Home / Topics / Opposites Quotes

Opposites Quotes

Browse 2751 quotes about Opposites.

Opposites Quotes

“The opposite of a glance... is a glimpse: because in a glance, we see only for a second, and in a glimpse, the object shows itself only for a second.”

Shows Objects Opposites Glances Glimpse

Author:James Elkins

“There are three things that are the motives of choice and three that are the motives of avoidance; namely, the noble, the expedient, and the pleasant, and their opposites, the base, the harmful, and the painful. Now in respect of all these the good man is likely to go right and the bad to go wrong, but especially in respect of pleasure; for pleasure is common to man with the lower animals, and also it is a concomitant of all the objects of choice, since both the noble and the expedient appear to us pleasant.”

Men Choices Three Pleasure Animal Common Objects Opposites Painful Noble Motive Pleasant Good Man Three Things Avoidance

Author:Aristotle

“Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side. Dr. Johnson has said that the habit of looking at the best side of a thing is worth more to a man than a thousand pounds a year. And we possess the power, to a great extent, of so exercising the will as to direct the thoughts upon objects calculated to yield happiness and improvement rather than their opposites.”

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance by Samuel Smiles

“The object isn't to be perfect. The goal isn't to hold back until you've created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.”

Believe I Believe Goal Perfect Imagine Failing Objects Waste Opposites Bigger Reproach Birthright

Author:Seth Godin

“I decided I should use the most obvious colours - the basic colours with simple names: red, purple, yellow, pink. I don't distort the objects, I don't change the objects, I draw them exactly as they are. I do the opposite with the colours.”

Should Use Names Simple Objects Draws Red Decided Opposites Obvious Colour Yellow Purple Don't Change

Author:Michael Craig-Martin

“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

“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

“Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake.”

Next Games Felt Alive Objects Opposites Sake Convinced Narrative Staying New Things Staying Alive Pinball

Author:Jonathan Franzen

“That all opposites—such as mass and energy, subject and object, life and death—are so much each other that they are perfectly inseparable, still strikes most of us as hard to believe. But this is only because we accept as real the boundary line between the opposites. It is, recall, the boundaries themselves which create the seeming existence of separate opposites. To put it plainly, to say that "ultimate reality is a unity of opposites" is actually to say that in ultimate reality there are no boundaries. Anywhere.”

Source: No Boundary, Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth

“Mind is dual, it always divides things into polar opposites: the conqueror and the conquered, the observer and the observed, the object and the subject, the day and the night. It goes on dividing things which are not divided. Neither is the day divided from the night, nor is birth divided from death. They are one energy. But mind goes on dividing everything into polarities, opposites. Nothing is opposite in existence; every contradiction is only apparent. Deep down all contradictions are meeting together.”

Mind Together Night Energy Existence Subjects Objects Goes On Birth Opposites Meetings Contradiction Divided Divides Observers Deep Down Conqueror Dividing Polarity Polar Opposites

Author:Rajneesh

“As I became aware that all things have unique spatial and temporal qualities which visually define and relate them, I began to perceive the things I was photographing not as objects but as events. Working to develop my skills of perceiving and symbolizing these event qualities, I discovered the principle of opposites. When, for example, I photographed the smooth, luminous body of a woman behind a dirty cobwebbed window, I found that the qualities of each event were enhanced and the universal forces which they manifested were more powerfully evoked.”

Source: Wynn Bullock, photographing the nude: the beginnings of a quest for meaning

“Among the authorities it is generally agreed that the Earth is at rest in the middle of the universe, and they regard it as inconceivable and even ridiculous to hold the opposite opinion. However, if we consider it more closely the question will be seen to be still unsettled, and so decidedly not to be despised. For every apparent change in respect of position is due to motion of the object observed, or of the observer, or indeed to an unequal change of both.”

Ifs Stills Earth Science Universe Opinion Middle Position Objects Authority Opposites Regard Dues Ridiculous Observers Despised

Book:On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

Source: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres