Opposite But The Same Quotes & Sayings

In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought that the same cause should produce such opposite effects. — Mary Shelley

Raising your kids vegetarian is a great way to encourage them to do the opposite of what you want! But the goal is not to have them have the same values that I have. It's to have them act on their values. — Jonathan Safran Foer

A source of white light-many colors mixed together-emits photons in a chaotic manner: the angle of the amplitude changes abruptly and irregularly in fits and starts. But when we construct a monochromatic source, we are making a device that has been carefully arranged so that the amplitude for a photon to be emitted at a certain time is easily calculated: it changes its angle at a constant speed, like a stopwatch hand. (Actually, this arrow turns at the same speed as the imaginary stopwatch we used before, but in the opposite direction-see Fig. 67.) — Richard Feynman

Each force in flight is balanced by an opposing force. The opposite of lift is weight. Weight is always trying to pull an object back to earth, so to get something to stay up, lift has to be greater than weight. You'd think your weight would always be the same, but it isn't. When you do aerobatics or go into a dive - like a kite that's plunging into the sand at the beach - there's an increase in gravity, and that makes you weigh more. If you want your heavy kite to stay in the air, you have to increase the lift, as well. Maybe by waiting for a stronger wind. Maybe by finding a windier place to fly your kite. Maddie brought lift back into my life by forcing me outside. So did Bob, who introduced me to the editors of this magazine. So did Fernande, the chambermaid at the Paris Ritz, who gave me her daughter's clothes and made me get dressed and brought me coffee every morning for three weeks. — Elizabeth Wein

Indifference is more truly the opposite of love than hate is, for we can both love and hate the same person at the same time, but we cannot both love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time. — Peter Kreeft

I made very clear at the time that the love of same sex couples is every bit as valuable as that of opposite sex couples but nevertheless my view actually is that marriage in the biblical sense is very clearly from the many many Christians who wrote to me on the subject in their opinion can only be between a man and a woman. — Andrea Leadsom

It has been said that in every being there is another being and this being is the true self. Not a double. Not an opposite. Simply, the one each of us strives to be all our lives. Some who have suffered cruelty, violence, or abuse as children somehow short-circuit this search with their cries. They are kidnapped by the other self and abandoned in a strangely familiar place where they are victim to the same cruelty, violence, or abuse, but can remember little or none of it until such time as they are strong enough to cope. — Philip Davison

All this simply shows us that communalism and terrorism are nothing but opposite sides of the same coin. They keep feeding on each other in a vicious cycle, resulting in a society full of violence, hatred, sorrow and intolerance. Every communal act is used as a justification for mindless acts of terrorism . Similarly , each act of terrorism is used as a justification for such horrible atrocities like genocide and ethnic cleansing. And, it is always the innocent who get killed. This is the sad truth. — Vivek Pereira

For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. I — Plato

Sure...the boy was precocious. But having been precocious himself, Lowell was never wowed by teenagers who could recite the periodic table of elements or whatever. He was on to them. Precocious was not the same as smart, much less the same as wise, and the perfect opposite of informed - since the more you prided yourself on knowing the less you listened and the less you learned. Worse, with application less glibly gifted peers often caught up with or overtook prodigies by early adulthood, and meanwhile the kid to whom everything came so effortlessly never mastered the grind of sheer hard work. — Lionel Shriver

Women are sewers just like we are, the once pure boys recognize with a start; it's raw sewage that produces fertilization; once you understand that you can be fond of yourself and members of the Opposite Sex, but you can never quite see them again as ice cream bars. I, the author, don't really mind this, for I love all girls and love to hug and kiss them and cheer them up when they cry, and have them perform all the same services for me; and a woman's saliva is certainly a miracle, think of all those enzymes and germs; and if I took and wrote the chemicals down on a sheet of paper, all COOOHs and sighs, it would look pretty, just like a face all pretty, like the dear round moon-face of her who loves you or the creamy-freckled skin and blue eyes and heavenly hair of that Irish beauty back in college, so don't think I'm complaining. — William T. Vollmann

They were alike, and yet they were totally opposite
in the way they viewed the world. He viewed it as it was. It
was a dark place, always holding itself into the shadows.
She saw the beauty that no one else could ever have seen in
the darkness. It was to be said that she both saved and
destroyed him. She was the essence of him and yet she,
beautiful sad eyed angel that she was, was also his
destruction all at the same time. He could be a downright
wretch of a man, yet she took it into herself, and never said
a word, but to love him. It was the love that broke him. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it. Thus is happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord's body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

All cats are the same in the dark, says the proverb. But it certainly did not apply to people, with them it was just the opposite. During the day they were all alike, running in their well-defined ways. At night they changed beyond recognition. — Jerzy Kosinski

A fact was the hard outer cover of meaning, and meaning was the soft living stuff inside a fact. Fact and meaning were the driving cogs of living. If the gear of fact drove the gear of meaning, then they revolved in opposite directions, but put the gear of fantasy between the two and they both revolved in the same direction. Fantasy was and is important; it leads to heaven knows where, but follow it and see. Sometimes it pays off. — Fynn

Self-hatred is not in our nature, but self-love is. If we attempt to think logically we might say, well if self-love is pride, then isn't the opposite of pride equal to self-hate? The short answer is no. Many Christians actively argue that since the opposite of pride is humility, the opposite of self-love must be self-hatred. In order for this to be true, it would mean that humility is the same thing as self-hatred. It is not. Humility means that you put others above yourself. The motivation for this selflessness is not because you hate yourself, but because you love others more than you love yourself. Did Jesus hate Himself? No. Previously we saw Jesus as the ultimate example of humility. If you subscribe to the belief that the opposite of pride must be self-hatred, you are also subscribing to the idea that Jesus died on the cross because He hated Himself. Jesus actually died on the cross because of His intense love for us, not for any other reason. — Kristin N. Spencer

It is by now proverbial that every proverb has its opposite. For every Time is money there is a Stop and smell the roses. When someone says You never stand in the same river twice someone else has already replied There is nothing new under the sun. In the mind's arithmetic, 1 plus -1 equals 2. Truths are not quantities but scripts: Become for a moment the mind in which this is true. — James Richardson

Persistence trumps talent.
What's the most powerful force in the universe? Compound interest. It builds on itself. Over time, a small amount of money becomes a large amount of money. Persistence is similar. A little bit improves performance, which encourages greater persistence which improves persistence even more. And on and on it goes.
Lack of persistence works the same way
only in the opposite direction.
Of course talent is important, but the world is lit erred with talented people who didn't persist, who didn't put in the hours, who gave up too early, who thought they could ride on talent alone. Meanwhile, people who might have less talent pass them by.
That's why intrinsic motivation is so important. Doing things not the get an external reward like money or a promotion, but because you simple like doing it. The more intrinsic motivation you have , the more likely you are to persist. The more you persist, the more likely you are to succeed. — Daniel H. Pink

Harry had read once, somewhere, that the opposite of happiness wasn't sadness, but boredom; and the author had gone on to say that to find happiness in life you asked yourself not what would make you happy, but what would excite you. And by the same reasoning, hatred wasn't the true opposite of love. Even hatred was a kind of respect that you could give to someone's existence. If you cared about someone enough to prefer their dying to their living, it meant you were thinking about them. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

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. — Reginald John Campbell

When I step into the ring with someone, this has got to be their vacation spot, but my home turf. So I go the opposite side seven rounds doing the same thing. Skipping, skipping, skipping. Then I go seven rounds going both ways. Skip to the left, skip to the right. — George Foreman

Of course, we all inevitably work too hard, then we get burned out and have to spend the whole weekend in our pajamas, eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma (which is the opposite of working, yes, but not exactly the same thing as pleasure). — Elizabeth Gilbert

A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone. — Cormac McCarthy

Arriving on Bainbridge Island is the opposite of arriving in Seattle. When you got in your car and waited to unload off the ferry in Seattle, you saw the Space Needle, cars, and a mound of urban construction. Once you exit the ferry terminal on Bainbridge, however, it's mostly trees. Pine as far as the eye can see. Well, pines, firework and coffee stands, and eventually a casino. You drive through the Port Madison Indian Reservation when you leave the island. I couldn't help but smile as I went past the casino. I didn't really get gambling, since I'd never had money to throw away, but as I passed through all the beautiful countryside that I'm sure once belonged to the tribe, I sort of hoped they would rob the white man blind. Perhaps not politically correct, but the feeling was there all the same. — Lish McBride

Never mix books and bed. In the spectrum of excitement, sex & thought were on opposite ends. Both to be enjoyed, but never at the same time. — Ian Caldwell

Beneath the current of our existence and within it, there is another current flowing in the opposite direction. In this life we go from yesterday to tomorrow, but there we go from tomorrow to yesterday. The web of life is being woven and unraveled at the same time. And from time to time we get breaths and vapors and even mysterious murmurs from that other world, from that interior of our own world. The inner heart of history is a counter-history; it is a process which inverts the course of history. The subterranean river flows from the sea and back to its source. — Miguel De Unamuno

On the opposite page, there was a poem. It described how beauty and truth mattered more than anything else. They were the same thing.
But it didn't matter how pretty you painted the world. — Brenna Yovanoff

Finally, I have someone that's like me. My other two pupils were the opposite sides of the moon. But this guy is on the same side of the moon, is on the same planet that I'm on. — Shaquille O'Neal

The ethic of ecstasy is the opposite of the trial's ethic; under its protection everybody does whatever he wants: now anyone can suck his thumb as he likes, from infancy to graduation, and it is a freedom no one will be willing to give up; look around you on the Metro; seated or standing, every single person has a finger in some orifice of his face-in the ear, in the mouth, in the nose; no one feels he's being observed, and everyone dreams of writing a book to tell about his unique and inimitable self, which is picking its nose; no one listens to anyone else, everyone writes, and each of them writes the way rock is danced to: alone, for himself, focused on himself yet making the same motions as all the others. In this situation of uniform egocentricity, the sense of guilt does not play the role it once did; the tribunals still operate, but they are fascinated exclusively by the past; they see only the core of the century; they see only the generations that are old or dead. — Milan Kundera

When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe. — Vera Nazarian

You are doomed to a life that will repeat itself again and again, as do all lives - for lives are static things, readings of already written papers - but whereas some men are fortunate to repeat a good pattern, others have the opposite luck - and you can surely see by now that your life is doomed to this same humiliation, endlessly repeated. — Andrew Holleran

For there is hardly any question in the sciences about which clever men have not frequently disagreed. But whenever two persons make opposite judgements about the same thing, it is certain that at least one of them is mistaken, and neither, it seems, has knowledge. For if the reasoning of one of them were certain and evident, he would be able to lay it before the other in such a way as eventually to convince his intellect as well. — Rene Descartes

Well I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And, you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that's how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman. — Carrie Prejean

It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Opposite to where she sat the water was a boggy brown, but not too far along it was a dark violet colour, always changing, the way the sweep of the current changed, but as she saw it, her own life did not change at all - the same routine, the same longing and the same loneliness. — Edna O'Brien

When I got home, I thought about the fact that Einstein supposedly used to stock his wardrobe with the same suits and shoes so he'd never have to think about what he was going to wear. I lack the intellect it takes to solve problems that way. I've advanced nothing in the field of psychology, and my paper on PTSD was given little attention; I wrote that psychological disorders with a genetic link, such as borderline personality disorder, might seem impossible to treat, while PTSD, which is based in trauma that has been experienced, seems easy to tackle, at least to the layperson. The opposite is true. It can be difficult to find the right medication for genetic disorders, but they can be sufficiently treated. Conversely, PTSD never goes away. One might think that our genes are so elementary that we cannot escape them, but our experiences have the ability to do far greater damage. — Bryan Way

People assume that repetition is always a static thing, but I beg to differ. Repetition is just as often the complete opposite of that: or a sign of rapid personal growth. In this repetition manifests one's ability to go on experiencing again the very same thing from a different perspective and in a brand-new light. — Criss Jami

I do not admire the excess of a virtue as of valour, except I see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as in Epaminondas, who had the greatest valour and the greatest kindness. For otherwise it is not to rise, it is to fall. We do not display greatness by going to one extreme, but in touching both at once, and filling all the intervening space. — Blaise Pascal

Free will is something that people struggle with so much, but it's very simple to me. Carl Jung said at the same moment you're a protagonist in your own life making choices, you also are the spear carrier, or the extra, in a much larger drama. You've got to live with these two opposite ideas at the same time. — Wayne Dyer

The fundamental confusion that makes income bracket data and individual income data seem mutually contradictory is the implicit assumption that people in particular income brackets at a given time are an enduring "class" at that level. If that were true, then trends over time in comparisons between income brackets would be the same as trends over time between individuals. Because that is not the case, the two sets of statistics lead not only to different conclusions but even opposite conclusions. — Thomas Sowell

Without looking at Jacob, I said slowly, 'Well, it seeps into you. It doesn't make you forget yourself, but totally the opposite.' I chance a glance at him. He was watching me intently. No glaze in his eyes. So I continued more bravely: 'It connect you with everything and fills you with awe that you share the same space with something that glorious. Like a sunrise on a clear blue day of the most extraordinary piece of glass. And then suddenly'
my hands escaped their tight grip in my lap, and now my fingers splayed wide like fireworks in the air
'you have this epiphany that there's more to the world than just you and what you want or even who you are. — Justina Chen

Expiating a sin does not mean doing something opposite to wallow in guilt, but to use that same guilt to achieve full knowledge of the sin. The fault lies more not in having committed certain acts, rather in having carried them out without reaching their intimate knowledge. And this leads to committing a wrong again and again. — Massimo Marino

Who thinks they're not open-minded? Our hypothetical prim miss from the suburbs thinks she's open-minded. Hasn't she been taught to be? Ask anyone, and they'll say the same thing: they're pretty open-minded, though they draw the line at things that are really wrong. (Some tribes may avoid "wrong" as judgemental, and may instead use a more neutral sounding euphemism like "negative" or "destructive".)

When people are bad at math, they know it, because they get the wrong answers on tests. But when people are bad at open-mindedness they don't know it. In fact they tend to think the opposite. — Paul Graham

So, your Socially Intelligent and altruistic behaviour doesn't just
benefit your friends and colleagues; you benefit too. If you leave people
on a high note, you leave yourself on that same high note! You thus
feed your own memory banks with wonderful and uplifting memories,
as well as boosting your own resistance to stress, illness and disease.
BUT REMEMBER: The opposite is also true ...
If you leave your friends, lovers and colleagues on antagonistic and
unpleasant notes, you help them to flood their own bodies with
poisons that leave them physically unbalanced, their immune systems
weakened, and their memories fouled.
And you do the same to yourself!
The choice is yours ... — Tony Buzan

I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them. — Blaise Pascal

ANTOECI (ANTO'ECI) n.s. It has no singular.[Lat. to inhabit.] In geography, those inhabitants of the earth, who live under the same meridian, and at the same distance from the equator; the one toward the north, and the other to the south. Hence they have the same longitude, and their latitude is also the same, but of a different denomination. They are in the same semicircle of the meridian, but opposite parallels. They have precisely the same hours of the day and night, but opposite seasons; and the night of the one is always equal to the day of the other.Chambers. — Samuel Johnson

My impulse is always toward work, pushing, guilt, rushing. But what restores me, what allows me to interact well with my family, what allows me to get good writing done, is almost always the opposite. And I'm finding that when I practice things like rest, grace, peace, prayer, self-care and slowness, the work gets done just the same. Well, just the same except less crying and less apologizing to my family. I'll take it. — Shauna Niequist

Brant had said my embellishing constituted a disservice to history and its players. But I believed the opposite. Marooning them on the forlorn island of Only What We Know, a place whose boundaries were determined by the scant information provided by a handful of surviving documents, seemed the greater disservice. I paid homage with my imagination, and hoped I might get visitors to do the same. — Leah Hager Cohen

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

When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? My Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions; or rather I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it. — Joseph Addison

There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: "the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach." It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach. — G.K. Chesterton

She cried, 'No choice! No choice!' She doesn't know. If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever.
I know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness.
and even though I taught my daughter the opposite, she still came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.
I know how it is to be quiet, to listen and watch, as if your life were a dream. You can close your eyes when you no longer want to watch. But when you no longer want to listen, what can you do? I can still hear what happened more than sixty years ago. — Amy Tan

Why did we divorce? I guess you could say we had trouble synchronizing. You know that carnival ride where two cages swing in opposite directions, going higher and higher until they go over the top? That was us. We passed each other all the time, but we never actually stopped in the same place until it was time to get off the ride. — Diane Hammond

What worries me the most,' she continued, 'is the opposite, the possibility that they're not trying. They could communicate with us, all right, but they're not doing it because they don't see any point to it. It's like ... "
she glanced down at the edge of the tablecloth they had spread over the grass
"like the ants. They occupy the same landscape that we do. They have plenty to do, things to occupy themselves. On some level they're very well aware of their environment. But we don't try to communicate with them. So I don't think they have the foggiest notion that we exist. — Carl Sagan

Because the actor always moves among and in relation to other acting beings, he is never merely a "doer" but always and at the same time a sufferer. To do and to suffer are like opposite sides of the same coin, and the story that an act starts is composed of its consequent deeds and sufferings. These consequences are boundless, because action, though it may proceed from nowhere, so to speak, acts into a medium where every reaction becomes a chain reaction and where every process is the cause of new processes — Hannah Arendt

Over me. And his brother offers me his hand. "The girl who tamed the beast. It's nice to finally meet." Andy laughs. I can tell by the sparkle in his eyes he knows exactly what his brother is like. "Come on, let's sit and get ready." Their mom sits and drags me with her. "How did BJ seem today? He gets tense sometimes when it's game day. Was he tense?" She's tense but I get it. This is a lifetime of work coming to a head. The culmination of a family full of dreams all coming true in one moment. Sami sits next to me, doing her indifferent face. It's weird being with them and being with my family. The life was the same and then completely opposite. His parents wanted what was best for him, same as mine, and they had a dream for him, same as mine, but they let him choose the dream, in the end. My dad did that for me, but my mom didn't. I wish she could see and feel what this moment is like. I wish I — Tara Brown

-On sharing the love story of the Persian prince Khushraw and the niece of the queen of Armenia Shirin (who were looking for each other but in opposite directions): Both lovers then departed, looking for each other in opposite directions, a theme universal in its pathos, because we all spend our brief lives doing just that, even if we physically share our beds with the same person every night for years. Always we carry an image in our head of a better person, of an ideal person, which blurs our chances of finding happiness. — Fatema Mernissi

Society was ruled by narrow-minded, profoundly incurious people, predatory business men, dull squires, bishops, politicians who could quote Horace but had never heard of algebra. Science was faintly disreputable and religious belief obligatory. Traditionalism, stupidity, snobbishness, patriotism, superstition and love of war seemed to be all on the same side; there was need of someone who could state the opposite point of view. — George Orwell

But one of the progressions I've made is from being a depressed teenager who saw how powerless she was to change all the ills around her to being a mostly cheerful fifty-something who realizes there are all kinds of ways of working towards positive change. I am not as active in doing so as my conscience would have me be, but I am not at all passive, or powerless. And that's because I'm not alone. I've learned I can trust that humans in general will strive to make things better for themselves and their communities. Not all of us. Not always in principled, loving, or respectful ways. Often the direst opposite, in fact. But we're all on the same spinning ball of dirt, trying to live as best we can. — Nalo Hopkinson

What is childlike humility? It's not the lack of intelligence, but the lack of guile. The lack of an agenda. It's that precious, fleeting time before we have accumulated enough pride or position to care what other people might think. The same un-self-conscious honesty that enables a three-year-old to splash joyfully in a rain puddle, or tumble laughing in the grass with a puppy, or point out loudly that you have a booger hanging out of your nose, is what is required to enter heaven. It is the opposite of ignorance - it is intellectual honesty: to be willing to accept reality and to call things what they are even when it is hard. — Todd Burpo

What art does is to coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous. The so-called uselessness of art is a clue to its transforming power. Art is not part of the machine. Art asks us to think differently, see differently, hear differently, and ultimately to act differently, which is why art has moral force. Ruskin was right, though for the wrong reasons, when he talked about art as a moral force. Art is not about good behaviour, when did you last see a miracle behave well? Art makes us better people because it asks for our full humanity, and humanity is, or should be, the polar opposite of the merely mechanical. We are not part of the machine either, but we have forgotten that. Art is memory - which is quite different [from] history. Art asks that we remember who we are, and usually that asking has to come as provocation - which is why art breaks the rules and the taboos, and at the same time is a moral force. — Jeanette Winterson

To see how transfer of antifragility works, consider two scenarios, in which the market does the same thing on average but following different paths. Path 1: market goes up 50 percent, then goes back down to erase all gains. Path 2: market does not move at all. Visibly Path 1, the more volatile, is more profitable to the managers, who can cash in their stock options. So the more jagged the route, the better it is for them. And of course society - here the retirees - has the exact opposite payoff since they finance bankers and chief executives. Retirees get less upside than downside. Society pays for the losses of the bankers, but gets no bonuses from them. If you don't see this transfer of antifragility as theft, you certainly have a problem. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A word about 'plain English.' The phrase certainly shouldn't connote drab and dreary language. Actually, plain English is typically quite interesting to read. It's robust and direct-the opposite of gaudy, pretentious language. You achieve plain English when you use the simplest, most straightforward way of expressing an idea. You can still choose interesting words. But you'll avoid fancy ones that have everyday replacements meaning precisely the same thing. — Bryan A. Garner

I want to take her into my arms and hold her tight. But at the same time, I know that is the exact opposite of what she wants. She wants to be free, and all I want is to hold her tight against me. ~ Elder — Beth Revis

I was reading a poem by my idol, Wallace Stevens, in which he said, 'The self is a cloister of remembered sounds.' My first response was, Yesss! How did he know that? It's like he's reading my mind. But my second response was, I need some new sounds to remember. I've been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I'm spinning through the same sounds I've been hearing in my head all my life. If I go on this way, I'll get old too fast, without remembering any more sounds than I already know now. The only one who remembers any of my sounds is me. How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people? How do you jump off one moving train, marked Yourself, and jump onto a train moving in the opposite direction, marked Everybody Else? I loved a Modern Lovers song called, 'Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste,' and I didn't want to waste mine. — Rob Sheffield

Till now, I could not have supposed it possible to be mistaken as to a girl's being out or not. A girl not out, has always the same sort of dress: a close bonnet, for instance; looks very demure, and never says a word. You may smile, but it is so, I assure you; and except that it is sometimes carried a little too far, it is all very proper. Girls should be quiet and modest. The most objectionable part is, that the alteration of manners on being introduced into company is frequently too sudden. They sometimes pass in such very little time from reserve to quite the opposite - to confidence! That is the faulty part of the present system. — Jane Austen

And how comfortless is the thought that the sickness of the normal does not necessarily imply as its opposite the health of the sick, but that the latter usually only present, in a different way, the same disastrous pattern. — Theodor Adorno

Science, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, is flexible and nondogmatic. It sticks to facts and to reality (which always can change) and to logical thinking (which does not contradict itself and hold two opposite views at the same time). But it also avoids rigid all-or-none and either/or thinking and sees that reality is often two sided and includes contradictory events and characteristics. Thus, in my relations with you, I am not a totally good person or a bad person but a person who sometimes treats you well and sometimes treats you badly. Instead of viewing world events in a rigid, absolute way, science assumes that such events, and especially human affairs, usually follow the laws of probability. — Albert Ellis

It is said that you can't write without a reader. The opposite holds true as well; you can't read without a writer. But if as a single, creative person you are one in the same, then, well ... problem solved! Great writing is born from that which we personally long to read. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Logic, too, also rests on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world, e.g., on the assumption that there areequal things, that the same thing is identical at different points in time: but this science arose as a result of the opposite belief (that such things actually exist in the real world). And it is the same with mathematics, which would certainly never have arisen if it had been understood from the beginning that there is no such thing in nature as a perfectly straight line, a true circle, and absolute measure. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Whether it is a falling man or an orbiting satellite, the effect of inertia is to create an apparent upward force that depends on the mass of the object. It is the same force we feel when riding in a car that goes around a tight curve. This inertial effect is equal and opposite to gravity and therefore cancels the pull of gravity. In physicist language, the "gravitational mass" and "inertial mass" are equal. This is not a tautology, as Ambrose Bierce thought, but a recognition that the pull of gravity is proportional to the inertia of the object being pulled. Einstein called this the "Principle of Equivalence", and it became the basis for his new theory of gravity that he called the general theory of relativity. — Rodney A. Brooks

It was still, at the root, the same dance: the same two bodies, connecting, gliding together, two aching souls reaching for each other and finding more than could be told. And then, in the fourth song, or maybe it was the fifth, they switched roles, without speaking, their bodies deciding, hands moving from waist to shoulder or shoulder to waist and pouring the dance in the opposite direction, which was, they discovered, not an opposite at all but a continuation of the very same dance, the same essential language of the body, of two bodies wishing to be one, forming a kinetic poem out of longing. — Carolina De Robertis

All history is the same thing over and over ... The technology may change, but the behavior is still human. We are who we are. Individuals learn, grow up, get better, wiser, stronger, healthier, kinder - or the opposite. As a group, though, we keep inventing the same behaviors. Some work, some don't. — Orson Scott Card

Mind training is based on the idea that two opposite mental factors cannot happen at the same time. You could go from love to hate. But you cannot, at the same time - toward the same object, the same person - want to harm and want to do good. — Matthieu Ricard

The ancient sanskirt legends speak of a destined love, a karmic connection between souls that are fated to meet and collide and enrapture one another. the legends say that the loved one is instantly recognised because she's loved in every gesture, every expression of thought, every movement, every sound, and every mood that prays in her eyes. the legends say that we know her by her wings - the wings that only we can see - and because wanting her kills every other desire of love. the same legends also carry warnings that such fated love may, sometimes, be the possession and the obsession of one, and only one, of the two souls twinned by destiny. but wisdom, in one sense, is the opposite of love. love survives in us precisely because it isn't wise. — Gregory David Roberts

Too often, the notion of progress is used as a code word for perfection, the chain of being in a different guise. The term should be employed with caution. Some see an arrow of time in biology, as in physics, but in the opposite direction- a relentless tendency to improve, just as a universe has a built-in trend towards chaos and disorder. That is too optimistic. Some lineages get more complicated, some simpler, and much of life has to struggle to stay in the same place. If everyone is evolving, nobody can afford to stop, and there may be constant change with no overall advance at all. — Steve Jones

In the beginning it was always the same. But. I kept trying. Then one day I accidentally moved as the shutter clicked. A shadow appeared. The next time I saw the outline of my face, and a few weeks later my face itself. It was the opposite of disappearing. — Nicole Krauss

I suppressed a sigh. Hungary felt increasingly like reading War and Peace: new characters came up every five minutes, with their unusual names and distinctive locutions, and you had to pay attention to them for a time, even though you might never see them again for the whole rest of the book. I would rather have talked to Ivan, the love interest, but somehow I didn't get to decide. At the same time, I also felt that these superabundant personages weren't irrelevant at all, but somehow the opposite, and that when Ivan had told me to make friends with the other kids, he had been telling me something important about the world, about how the fateful character in your life wasn't the one who buried you in a rock, but the one who led you out to more people. — Elif Batuman

The big problem of our modern society is that we feel that we are separated from the nature. But it's just the opposite. We are interrelated and our DNA is the same. And only when human beings understand that, the nature will not be obstacle. — Marina Abramovic

Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

H&M approached us to collaborate, and see if we could translate the dream we created at Lanvin to a wider audience, not just a dress for less. I have said in the past that I would never do a mass-market collection, but what intrigued me was the idea of H&M going luxury rather than Lanvin going public. This has been an exceptional exercise, where two companies at opposite poles can work together because we share the same philosophy of bringing joy and beauty to men and women around the world. — Alber Elbaz

GARDENS OR FIELDS? Craig Blomberg points out that in Matthew's parable of the mustard seed, the sower sows his seed in a "field" (agros, Matt 13:31), while in Luke the sowing is in a "garden" (kepos, Luke 13:19). Jews never grew mustard plants in gardens, but always out on farms, while Greeks in the Mediterranean basin did the opposite. It appears that each gospel writer was changing the word that Jesus used in Mark - the word for "earth" or "ground" (ge, Mark 4:31) - for the sake of his hearers. There is a technical contradiction between the Matthean and Lukan terms, states Blomberg, "but not a material one. Luke changes the wording precisely so that his audience is not distracted from ... the lesson by puzzling over an ... improbable practice." The result is that Luke's audience "receives his teaching with the same impact as the original audience."22 — Timothy Keller

My generation grew up with an imposed myth: the myth of happily ever after
(and makes you do the same). Whether we wrote this myth or its opposite
there is no prince, and ever if there is, he never comes, and even if he comes, he never makes you come
we were still seeing our lives in terms of this myth. Pro-prince or anti-prince, the terms of the debate were defined
and not by us. We tried to write other myths
some day my princess will come or I am my own princess so there
but they were all derivative. The armature of plot was the same. We were reacting, not creating. We had not expanded the terms in which we saw our lives. — Erica Jong

the ultimate standard, by which we determine all disputes, that may arise concerning them, is always derived from experience and observation. Where this experience is not entirely uniform on any side, it is attended with an unavoidable contrariety in our judgments, and with the same opposition and mutual destruction of argument as in every other kind of evidence. We frequently hesitate concerning the reports of others. We balance the opposite circumstances, which cause any doubt or uncertainty; and when we discover a superiority on any side, we incline to it; but still with a diminution of assurance, in proportion to the force of its antagonist. — Christopher Hitchens

Separation is painful, but so is its opposite. And if being together brings joy, then it is only proper that separation should do the same in its own way. — Yukio Mishima

Etymologically, "compassion" means to suffer together. "Together," however, is different from "identically." Compassion is not the same as selflessness, and not really the opposite of selfishness. Rather, it provides a basis for helping other people that is materially disinterested but emotionally self-regarding. As Rousseau wrote in Emile, "When the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer. I am interested in him for love of myself ... " Or, as Jean Bethke Elshtain has said, "Pity is about how deeply I can feel. And in order to feel this way, to experience the rush of my own pious reaction, I need victims the way an addict needs drugs. — William Voegeli

Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things. In France, I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country. — Alexis De Tocqueville

It was like being wrapped in a sheet, all white, nothing but white, above, below, all around you. It was the exact opposite of darkness, but it frightened Alice in precisely the same way. — Paolo Giordano

A Bond girl must be a strong and independent woman, but at the same time charming and sensual. Those opposite qualities combined together make her interesting. She must be strong but at the same time feminine. — Olga Kurylenko

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

I'm excited about mobile; clearly that's important. Mobile devices are kind of at the opposite end of PCs, in that PCs are pretty open and you can do a fair amount with them, but many mobile devices aren't. We're excited at the idea that we can make the same kind of contribution in the mobile space. So that's one thing coming down the pike. — Mitchell Baker

Now standing in one corner of a boxing ring with a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, shooting a bullet weighing only 40 grains and with a striking energy of 51 foot pounds at 25 feet from the muzzle, I will guarantee to kill either Gene Tunney or Joe Louis before they get to me from the opposite corner. This is the smallest caliber pistol cartridge made; but it is also one of the most accurate and easy to hit with, since the pistol has no recoil. I have killed many horses with it, cripples and bear baits, with a single shot, and what will kill a horse will kill a man. I have hit six dueling silhouettes in the head with it at regulation distance in five seconds. It was this type of pistol that Millen boys' colleague, Abe Faber, did all his killings with. Yet this same pistol bullet fired at point blank range will not dent a grizzly's skull, and to shoot a grizzly with a .22 caliber pistol would simply be one way of committing suicide — Ernest Hemingway,

For it is not true that some Christians believe in divine sovereignty while others hold an opposite view. What is true is that all Christians believe in divine sovereignty, but some are not aware that they do, and mistakenly imagine and insist that they reject it. What causes this odd state of affairs? The root cause is the same as in most cases of error in the church
the intruding of rationalistic speculations, the passion for systematic consistency, a reluctance to recognize the existence of mystery and to let God be wiser than men, and a consequent subjecting of Scripture to the supposed demands of human logic. — J.I. Packer

So often, over the course of our day-to-days, we forget the details of what shapes us most in life. Sure, we'll pay through the nose to have our weddings videotaped, but can we say the same thing about the first time we discovered masturbation, or the moment we realized that the true nature of the opposite sex is to lie and humiliate (and I'm not just talking about women here)? Usually not. — Kevin Smith

At the opposite pole to this nature of shadows, madness fascinates because it is knowledge. It is knowledge, first, because all these absurd figures are in reality elements of a difficult, hermetic, esoteric learning. These strange forms are situated, from the first, in the space of the Great Secret, and the Saint Anthony who is tempted by them is not a victim of the violence of desire but of the much more insidious lure of curiosity; he is tempted by that distant and intimate knowledge which is offered, and at the same time evaded, by the smile of the gryllos; his backward movement is nothing but that step by which he keeps from crossing the forbidden limits of knowledge; he knows already - and — Michel Foucault

Some girls can't stand to be around the guy they like. They get really nervous, and rather than make fools of themselves, they just stay away. I was the opposite; the more I liked a guy, the more I wanted to be around him. I was the type who'd join the same org, or pick the same elective. Sure I was probably looking like a fool five times a day over a bunch of things, but I liked being close to someone I admired. — Mina V. Esguerra

Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. One would think that extreme wariness and caution would be the order of the day, but in fact childish trust and impetuosity are far more common. The journalistic encounter seems to have the same regressive effect on a subject as the psychoanalytic encounter. The subject becomes a kind of child of the writer, regarding him as a permissive, all-accepting, all-forgiving mother, and expecting that the book will be written by her. Of course, the book is written by the strict, all-noticing, unforgiving father. — Janet Malcolm

I felt sorry for Mary-Emma and all she was going through, every day waking up to something new. Though maybe that was what childhood was. But I couldn't quite recall that being the case for me. And perhaps she would grow up with a sense that incompetence was all around here, and it was entirely possible I would be instrumental in that. She would grow up with love, but no sense that the people who loved her knew what they were doing - the opposite of my childhood - and so she would become suspicious of people, suspicious of love and the worth of it. Which in the end, well, would be a lot like me. So perhaps it didn't matter what happened to you as a girl: you ended up the same. — Lorrie Moore

Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word ad immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen. He's sure to open the door again for it's a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would only pretend not to look at the other, if he slowly set the room in order as though it were a room like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door, sometimes even both are behind the doors and the the beautiful room is empty. Franz Kafka (in a letter to Milena Jesenska) — Edmund White

Minerva drew unusual attention to herself on her very first evening, when she was revealed to be a Hatstall. After five and a half minutes, the Sorting Hat, which had been vacillating between the houses of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, placed Minerva in the latter. (In later years, this circumstance was a subject of gentle humour between Minerva and her colleague Filius Flitwick, over whom the Sorting Hat suffered the same confusion, but reached the opposite conclusion. The two Heads of House were amused to think that they might, but for those crucial moments in their youths, have exchanged positions). — J.K. Rowling