Best opposites & ifs Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 4

“Some think, "If I marry this guy who's two inches taller than I am and who has a nice bank account, I won't die. If I buy six cars, I won't die. If I hate Jews, I won't die. If I hate homosexuals, I won't die." They think they will increase their life by shunting misery onto somebody else, but it's just the opposite.”

Ifs Thinking Two Guy Hate Dies Nice Car Six Opposites Accounts I Hate Increase Misery Jew Inches Homosexual This Guy Bank Accounts

Author:Maya Angelou

“I used to let other people's struggles affect my happiness. If they weren't happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn't happy, I didn't want anyone around me to be happy.”

People Ifs Way Want Used Struggle Opposites

Author:Joyce Meyer

“Be kind. It's worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them. If you allow yourself to be somewhat curious - and if you get into the habit of doing that - it's the first step to being open minded and realizing that your points of view aren't totally opposite.”

People Ifs Firsts Kind Might Realizing Views Common Effort Steps Figures Habit Opposites Point Of View Curious Be Kind Worthwhile First Steps Open Minded Being Open Minded

Author:Viggo Mortensen

“I'd like to think, if I was ever in a fight, I'd win, although I'd probably run in the opposite direction.”

Ifs Thinking Running Fighting Winning Opposites

Author:Rachel Nichols

“While everyone else is thinking about economics and politics, executive salaries and the future of the euro, do the opposite, even if it's hard. Invest in the spirit.”

Ifs Thinking Hard Spirit Economics Opposites Executives Salary Euro

Author:Jonathan Sacks

“Actually, one of the better indicators historically of how well the stock market will do is just a Gallup poll, when you ask Americans if you think it's a good time to invest in stocks, except it goes the opposite direction of what you would expect. When the markets going up, it in fact makes it more prone toward decline.”

Ifs Thinking Wells Facts Asks Opposites Good Times Decline Polls Indicators

Author:Nate Silver

“If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite.”

Ifs Long Doe Social Media Car Internet Mass Opposites Isolation Mentality Workplace Suburbs Mass Media Bunkers Social Isolation Different Mentality

Author:Alex Steffen

“There's no law of physics that says we have to be an unsustainable society - in fact, quite the opposite. The planet's ready to work with us if we're ready to think differently, but we do have to make that jump and start to do things in new ways.”

Ifs Thinking Way Facts Law Planets Ready Opposites Physics New Ways Laws Of Physics

Author:Alex Steffen

“Now, playing a love interest can be really thrilling, if you're working opposite thrilling people.”

People Ifs Interest Opposites Thrilling

Author:Kristin Scott Thomas

“This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.”

People Ifs Thinking Mean Soul Asks Courage Opposites Agree

Book:The Common Reader

Source: The Common Reader

“What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make others people's decisions for them? Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or at the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude. If it results from anything, it must be levity.”

People Ifs Action Political Decision Results Attitude Liberty Opposites Property Evolve Ownership Polls Compulsion Political Action Levity Barricades Ownership And Control

Book:Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

“Think of being curled up and floating in a darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world the Asian Taoists call the "Ten Thousand Things"? And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead? What would you care? How would you eve know the difference?”

Ifs Thinking Knows World Care Imagination Differences Darkness Imagine Thousand Ten Opposites Floating Miraculous Asian

Book:Jesus' Son: Stories

Source: Jesus' Son: Stories

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

People Ifs May Ideas Ends Facts Wisdom Reality Faces Used Values Results Struggle Achieve Depends Opposites Worthless Personal Relationships

Author:Thomas Merton

“To square the records, however, it should be said that if the Calvinist does not rise as high, he usually stays up longer. He places more emphasis on the Holy Scriptures which never change, while his opposite number (as the newspapers say) tends to judge his spiritual condition by the state of his feelings, which change constantly. This may be the reason that so many Calvinistic churches remain orthodox for centuries, at least in doctrine, while many churches of the Arminian persuasion often go liberal in one generation.”

“In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn't the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert.”

Ifs Feelings Sides Hours Dark White Cat Opposites Snow Desert Sheets Fabulous Moonlight Otherness Snow White Stargirl

Book:The Stargirl Collection

Source: The Stargirl Collection

“Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.”

Ifs Looks Persons Stills Life Is Causes Opposites Silent Busy Stillness Observers Fascination Inner Life Velocity

Book:Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“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

“Elie Wiesel says that the greatest evil in the world is not anger or hatred, but indifference. If that is true, then the opposite is also true: that the greatest love we can show our children is the attention we pay them, the time we take for them. Maybe we serve children the best simply by noticing them.”

Ifs World Children Shows Evil Pay Attention Hatred Opposites Our Children Indifference Noticing Greatest Love

Author:Mumia Abu-Jamal

“If you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.”

People Ifs Thinking Way Should Force Watches Opposites One Way Spite Just Being Stubborn Mules

Book:One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“The great majority of us are required to live a constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected by it if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what bring brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just a fiction, it’s part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity.”

“They all think any minute I'm going to commit suicide. What a joke. The truth of course is the exact opposite: suicide is the only thing that keeps me alive. Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nitwit. But if I could not kill myself -- ah then, I would. I can do without nembutal or murder mysteries but not without suicide.”

Ifs Thinking I Can Two Courses Can Do Alive Failing Mystery Minutes Jokes Opposites Murder Suicide Commit If I Could Seconds Cheerful Murder Mysteries

Book:The Moviegoer

Source: The Moviegoer

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

“Just my luck, if I believed in luck. I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is.”

Ifs Believe Opposites Luck

Book:A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in The Wicked Years

Source: A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in The Wicked Years

“Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive.”

“The reason I know what we are to each other is because we fight freely and almost constantly, about even the smallest thing. In fact, once we didn't speak for an entire week because he didn't like the way I loaded his dishwasher...I can't decide if we're exact opposites, or somehow exactly the same except for minor cosmetic differences. I do know that all of his friends hate me and all of my friends hate him. We drive each other crazy in ways that nobody else can even touch. We never bore each other. And we both realize what a rare thing this is.”

Ifs Knows Way I Can Reason Facts Hate Fighting Speak Realizing Differences Week Crazy My Friends Opposites Bores Minors Smallest Loaded Hate Me Cosmetics Hate Him Rare Things Dishwashers

Author:Augusten Burroughs

“God never promised that we wouldn’t have challenges. In fact, He said just the opposite. His word says, ‘Be truly glad!...these trials are only to test your faith, to see whether or not it is strong and pure…’ so if your faith remains strong after being tried in the test tube of fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day of His return.”

Ifs Said Facts Strong Challenges Return Honor Pure Glory Tests Opposites Praise Remains Glad Trials Tubes Fiery Glory And Honor

Author:Joel Osteen

“I found that if I offered to cook for a girl, my odds improved radically over simply asking a girl out. Through my efforts to attract the opposite sex, I found that not only did cooking work, but that it was actually fun.”

Ifs Girl Found Fun Sex Effort Opposites Asking Cooking Cooks Odds

Author:Alton Brown

“know that without night there is no day; without lies, no truth;without despair,no hope. Beware above all of hate, but call to its opposite too. For all things have an opposite and, if you choose it, with will and care, you may turn one thing into its reflection.”

Ifs Knows May Care Lying Night Hate Turns One Thing Despair Reflection All Things Opposites You Choose No Hope

Author:David Clement-Davies

“If gold has been prized because it is the most inert element, changeless and incorruptible, water is prized for the opposite reason -- its fluidity, mobility, changeability that make it a necessity and a metaphor for life itself. To value gold over water is to value economy over ecology, that which can be locked up over that which connects all things.”

Ifs Has Beens Reason Values Water Economy Elements All Things Gold Opposites Metaphor Locked Ecology Locked Up Mobility Fluidity

Book:Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics

Source: Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics

“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.”

“People always say it's harder to heal a wounded heart than a wounded body. Bullshit. It's exactly the opposite—a wounded body takes much longer to heal. A wounded heart is nothing but ashes of memories. But the body is everything. The body is blood and veins and cells and nerves. A wounded body is when, after leaving a man you’ve lived with for three years, you curl up on your side of the bed as if there’s still somebody beside you. That is a wounded body: a body that feels connected to someone who is no longer there.”

“I turned to look into his face one last time. It was as if I could see the whole universe in his eyes. Maybe he was God, maybe he was simply enlightened. I didn't care right then, in that blessed moment, I just loved him. Later, though, the love was to turn to hate, to fear. They seemed so opposite, the feelings, yet they were all one note on his flute.”

Source: Thirst No. 1: The Last Vampire, Black Blood, Red Dice

“They say there is no light without dark, no good without evil, no male without female, no right without wrong. That nothing can exist if it's direct opposite does not also exist.”

Ifs Doe Light Evil Dark Female Direct Opposites Males

Book:Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

Source: Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

“If civilization has an opposite, it is war.”

Ifs War Civilization Opposites

Book:The Left Hand of Darkness

Source: The Left Hand of Darkness

“My head was level with hers as we stared at each other from opposite sides of the glass. I don't remember how it ended - if I went to bed or she did. In my memory, it doesn't end. We just stay there, looking at each other, forever.”

Ifs Ends Remember Sides Memories Levels Forever Bed Opposites Glasses

Book:Paper Towns

Source: Paper Towns

“The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.”

“Gu was a worrier, a neurotic curmudgeon. If he had a headache, it was a brain tumor; if it looked like rain, this year's harvest was ruined. This was his way of controlling the situation, his lifelong strategy for always coming out ahead. Now, when reality looked more dire than any of his fatalisitic predictions, he had no choice but to turn tail and charge in the opposite direction.”

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“There were two now where they had been three. David's death had dismantled the triangle, and an enclosed space was now open. Two points are unreliable; with nothing to anchor them, there is nothing to stop them drifting in opposite directions. If it is string that binds, it will eventually snap and the points will separate; if elastic, they will continue to part, further and further, until the strain reaches its limit and they are pulled back with such speed that they cannot help but collide with devastating force.”

Ifs Two Helping Three Force Space Limits Opposites Speed Strings Strain Anchors Snaps Drifting Unreliable Triangles Collide

Book:The House at Riverton: A Novel

Source: The House at Riverton: A Novel

“Bell seated himself behind the desk, motioning for Nancy to stand opposite him. There was tense silence for a moment. Then Bell reached for a desk telephone. "I am going to call the police, Miss Drew, and turn you over to them on a charge of trespassing, breaking, and entering with an attempt to steal." "I wish you would," Nancy replied. "if it is possible over that dummy telephone.”

Ifs Moments Turns Wish Behinds Silence Missing Opposites Police Stealing Bells Desks Entering Telephones Tense Wish You Nancy Dummy Trespassing I Wish You Would Breaking And Entering

Author:Carolyn Keene

“The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.”

Ifs May Enough Beautiful Desire Strong Opposites Oneself Proof Secure Luxury Fixed Existentialism Permit Skepticism Existential Strong Faith

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“But nirvana is a radical transformation of how it feels to be alive: it feels as if everything were myself, or as if everything---including "my" thoughts and actions---were happening of itself. There are still efforts, choices, and decisions, but not the sense that "I make them"; they arise of themselves in relation to circumstances. This is therefore to feel life, not as an encounter between subject and object, but as a polarized field where the contest of opposites has become the play of opposites.”

Source: Psychotherapy East & West

“People who think that grammar is just a collection of rules and restrictions are wrong. If you get to like it, grammar reveals the hidden meaning of history, hides disorder and abandonment, links things and brings opposites together. Grammar is a wonderful way of organising the world how you'd like it to be.”

People Ifs Thinking World Way Together Wonderful Opposites Collections Links Disorder Grammar Abandonment Restriction Hidden Meaning

Author:Delphine de Vigan

“It's the story of my life. You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead. Now, as you look through this document you'll see that I've underlined all the major decisions I ever made to make the stand out. They're all indexed and cross-referenced. See? All I can suggest is that if you take decisions that are exactly opposite to the sort of decisions that I've taken, then maybe you won't finish up at the end of your life" --she paused, and filled her lungs for a good should--"in a smelly old cave like this!”

“When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.”

Ifs Success Universe Stars Opposites Aim Reaching Aim High Reaching For The Stars

Author:Vera Nazarian

“Newton's Third Law of Conversation, if it existed, would hold that every statement implies an equal and opposite statement. To say that I'd turned the offer down raised the possibility that I might not have done.”

Ifs Done Might Law Possibility Offers Conversation Equal Opposites Thirds Raised Statements Newton

Book:The Gun Seller

Source: The Gun Seller

“The Bible is not interested in arguing, because if you state a thesis of belief you have already stated it's opposite; if you say, I believe in God, you have already suggested the possibility of not believing in him. [p.250]”

Ifs Believe States Belief I Believe Possibility Opposites I Believe In Arguing Believe In God Not Interested Thesis I Believe In God

Author:Northrop Frye

“...when someone asked Bonhoeffer whether he shouldn't join the German Christians in order to work against them from within, he answered that he couldn't. 'If you board the wrong train,' he said, 'it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.”

Ifs Said Use Running Christian Order Opposites Train Boards Corridors Bonhoeffer

Book:Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Source: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“One time you told me that the opposite of love isn't hate. And I didn't understand that, but I think I do know. Because if you hate someone, you most still care, right? You have to care a little bit; otherwise you would just ignore them and forget they even live. Or lived.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Littles Stills Care Hate Bits Forget Little Bit Opposites One Time

Author:Barry Lyga

“Yes. The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. That is why few people find God. They go to church and talk about him and that sort of thing. They may even go out and evangelize and try to win converts. But in their hearts, if they are honest with themselves, they are indifferent to him because they cannot see him. God is too abstract for people. God is a word without meaning. If Jesus came back today, nothing he said would make any sense to those who wait for him. They would be the first ones to kill him again.”

People Ifs Trying Firsts Heart May Said Would Be Today Hate Jesus Winning Waiting Church Love Is Honest Opposites Indifference Abstract Indifferent Those Who Wait Wait For Him

Book:Black Blood

Source: Black Blood

“Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another.”

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