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Opposites Quotes

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Opposites Quotes

“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.”

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

IfsKnowsWayI CanReasonFactsHateFightingSpeakRealizingDifferencesWeekCrazyMy FriendsOppositesBoresMinorsSmallestLoadedHate MeCosmeticsHate HimRare ThingsDishwashers
Author:Augusten Burroughs
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“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.”

WayGivingFeelsPersonsBookRealRealityReadingImaginationAttentionHealthyOppositesGive MeContactBlissAccomplishedDisorderSmarterDeficitBetter PersonAttention Deficit DisorderToo Real
Author:Nora Ephron
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“The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could remember every stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind.”

WayMindLongSaidDoneFeelingsPastRememberFeltPerfectStupidLowsOppositesClarityRecallsHumiliationEmbarrassmentParadesStupid ThingsFeeling LowPicture Perfect
Book:Little Brother
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“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.”

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Book:World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
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“I actually grew fond of her in a nastily superior kind of way. For she was so completely artless and optimistic and clueless, she didn't care that she smelled bad or was fat or wore clothes unlike everyone else's, she had some weird disconnect with life that kept her constantly bubbling, and you knew she would go blithely through her long horribly boring life thinking every thing was just swell (the opposite of me).”

ThinkingWayKindLongCareGrewClothesOppositesBoringSuperiorsFatsOptimisticCluelessBoring Life
Book:Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
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“I'm always amazed at friends who say they try to read at night in bed but always end up falling asleep. I have the opposite problem. If a book is good I can't go to sleep, and stay up way past my bedtime, hooked on the writing. Is anything better than waking up after a late-night read and diving right back into the plot before you even get out of bed to brush your teeth?”

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Book:Role Models
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“The way I pictured it, all this grief would be like a winter night when you're standing outside. You'll warm up once you get used to the cold. Except after you've been out there for awhile, you feel the warmth draining out of you and you realize the opposite is happening; you're getting colder and colder, as the body heat you brought outside with you seeps out of your skin. Instead of getting used to it, you get weaker the longer you endure it.”

WayFeelsBodyWould BeUsedNightRealizingGriefColdHappeningsStandingSkinsOppositesEndureWinterWarmHeatWarmthDrainingWinter NightBody Heat
Author:Rob Sheffield
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“Southern women see no point in the hard way. Life is hard enough. So we add a little sugar to the sour. Which is not to suggest Southern women are disingenuous cream puffs. Quite the opposite. When you are born into a history as loaded as the South’s, when you carry in your bones the incontrovertible knowledge of man’s violence and limitations, daring to stay sweet is about the most radical thing you can do.”

MenWayLittlesHardEnoughLife IsCan DoBornViolenceSweetOppositesAddSouthBonesRadicalLimitationSouthernSugarDaringCreamNo PointLoadedSourLife Is HardPuffHard WayDisingenuousSouthern WomenCream Puffs
Author:Allison Glock
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“Now I’m just standing here on the conveyor. Along for the ride. I reach the end, turn around, and go back the other way. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. After a few hours of this, I notice a female on the opposite conveyor. She doesn’t lurch or groan like most of us. Her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her. That she doesn’t lurch or groan. I catch her eye and stare at her.”

WorldWayHas BeensEndsEyeTurnsEasySidesHoursFemaleStandingOppositesStaringHer EyesAlong For The Ride
Book:Warm Bodies: A Novel
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“You would think, wouldn’t you, that if you were the child of a happy marriage, then you ought to have a better than average marriage yourself – either through some genetic inheritance or because you’d learnt from example? But it doesn’t seem to work like that. So perhaps you need the opposite example – to see mistakes in order not to make them yourself. Except this would mean that the best way for parents to ensure their children have happy marriages would be to have unhappy ones themselves. So what’s the answer?”

IfsThinkingWayNeedsMeanChildrenSeemsWould BeOrderParentAnswersMistakeExampleOughtOppositesAverageUnhappyBest WayInheritanceHappy Marriage
Author:Julian Barnes
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“There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?”

ThinkingKnowsWayEarthPerfectGrowingTreeRootsOppositesConnectedBranchesOpposingUpside DownTrunksSymmetry
Book:Elsewhere
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“My mother was a continual source of wisdom and great advice...she taught me that there is always a way around a problem-you've just got to find it. Keep trying doors; one will eventually open. She also taught me to accept failure as part and parcel of life. It's not the opposite of success; it's an integral part of success. I talk a lot about learning to become fearless in your approach to life. But fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's all about getting up one more time than you fall down.”

WayTryingProblemMotherFallAcceptingDoorsAdviceTaughtSourceApproachOppositesAbsenceFearlessMore TimeMasteryFalling DownKeep TryingFearlessnessParcelThere Is Always A WayGreat Advice
Author:Arianna Huffington
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“If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves?”

IfsWayBelieveEndsSometimesLyingCertainOrderFallEnergyQualityOppositesAnd LoveFalling In LoveBelovedPessimismCynicismSpectrumExaggerationHabitualCoupsLove Lies
Book:On Love: A Novel
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“Additionally, Liesl and Po is the embodiment of what writing has always been for me at its purest and most basic--not a paycheck, certainly; not an idea, even; and not an escape. Actually, it is the opposite of an escape; it is a way back in, a way to enter and make sense of a world that occasionally seems harsh and terrible and mystifying. (From the "Author's Note" at the end).”

WorldWayWritingIdeasEndsSeemsTerribleOppositesNotesMake SenseHarshEmbodimentPaychecks
Author:Lauren Oliver
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“I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening. Because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I’m resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsWaySeemsTurnsCasesHappeningsOppositesInnovationDeterminedFavorsBest WayButtonsTurn OffI Am DeterminedJuggernaut
Author:Marshall McLuhan
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“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God's commandment. Wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of almighty God. Not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.”

WayWantGivingTryingMeanHandsPurposeNationsDestinySecurityBattleProtectSafeDemandWeaponsCrossesDirectOppositesSafetyOneselfSelfishObedienceGuaranteesAlmightyCommandmentsVentureAlmighty God
Author:Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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“In Sliding Doors, the whole idea is that every choice you make, and every single thing that happens to you changes the trajectory of your life, and once you are put on that trajectory, there is no way back. But Groundhog Day - which, I tell him, also happens to be a much better movie - says the opposite. It says if you mess up or make the wrong choice, you just have to keep at it until you do it right.”

IfsWayIdeasWholeHappensChoicesDoorsOppositesMessTrajectoryChoices You MakeWrong ChoicesGroundhog DayGroundhogsSliding Doors
Book:Love Is the Higher Law
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“Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.”

IfsWayWantLifeMayEndsFacesMovingSidesLinesPathWallDependsLoversBuiltOppositesLipsObstaclesAccidentsCardsFixedTouchingMagnetJulietFiling
Book:The Principles of Psychology
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“Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent - the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.”

MenWayGivingMayPlaySeemsFacesBitsChangeKingsOppositesFundamentalsTyrannyPermanentDelusionCycles
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“The ultimate way of Being lies beyond all contradictory pairs of opposites with which our two dimensional thinking mind operates. As soon as we are successful in silencing the restless activity of the thinking mind and give a chance to intuition, the pure all embracing spirit in us will manifest effortlessly.”

ThinkingWayGivingMindTwoSpiritLyingChanceSuccessfulMeditationPureActivityOppositesUltimateIntuitionPairsManifestRestlessContradictoryThinking MindSilencing
Author:Anagarika Govinda
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“Gardening is not trivial. If you believe that it is, closely examine why you feel that way. You may discover that this attitude has been forced upon you by mass media and the crass culture it creates and maintains. The fact is, gardening is just the opposite - it is, or should be, a central, basic expression of human life.”

IfsWayFeelsShouldBelieveHumansMayHas BeensFactsCultureAttitudeMediaExpressionMassGardenOppositesHuman LifeGardeningIf You BelieveMass MediaCrass
Author:Andrew Weil
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“Meditation means undoing what the society has done to you. It has reduced you to a machine; you have to de-automatise yourself, you have to become a man again. You have to come out of this state of unconsciousness, of mechanicalness. You have to come out of this sleep. It is possible only through meditation. There is no other way, there has never been, there will never be. The only way to reduce a man to a machine is take away his consciousness force him to function unconsciously. And just the opposite is the way of meditation: give him back his consciousness.”

MenWayGivingMeanStatesDoneForceSleepConsciousnessMeditationMachinesOppositesFunctionUnconsciousnessUndoing
Author:Rajneesh
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“There are endless ways to amuse oneself and be idle, and most of them lie outside the woods. I assume that when a man goes to the woods he goes because he needs to. I think he is drawn to the wilderness much as he is drawn to a woman: it is, in its way, his opposite. It is as far as possible unlike his home or his work or anything he will ever manufacture. For that reason he can take from it a solace-an understanding of himself, of what he needs and what he can do without-such as he can find nowhere else.”

ThinkingMenWayNeedsReasonHomeLyingUnderstandingCan DoOppositesAssumingOneselfWoodsEndlessWildernessIdleSolace
Author:Wendell Berry
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“It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the same thing, described from opposite points of view. How we shall experience it depends upon the way we shall come up against it: God does not change; it is man's moral state that changes. The wrath of God is a figure of speech to denote God's unchanging opposition to sin; it is His righteous love operating to destroy evil. It is not evil that will have the last word, but good; not sorrow, but joy; not hate, but love.”

MenWayLoveDoeStatesLastsJoyHateEvilSinViewsMoralFiguresDependsSorrowSpeechOppositesMetaphorCome UpPoint Of ViewGod LoveOppositionRighteousStrainLast WordsWrathLove HateUnchangingWrath Of GodFigures Of Speech
Author:Reginald John Campbell
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“Do I start with the lyrics? No. Quite honestly, it's the opposite. I generally get the melody first - I kinda fiddle around on the guitar and work out a melody. The lyrics are there to flesh out the tone of the music. I've tried before to do things the other way around, but it never seems to work. Obviously, I spend a lot of time on my lyrics, I take them very seriously, but they're kinda secondary. Well, equal, maybe. I think sometimes that if you write a poem, it should remain as just a poem, just... words.”

IfsThinkingWayShouldWritingFirstsWellsSometimesSeemsEqualOppositesGuitarWork OutFleshHonestlyToneMelodySongwritingFiddle
Author:Iron & Wine
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