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Opposites Quotes

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Opposites Quotes

“She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.”

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Book:Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much
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“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.”

PeopleIfsActionPoliticalDecisionResultsAttitudeLibertyOppositesPropertyEvolveOwnershipPollsCompulsionPolitical ActionLevityBarricadesOwnership And Control
Book:Skinny Legs and All
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“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.”

PeopleIfsMayIdeasEndsFactsWisdomRealityFacesUsedValuesResultsStruggleAchieveDependsOppositesWorthlessPersonal Relationships
Author:Thomas Merton
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“The world is filled with people who are no longer needed. And who try to make slaves of all of us. And they have their music and we have ours. Theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare. And without their music and ideological miscarriages to compare our songs of freedom to, we'd not have any opposite to compare music with - - and like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we'd never know its speed, its power.”

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Book:Pastures of plenty: a self-portrait
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“Few people...have had much training in listening. The training of most oververbalized professional intellectuals is in the opposite direction. Living in a competitive culture, most of us are most of the time chiefly concerned with getting our own views across, and we tend to find other people's speeches a tedious interruption of the flow of our own ideas.”

PeopleIdeasCultureViewsListeningSpeechTrainingConcernedFlowOppositesTediousInterruptions
Author:S. I. Hayakawa
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“I do think that women could make politics irrelevant; by a kind of spontaneous cooperative action the like of which we have never seen; which is so far from people’s ideas of state structure or viable social structure that it seems to them like total anarchy — when what it really is, is very subtle forms of interrelation that do not follow some heirarchal pattern which is fundamentally patriarchal. The opposite to patriarchy is not matriarchy but fraternity, yet I think it’s women who are going to have to break this spiral of power and find the trick of cooperation.”

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Author:Germaine Greer
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“Most people think things are not real unless they are spoken, that it's the uttering of something, not the thinking of it, that legitimizes it. I suppose this is why people always want other people to say "I love you." I think just the opposite—that thoughts are realest when thought, that expressing them distorts or dilutes them.”

PeopleThinkingWantRealLove YouOppositesSay I Love You
Book:Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
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“There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour.”

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Book:the bell jar
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“Sometimes I would make left turns all the way around a block, and when I returned to the original intersection, I would feel disappointed to find all the drivers were new. It wasn't like a square dance, where you miraculously end up with your original partner, laughing and feeling giddily relieved to find him after dancing with everyone else in the world. Instead, they swung around and kept on going, some people were at work by now, or halfway to the airport. In fact, driving might be the thing most opposite of dancing.”

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Book:No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
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“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.”

PeopleIfsLoveLifeInspirationalHumansHeartPersonsInspirationMotivationalReligionHatePeaceBornCommunityInspiringLearningSocietyHuman NaturePositiveTaughtColorPoliticianRacismHatredSkinsOppositesI HateBackgroundsDiscriminationHatedLgbtSouth AfricaHuman HeartLove HateApartheidHuman DignityLove And HateHate PeopleSkin ColorHate HimAnti RacismLearning To LoveLong WalksLong Walk To FreedomLove Or HateEducation And FreedomI Hate PeoplePeace HarmonyPeace And ToleranceAnti DiscriminationInspirational FreedomNo HateHated LoveHate ReligionHate GodDiscrimination And RacismEnding RacismNatural LoveAgainst RacismJustice And Love
Author:Nelson Mandela
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“Wounding and healing are not opposites. They're part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to to find other people or to even know they're alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of.”

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Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
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“It’s the same with people who say, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn’t kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you incredibly annoying.”

PeoplePainRealizingLossWeakOppositesStrongerAnnoyingPompousCripplesMakes You StrongerFull Of Yourself
Book:Love Is a Mix Tape: Life, Loss, and What I Listened To
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“I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete — that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.”

PeopleWantKindValuesAcceptingOppositesSickAbsolutesTheatreQuittingDepartmentAshamedScareNot AfraidApplauseI QuitRave
Author:J. D. Salinger
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“There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people!”

PeopleMenChildrenActorsActingAirPromiseClothesBirdDignityEmptyOppositesKillingCloudsSpokesGesturesVengeanceHollowWigsSwearingVanishingDementedKilling Each OtherRosencrantz And GuildensternCoupletsEmpty Promises
Book:Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
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“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.”

PeopleIfsMenFeelsYearsHeartStillsBodyThreeSidesMemoriesBloodBedOppositesHarderLeavingConnectedHealCellsNervesThree YearsAshesBullshitWoundedVeinsYour SideCurlsBeside YouWounded Heart
Author:Xiaolu Guo
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“Anna is the only proof I have that I was born into this family. Instead of dropped off on the doorstep by some Bonnie and Clyde couple that ran off into the night. On the surface, we’re polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we’re the same: people think they know what they’re getting, and they’re always wrong. (Jesse)”

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Book:My Sister's Keeper - Movie Tie-In: A Novel
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“What connexion can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!”

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Book:Bleak House
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“People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion.”

PeopleDifferentSometimesCertainOpinionImagineTvsOppositesRadioAccessNewspapersInfinityImagine ThatAmplifyDifferent OpinionsOthers Opinions
Author:Amin Maalouf
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“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. […] There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.[…]The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.”

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Author:C. S. Lewis
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“I love the idea of the big life - the life that matters, the life that makes a difference. The life where stuff happens, where people take action. The opposite of the life where the girl can't even speak to the boy she likes; the opposite of the life where the friends aren't even good friends, and lots of days are wasted away feeling bored and kind of okay, like nothing matters much.”

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Book:Fly on the Wall
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“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.”

PeopleIfsTryingFirstsHeartMaySaidWould BeTodayHateJesusWinningWaitingChurchLove IsHonestOppositesIndifferenceAbstractIndifferentThose Who WaitWait For Him
Book:Black Blood
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“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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Author:Steven Pinker
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“In face of this modern nihilism, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take this question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there we would be among the first of those who had the courage to step out of the queue.”

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Author:Francis Schaeffer
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“I think the highest forgiveness is to accept that creation is thoroughly tangled, with every possible quality given outlet for expression. People need to accept once and for all that there is only one life and each of us is free to shape it through the choices we make. Seeking can’t get anyone out of the tangle because everything is tangled up…it’s much easier to keep up the fight between good and evil, holy and profane, us and them. But as awareness grows, these opposites begin to calm down in their clashes, and something else emerges- a world you feel at home in.”

PeopleThinkingWorldNeedsFeelsHomeChoicesFightingEvilGivenGrowsQualityAcceptingAwarenessCreationExpressionEasierHolyShapesHighestOppositesCalmSeekingGood And EvilOutletsClashTangledProfaneCalm Down
Author:Deepak Chopra
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