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Breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next... (David Abram)
I'm nothing more than what you actually see, but I am also the complete opposite. (Keren Ann)
Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash. (Louis Aragon)
My work is so unorthodox that from one panel to the next, the drawings are completely different... totally opposed to the way of working in something like animation, where every drawing has to look like the one before. (Sergio Aragones)
Now equilibrium is the very opposite of disorder. (Rudolf Arnheim)
I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex. (John Baldessari)
Perceive the similarity between the unfamiliar and what is familiar - look for opposites - and change your frame of reference. (Miles G. Batt)
You can say the opposite of something you've said but you can't do the opposite of something you've done. (Jose Bergamin)
All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. (John Berger)
So, this was my general feeling: on the one side, this beautiful undamaged nature form which I took a lot and had a lot of possibilities for contemplation, meditation, research, collecting things, making a kind of system; and on the other side, this social debacle that I felt already as a coming dilemma. (Joseph Beuys)
The pair of opposites do not effect a yogi - neither praise nor insult. (Yogi Bhajan)
In the animation world, people who understand pencils and paper usually aren't computer people, and the computer people usually aren't the artistic people, so they always stand on opposite sides of the line. (Don Bluth)
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. (Niels Bohr)
Some artists shrink from self-awareness, fearing that it will destroy their unique gifts and even their desire to create. The truth of the matter is quite opposite. (James Broughton)
Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. (Anthony Burgess)
- Hero...
There is both joy and suffering on planet Earth because this beautiful world is a world of duality - a world of opposites. There is an opposite side to everything. (Rhonda Byrne)
Opposites attract, and I think temperament is so fundamental that you end up craving someone of the opposite temperament to complete you. (Susan Cain)
-Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking...
All personality traits have their good side and their bad side. But for a long time, we've seen introversion only through its negative side and extroversion mostly through its positive side. (Susan Cain)
Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite - getting something down. (Julia Cameron)
Whenever a situation develops to its extreme, it is bound to turn around and become its opposite. (Frank Capra)
Why do 'overlook' and 'oversee' mean opposite things? (George Carlin)
Why are a 'wise man' and a 'wiseguy' opposites? (George Carlin)
I love playing ego and insecurity combined. (Jim Carrey)
I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like. (Coco Chanel)
Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. (Pema Chodron)
The harder you try to become the opposite of your parents, the more quickly you become them. (Doug Coupland)
Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep. (Quentin Crisp)
It is either easy or impossible. (Salvador Dali)
Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true. (Ram Dass)
When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. (Richard Dawkins)
- quoted in The Anchor Book of French Quotations with English Translations, (1963) by Norbert Gutermam...
To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him. (Denis Diderot)
Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen. (Carol Ann Duffy)
What a funny thing painting is. The abstract painters always insist on their connection with the visible reality, while the so-called figurative artists insist that what they really care about is the abstract qualities of life. (Marlene Dumas)
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. (Albert Einstein)
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. (James Elkins)
-The 4-Hour Workweek...
The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom. (Timothy Ferriss)
In excess, most endeavors and possessions take on the characteristics of their opposite. (Timothy Ferriss)
Identify in your work opposites of color, form, compositional arrangements, space, etc. (Josh Goldberg)
Overcome errors in observing by exaggerating the opposite. (Irwin Greenberg)
Abstract realism unites two opposing forms of art to create an alternative approach which combines non-objective and objective in a single vision. (Joseph Gyurcsak)
Everybody is a True Believer. Everybody has a little nugget they're convinced of that is the opposite of the nugget on the other side. And they're convinced it's fact. (Jane Haddam)
If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst. (Thomas Hardy)
All things merge in one another - good into evil, generosity into justice, religion into politics... (Thomas Hardy)
If 'pro' is the opposite of 'con' what is the opposite of 'progress'? (Paul Harvey)
- The Scarlet Letter...
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin. (Hermann Hesse)
You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. (Hermann Hesse)
So many wonderful opposites: darkness and light, peace and chaos, subtlety and directness, intensity and muteness... (Matthew Higginbotham)
Within every setback or obstacle or disadvantage there is the seed of an equal or opposite or greater advantage or benefit. (Napoleon Hill)
The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension of opposites. (Carl Gustav Jung)
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. (Carl Gustav Jung)
There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad to find the home one has lost. (Franz Kafka)
Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success. (Abdul Kalam)
I like to make an image that is so simple you can't avoid it, and so complicated you can't figure it out. (Alex Katz)
Entitlement is the opposite of enchantment. (Guy Kawasaki)
It's all too much and not enough at the same time. (Jack Kerouac)
It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite. (Soren Kierkegaard)
- The Fire-Dwellers...
What goes on inside isn't ever the same as what goes on outside. (Margaret Laurence)
I love to use my left hand. I can literally feel the divide between my right and left hemispheres dissolving away. (Carin Lavery)
The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. (Fran Lebowitz)
To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. (Walter Lippmann)
What is there about polarity that is matter becoming more complex? (Norman Mailer)
What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil. (Norman Mailer)
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth. (Thomas Mann)
-Life of Pi...
The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other. (Yann Martel)
Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is. (Rollo May)
For playful or unusual lines, consider the use of your opposite hand... You may be surprised at the results. (Richard McDaniel)
People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words. (Felix Mendelssohn)
Write the opposite of what you always write, think, speak. Do everything against the grain! (Deena Metzger)
The principle to remember is that all dualities and opposites are not disjoined but polar. They do not confront each other from afar; they originate in a common center. (Michael Michalko)
The artist is the opposite of the politically-minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life. (Henry Miller)
My music is alive and it's about the living and the dead, about good and evil. It's angry, yet it's real because it knows it's angry. (Charles Mingus)
To know one thing, you must know the opposite. (Henry Moore)
Our pleasures are made up of opposites: hot and cold, dark and light, salty and sweet, energy and sleep. Opposites show us we are alive and living in our bodies. (Janet Morgan)
I started with straight, basic, symbolic structures. My problem now is the opposite; as I get older, I try to make my paintings more contrapuntal, richer. (Robert Motherwell)
I enjoy lying flat on the ground, looking at things above me. In this position, what is above me becomes the opposite of me. And in this face-to-face situation, I find intimacy. (Nerrisa Ng)
Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Most people think of success and failure as opposites, but they both are products of the same process. (Roger von Oech)
It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative - whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it. (Sylvia Plath)
Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments. (Plato)
Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence. (Norman Podhoretz)
The opposite of love isn't hate; it's indifference. (Steven Pressfield)
The remedy for thirst? It is the opposite of the one for a dog bite: run always after a dog, he'll never bite you; drink always before thirst, and it will never overtake you. (Francois Rabelais)
There is a need to subvert my own taste and find the opposite to look at. (Fiona Rae)
Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. (Ayn Rand)
To change misery, disease and failure into joy, health, success and prosperity, I must think, speak and act, in ways which are the exact reverse of how most people think, speak and act. (James Arthur Ray)
I tried to oppose the academic to the marketplace. (Ad Reinhardt)
No one escapes that moment of innocence when the world attacks him and installs within him the spirit of opposites... As long as everything within you is saying yes and no, dark and light, with big earth-shaking ideas, you come nowhere near art, I think. Light and dark don't exist for us as artists. Light is something given to you and you're allowing it to pass through. (Milton Resnick)
Success lies in the opposite direction of the natural flow. (Jim Rohn)
God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one. (Rumi)
The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, grotesque. (John Ruskin)
I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite. (Bertrand Russell)
The opposite of simplicity, as I understand it, is not complexity but clutter. (Scott Russell Sanders)
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it. (George Santayana)
The optimistic style of explaining good events is the opposite of that used for bad events: It's internal rather than external. (Martin Seligman)
Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former. (William Shenstone)
All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves. (Eli Siegel)
Oscar is the exact opposite of how I think you should behave. I just think of it as a negative view of the positive mind I have. Big Bird is sweet and nice and also sympathetic, as kids can identify with him even though he looks like such a bizarre character - great 8 feet 2 inches, a beak 18 inches long. (Caroll Spinney)
Action and reaction are equal and opposite. (Gertrude Stein)
There are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike each other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and evil, are not absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for wherever there is life there is action, and action is but the expression of one or other of these qualities. (James Stephens, author)
-The Collected Poems...
Two things of opposite natures seem to depend / One on another, as Logos depends / On Eros, day on night, the imagined On the real. / This is the origin of change. (Wallace Stevens)
Uncertainty can drive people into themselves, making them feel isolated and helpless. The best strategy here is to go in the opposite direction, expanding your connection with others - focusing on helping them transform their negatives into positives. (Dan Sullivan)
Obviously, the intention was not to go back to images traditionally valued as worthy or holy images and shapes, but exactly the opposite; its main purpose had to be to realise as sacred art, anything which so far had been regarded as of little value and pitiful. (Antoni Tapies)
Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it? (Henry David Thoreau)
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. (Author unknown)
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason. (Leonardo da Vinci)
And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. (Alan Watts)
If you aim to dispense with method, learn method; If you aim at facility, work hard; If you aim for simplicity, master complexity. (Wang Wei)
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. (Elie Wiesel)
There is a profound truth to being both
good and bad, positive and negative, powerful and vulnerable, masculine and feminine, light and dark. Not either/or, not neither/nor, but both, even all, and ending duality as we know it. (J. Bruce Wilcox)
Did you ever find that there is room between the two opposing rules of a paradox? That space between two almost opposite rules is the ground where I play and write. (Mu Xin)
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