victim Extremes Spectrum Perpetrators Christine Chad

Author:Neil LaBute

“In avoiding one vice fools rush into the opposite extreme.”

Fool Opposites Vices Extremes Avoiding

Author:Horace

“The revolt against any oppression usually goes to an opposite extreme for a time; and that is right and necessary.”

Revolution Opposites Extremes Oppression Revolt

Author:Tennessee Celeste Claflin

“For to be contemporary is not necessarily to be part of any movement, to be included in the official representations of national and international art. History shows that it may well be the opposite. It may be that it is the odd, the personal, the curious, the simply honest, that at this moment, when everyone looks to the extreme and flamboyant, constitutes the most interesting manifestation of the spirit of art.”

“Orthodox Judaism is a thicket of detailed injunctions, Biblical commandments elaborated during centuries of prohibited proselytizing, functioning to limit interaction with outsiders. At the opposite extreme, Islam, still the most rapidly expanding of faiths, demands little immediate knowledge from those who would convert. The convert is permitted to enter and then to learn by participation, although there are plenty of detailed regulations and abstruse theological ideas to be pursued later, and the regulations do effectively separate believers from nonbelievers.”

“Art knows no happier moment than the opportunity to show the symmetry of an extreme, during that moment of spheric harmony when the dissonance dissolves for the blink of an eye, dissolves into a blissful harmony, when the most extreme opposites, coming together from the greatest alienation, fleetingly touch with lips of the word and of love.”

Knows Art Moments Shows Eye Together Opportunity Opposites Harmony Lips Extremes That Moment Alienation Blink Symmetry Coming Together Dissonance Blink Of An Eye

Author:Stefan Zweig

“When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.”

Men Has Beens Opposites Embrace Extremes Anarchy Despotism Eagerness

Author:Richard Whately

“I use [Heraclitus' discovery of] enantiodromia for the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time. This characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, onesided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counterposition is built up, which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control.”

Firsts Use Courses Powerful Break Conscious Discovery Built Opposites Performances Extremes Tendencies Characteristics Unconscious Phenomenon Break Through Emergence

Book:Psychological Types

Source: Psychological Types

“The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul; and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.”

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“The Internet bubble circa 2000 is the most extreme in modern capitalism. In the 1930s, we had the worst depression in 600 years. Today is almost as extreme in the opposite way.”

Way Years Today Modern Worst Internet Capitalism Opposites Extremes Bubbles 1930s

Author:Charlie Munger

“The true secret of natural goodness lies in the recognition of the contending rights of the Pairs of Opposites; there is no such antimony as between Good and Evil, but only balance between two extremes, each of which is evil when carried to excess, both of which give rise to evil if insufficient for equipoise.”

Ifs Giving Two Lying Evil Natural Secret Rights Balance Goodness Opposites Extremes Recognition Good And Evil Pairs Excess Insufficient Contending Two Extremes

Author:Dion Fortune

“Only when the kulak refused to deliver grain to the State did [Joseph] Stalin, under the pressure of the Left Opposition, accomplish a sharp turn. Being the empiricist that he is, he moved, to the opposite extreme, and set as a task for two or three years the collectivization of all the peasantry, the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, and the compression of the Five Year Plan into four years.”

Years Two States Turns Three Left Class Five Four Plans Tasks Opposites Pressure Moved Extremes Accomplish Five Years Opposition Three Years Four Years Grain Compression Five Year Plans

Author:Leon Trotsky

“Granted, we may try to help our own family members because they share our DNA. Or help someone else in expectation that they will help us later. But when you look at what we admire as the most generous manifestations of altruism, they are not based on kin selection or reciprocity. An extreme example might be Oskar Schindler risking his life to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas chambers. That's the opposite of saving his genes.”

“The rich and powerful countries are trying to wreck as much as possible. You know, go off the cliff as soon as you can. Extract every drop of hydrocarbons off the ground and destroy the environment. At the opposite extreme are countries like Bolivia and Ecuador, indigenous people around the world, and first nations in Canada and tribal people in India, campesinos in Colombia... They're trying to save the commons.”

“I think of moral beauty as what is the good and the just - terms perhaps best defined by their opposite: evil. Evil is the willingness to do damage to the other; its maximal expression is murder, but it includes a great deal of subtle and not-so-subtle injuries as it advances to that extreme. Evil acts reduce the other to an object, a being to its component parts, and obliterate subjectivity. Evil's breeding ground is a lack of empathy.”

Thinking Evil Term Deals Moral Objects Expression Empathy Opposites Murder Extremes Defined Damage Injury Subtle Willingness Components Breeding Subjectivity Lack Of Empathy

Author:C.E. Morgan

“The world is not dialectical - it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.”

World Evil Principles Opposites Extremes Radical Reconciliation Equilibrium Synthesis Antagonism

Author:Jean Baudrillard

“The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?”

Source: Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

“I am quite likely to re-act to the opposite extreme - to feel rapturously that the world is beautiful and mere existence something to thank God for. I suppose our 'blues' are the price we have to pay for our temperament. 'The gods don't allow us to be in their debt.' They give us sensitiveness to beauty in all its forms but the shadow of the gift goes with it.”

World Giving Feels Beautiful Form Pay Existence Shadow Opposites Mere Extremes Debt Thank God Temperament World Is Beautiful

Book:My dear Mr. M.: letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery

Source: My dear Mr. M.: letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery

“Heroes and scholars represent the opposite extremes... The scholar struggles for the benefit of all humanity, sometimes to reduce physical effort, sometimes to reduce pain, and sometimes to postpone death, or at least render it more bearable. In contrast, the patriot sacrifices a rather substantial part of humanity for the sake of his own prestige. His statue is always erected on a pedestal of ruins and corpses... In contrast, all humanity crowns a scholar, love forms the pedestal of his statues, and his triumphs defy the desecration of time and the judgment of history.”

“Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites.”

Thinking Philosophy Literature Term Mankind Opposites Educational Extremes Likes

Book:Experience and Education, 60th Anniversary Edition

Source: Experience and Education, 60th Anniversary Edition

“If catastrophic geology had at times pushed Nature to almost indecent extremes of haste, uniformitarian geology, on the other hand, had erred in the opposite direction, and pictured Nature when she was 'young and wantoned [sic] in her prime', as moving with the lame sedateness of advanced middle age. It became necessary, therefore, as Dr. [Samuel] Haughton expresses it, 'to hurry up the phenomena'.”

Ifs Hands Age Moving Young Science Nature Middle Opposites Extremes Prime Drs Middle Ages Haste Lame Geology

Author:William Johnson Sollas

“There is an important difference between love and friendship. While the former delights in extremes and opposites, the latter demands equality.”

Love Important Romance Friendship Differences Demand Opposites Delight Extremes Former Latter Love And Friendship Friend Valentine

Author:Francoise d'Aubigne, Marquise de Maintenon

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Opposites Quotes