Contraries Quotes & Sayings

The power of monsters is their ability to fuse opposites, to merge contraries, to subvert rules, to overthrow cognitive barriers, moral distinction, and ontological categories. Monsters overcome the barrier of time itself. Uniting past and present, demonic and divine, guilt and conscience, predator and prey, parent and child, self and alien, our monsters are our innermost selves. — David D. Gilmore

All concord's born of contraries. — Ben Jonson

Being cannot be one in form, though it may be in what it is made of. (Even some of the physicists hold it to be one in the latter way, though not in the former.) Man obviously differs from horse in form, and contraries from each other. — Aristotle.

The passions often engender their contraries. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

In the second half of life the necessity is imposed of recognizing no longer the validity of our former ideals but of their contraries. Of perceiving the error in what was previously our conviction, of sensing the untruth in what was our truth, and of weighing the degree of opposition, and even of hostility, in what we took to be love. — Carl Jung

All thinkers then agree in making the contraries principles, both those who describe the All as one and unmoved (for even Parmenides treats hot and cold as principles under the names of fire and earth) and those too who use the rare and the dense. (20) — Aristotle.

I'm moved by contraries, by opposites, the strength that was my mother's eyes, the beauty of my father's hands. — Judith Jamison

They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another. — Thomas Browne

It was lunar symbolism that enabled man to relate and connect such heterogeneous things as: birth, becoming, death, and ressurection; the waters, plants, woman, fecundity, and immortality; the cosmic darkness, prenatal existence, and life after death, followed by the rebirth of the lunar type ("light coming out of darkness"); weaving, the symbol of the "thread of life," fate, temporality, and death; and yet others. In general most of the ideas of cycle, dualism, polarity, opposition, conflict, but also of reconciliation of contraries, of coincidentia oppositorum, were either discovered or clarified by virtue of lunar symbolism. We may even speak of a metaphysics of the moon, in the sense of a consistent system of "truths" relating to the mode of being peculiar to living creatures, to everything in the cosmos that shares in life, that is, in becoming, growth and waning, death and ressurrection. — Mircea Eliade

... on some occasions, women, like dreams, go by contraries. — Louisa May Alcott

Without contraries there is no progression. — William Blake

Fortunately we have learnt to combine these ideas, not in the mutual toleration of sub-contraries, but in the affirmation of contraries, that transcending of the laws of intellect which is madness in the ordinary man, genius in the Overman who hath arrived to strike off more fetters from our understanding. — Aleister Crowley

For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud
and it is here above allthat exceptions prove the rule
that everything that exists in nature exists in art. — Victor Hugo

The hope is that science gives us objective truth; religion, however, gives us personal meaning or personal truth. They should not be seen as contraries. — Richard Rohr

Do not be deceived by the way men of bad faith misuse words and names ... Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade. — R.A. Lafferty

If thou makest a statement concerning women, lo, she shall immediately try to disprove it straightway. She goeth by contraries. — Gelett Burgess

I do not accept evil. Man is perfect. The soul does not fall. Progress exists ... Up till now, misfortune has been described in order to inspire terror and pity. I will describe happiness in order to inspire their contraries ... As long as my friends do not die, I will not speak of death. — Comte De Lautreamont

Do we ever get what we really want? Do we ever achieve what our powers have ostensibly equipped us for? No: everything works by contraries. — Nikolai Gogol

There appears to be but two grand master passions or movers in the human mind, namely, love and pride. And what constitutes the beauty or deformity of a man's character is the choice he makes under which banner he determines to enlist himself. But there is a strong distinction between different degress in the same thing and a mixture of two contraries. — Sarah Fielding

It is plain then that they all in one way or another identify the contraries with the principles. And with good reason. For first principles must not be derived from one another nor from anything else, while everything has to be derived from them. But these conditions are fulfilled by the primary contraries, which are not derived from anything else because they are primary, nor from each other because they are contraries. — Aristotle.

As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delights of presence best known by the torments of absence. — Alcibiades

Contraries are cured by contraries. — Bill Vaughan

Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. — William Blake

I say that in narrative paintings one should mingle direct contraries close by, because they produce strong contrasts with one another, and all the more so when they are very close together; that is, the ugly next to the beautiful, the big to the small, the old to the young, the strong to the weak; in this way you will vary as much as possible and close by. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial; the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade. But do not pity them overly, it is your own death and your soul's death that they work by their deception. — R.A. Lafferty

By proving contraries, truth is made manifest. — Joseph Smith Jr.

There is no learned man but will confess be hath much profited by reading controversies,
his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds firmly established. If then it be profitable for him to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write? In logic they teach that contraries laid together, more evidently appear; it follows then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much to the general confirmation of an implicit truth. — John Milton

The beginning, middle, and end of the birth, growth, and perfection of whatever we behold is from contraries, by contraries, and to contraries; and whatever contrariety is, there is action and reaction, there is motion, diversity, multitude, and order, there are degrees, succession and vicissitude. — Giordano Bruno

The first set make the underlying body one - either one of the three5 or something else which is denser than fire and rarer than air - then generate everything else from this, (15) and obtain multiplicity by condensation and rarefaction. Now these are contraries, which may be generalized into 'excess and defect'. — Aristotle.

It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist. — Thomas Aquinas

Thus we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it. — Daniel Defoe

GONZALO: I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
And no sovereignty; -
SEBASTIAN: Yet he would be king on't.
ANTONIO: The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning. — William Shakespeare

Jo's face was a study next day, for the secret rather weighed upon her, and she found it hard not to look mysterious and important. Meg observed it, but did not troubled herself to make inquiries, for she had learned that the best way to manage Jo was by the law of contraries, so she felt sure of being told everything if she did not ask. — Louisa May Alcott

God works by contraries so that a man feels himself to be lost in the very moment when he is on the point of being saved. — Martin Luther

Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The hero whose attachment to ego is already annihilate passes back and forth across the horizons of the world, in and out of the dragon, as readily as a king through all the rooms of his house. And therein lies his power to save; for his passing and returning demonstrate that through all the contraries of phenomenality the Un-create- Imperishable remains, and there is nothing to fear (93). — Joseph Campbell

In life, as in dreams, however, things often go by contraries — L.M. Montgomery

Our ... reduceth to a single origin and relateth to a single , and maketh contraries to coincide so that there is one primal foundation both of origin and of end. From this coincidence of contraries, we deduce that ultimately it is divinely true that contraries are within contraries; wherefore it is not difficult to compass the knowledge that each thing is within every other. — Giordano Bruno

A love without satiety an ecstasy without an end, a surrender to the beloved - God - without ever falling back on egotistic loneliness. Marriage and celibacy are not contraries — Fulton J. Sheen

Everything lives by movement, everything is maintained by equilibrium, and harmony results from the analogy of contraries; this law is the form of forms. — Eliphas Levi

Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one's being, but by integration of the contraries. — C. G. Jung