Opposite Word Quotes & Sayings

I am an artist ... It's self-evident that what that word implies is looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full. It is the opposite of saying, 'I know all about it. I've already found it.' As far as I'm concerned, the word means, 'I am looking. I am hunting for it. I am deeply involved.' — Vincent Van Gogh

When I was in fourth grade, we were learning vocabulary words, and the word nonconformist came up. The teacher said, "It's somebody who whatever everybody is doing, they do the opposite." I remember raising my hand and saying, "Mrs. Christiansen, I would like to be a nonconformist." — Nick Offerman

What should worry us is not the number of people who oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so. We should therefore divert our attention away from the presence of unpopularity to the explanations for it. It may be frightening to hear that a high proportion of a community holds us to be wrong, but before abandoning our position, we should consider the method by which their conclusions have been reached. It is the soundness of their method of thinking that should determine the weight we give to their disapproval. We seem afflicted by the opposite tendency: to listen to everyone, to be upset by every unkind word and sarcastic observation. We fail to ask ourselves the cardinal and most consoling question: on what basis has this dark censure been made? We treat with equal seriousness the objections of the critic who has thought rigorously and honestly and those of the critic who has acted out of misanthropy and envy. — Alain De Botton

Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Pathetic, huh?" He learned that word
from me.
"Yeah. It's like the opposite of a fish,
right? — Hannah Moskowitz

Allure is a word very few people use nowadays, but it's something that exists. Allure holds you, doesn't it? Whether it's a gaze or a glance in the street or a face in the crowd or someone sitting opposite you at lunch ... you are held — Diana Vreeland

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

Eventually, he found the bed too comfortable for his state of mind, so he lay down on his back, his legs sprawled across the carpet. He anagrammed "yrs forever" until he found one he liked: sorry fever. And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wanted do cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something. He kept thinking about one word - forever - and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage.
It hurt like the worst ass-kicking he'd ever gotten. And he'd gotten plenty. — John Green

Col,
Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go And here's me, whispering again and again and again and again: iloveyou. yrs forever, K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e
Eventually, he found the bed too comfortable for his state of mind, so he lay down on his back, his legs sprawled across the carpet. He anagrammed "yrs forever" until he found one he liked: sorry fever. And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wanted to cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus somthing. He kept thinking about one word -forever-and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage.
It hurt like the worst ass-kicking- he'd ever gotten. And he'd gotten plenty."
1.Greek: "I have found it."
2.More on that later. — John Green

The writing system at the opposite extreme took the longest to emerge: the alphabet, one symbol for one minimal sound. The alphabet is the most reductive, the most subversive of all scripts. In all the languages of earth there is only one word for alphabet (alfabet, alfabeto, ). The alphabet was invented only once. — James Gleick

Where the hell have you been?" said Meryl, when I caught up with her in the Street of Inns at about three in the morning. "Where did you get that huge bag of money?" I dumped it on the pavement, sick of hefting the weight around. "Is there a word for the exact opposite of a mugging? — Anonymous

I think there's a greater detriment with our escalating progression toward the opposite extremity - the increasingly common ideology that assures people they're right about what they believe. And note that I used the word "detriment." I did not use the word "danger," because I don't think the notion of people living under the misguided premise that they're right is often dangerous. Most day-to-day issues are minor, the passage of time will dictate who was right and who was wrong, and the future will sort out the past. It is, however, socially detrimental. It hijacks conversation and aborts ideas. It engenders a delusion of simplicity that benefits people with inflexible minds. It makes the experience of living in a society slightly worse than it should be. — Chuck Klosterman

Transgress. In a word, be other than yourself in turning into your love-soaked opposite. — John Ashbery

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

Home, to me, was any place by my mother's side. Since my mother's death, the idea of home has assumed many forms. I use the word loosely to refer to India, Nepal and even Tibet when I am in San Francisco. Home is a place that is always imminent but never present. Or maybe it is the very opposite, maybe I am at ease whenever I am and the feeling of not belonging to any one place is a condition of being at home. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

For me, the word "writing" is the exact opposite of the word "waiting". Instead of waiting, there is writing. — Roberto Bolano

People in Africa have a well-deserved reputation for being happy. This may explain why: there is no word in Swahili for "sarcasm" therefore Africans have no concept of saying something and having it mean a playfully snide version of the opposite. — Will Bowen

Yes. The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. That is why few people find God. They go to church and talk about him and that sort of thing. They may even go out and evangelize and try to win converts. But in their hearts, if they are honest with themselves, they are indifferent to him because they cannot see him. God is too abstract for people. God is a word without meaning. If Jesus came back today, nothing he said would make any sense to those who wait for him. They would be the first ones to kill him again. — Christopher Pike

Knowing that a particle can occupy two different states at the same time - a state known as superposition - and, two particles, such as two particles of light, or photons, can become entangled, means that there is a unique, coupled state in which an action, like a measurement, upon one particle immediately causes a correlated change in the other.
If there is a better word to describe my relationship with Fanio than entangled, I have yet to hear it. Even when the two entangled particles - or people - are separated by a great distance (and I mean emotional or physical distance, such as mine with Epifanio, or like being at opposite ends of the universe), their movements or actions affect each other. Yet, before any measurements or other assessments occur, the actual "spin states" of either of the two particles are uncertain and even unknowable. — Sally Ember

I was an utterance in absentia. I was a forgotten word, uttered and mislaid long ago. I was the word that existed because there was another word that was my opposite, and without it I was nothing. I gained meaning only by acknowledging that possible other.
Nida — Faiqa Mansab

We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life. — Marina Keegan

A politician will always tip off his true belief by stating the opposite at the beginning of the sentence. For maximum comprehension, do not start listening until the first clause is concluded. Begin instead at the word 'BUT' which begins the second, or active, clause. This is the way to tell a liberal from a conservative - before they tell you. Thus: 'I have always believed in a strong national defense, second to none, but ... (a liberal, about to propose a $20 billion defense cut). — Frank Mankiewicz

I push open the door just as Tobias, who is sitting on the floor with one leg stretched out, hurls a butter knife at the opposite wall. It sticks, handle out, from a large hunk of cheese they positioned on top of the dresser. Caleb, standing beside him, stares in disbelief, first at the cheese and then at me.
"Tell me he's some kind of Dauntless prodigy," says Caleb. "Can you do this too?"
"With my right hand, maybe," I say. "But yes, Four is some kind of Dauntless prodigy.
Tobias's eyes catch mine on the word "Four." Caleb doesn't know that Tobias wears his excellence all the time in his own nickname. — Veronica Roth

We are not walking in the Word if our thoughts are opposite of what it says. We are not walking in the Word if we are not thinking in the Word. — Joyce Meyer

Boredom is essentially a thwarted desire for events, not necessarily pleasant ones, but just occurrences such as will enable the victim of ennui to know one day from another. The opposite of boredom, in a word, is not pleasure, but excitement. — Bertrand Russell

Boots, I told you that I'd never walk away again. I'm a man of my word, he says sternly. Clearly insinuating that I'm the opposite of that. — Jillian Dodd

Everybody in hip-hop discriminates against gay people. Matter of fact, the exact opposite word of 'hip-hop,' I think, is 'gay.' Like yo, you play a record and if it's wack, 'That's gay, dog!' And I wanna just come on TV and just tell my rappers, just tell my friends, 'Yo, stop it, fam.' — Kanye West

Those who use the word 'anarchy' to mean disorder or misrule, are not in correct. If they regard government as necessary, if they think that we could not live without Whitehall or the White House directing our affairs, if they think politicians are essential to our well-being and that we could not behave socially without policemen, they are right in assuming that anarchy means the opposite to what government guarantees. But those who take the reverse opinion, and consider government to be tyranny, are right too in considering anarchy, no government, to be liberty. If government is the maintenance of privilege and exploitation
and inefficiency of distribution its tool then only anarchy is order. — Albert Meltzer

His analysis showed that there was a significant correlation between the level of complexity of a society and the number of distinctions that are expressed inside the word. But contrary to what Joe, Piers, and Tom might expect, it was not the case that sophisticated societies tend to have sophisticated word structures. Quite the opposite: there is an inverse correlation between the complexity of society and of word structure! The simpler the society, the more information it is likely to mark within the word; the more complex the society, the fewer semantic distinctions it is likely to express word-internally. — Guy Deutscher

Time flowed for Bela in the opposite direction. The day after yesterday, she sometimes said. Pronounced slightly differently, Bela's name, the name of a flower, was itself the word for a span of time, a portion of the day. Shakal bela meant morning; bikel bela, afternoon. Ratrir bela was night. Bela's yesterday was a receptacle for anything her mind stored. Any experience or impression that had come before. Her memory was brief, its contents limited. Lacking chronology, randomly rearranged. — Jhumpa Lahiri

In some cases - most notably the Christian - one revelation is apparently not sufficient, and needs to be reinforced by successive apparitions, with the promise of a further but ultimate one to come. In other cases, the opposite difficulty occurs and the divine instruction is delivered, only once, and for the final time, to an obscure personage whose lightest word then becomes law. Since all of these revelations, many of them hopelessly inconsistent, cannot by definition be simultaneously true, it must follow that some of them are false and illusory. It could also follow that only one of them is authentic, but in the first place this seems dubious and in the second place it appears to necessitate religious war in order to decide whose revelation is the true one. — Christopher Hitchens

At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful. — Andre Breton

Though at opposite ends of our country, Maine and Hawaii are, other than climate, much alike. Places where you say who you are, be who you are, keep your word, and don't cheat or lie to take advantage of each other. Where you protect other folks because they are your tribe. — Mike Bond

Too often, people hear the word "theory" and they think it to mean "an idea which has not been proven." They will tell you that a theory is the opposite of a "fact." But it is more accurate to say that a theory is an idea which has not been disproven, and a fact (in the historical sense) is just a theory that most everybody agrees with. — Simon Trinculo

It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning; or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words - in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought. A — George Orwell

It's funny how there's a word like overprotective to describe some parents, but no word that means the opposite. what word do you use to describe parents who don't protect enough? underprotective? neglectful? self-involved? lame? all of the above. olivia's family — R.J. Palacio

My first language, the true language of the soul spoken only on our planet of origin, had no word for betrayal or traitor. Or even loyalty- because without the opposite, the concept had no meaning. — Stephenie Meyer

There is no good word for the opposite of lonesome.
One might be tempted to suggest togetherness or contentment , but the fact that these two other words bear definitions unrelated to each other perfectly displays why lonesome cannot be properly mirrored. It does not mean solitude, nor alone, nor lonely, although lonesome can contain all of those words in itself.
Lonesome means a state of being apart. Of being other. Alone-some. — Maggie Stiefvater

The word religion comes from an origin which means "coming together." But priesthood has been doing just the opposite, it has created splits in man, not oneness. Religion means creating in man an organic unity; it has nothing to do with God, it has something to do with you. It has nothing to do with worship, it has something to do with a transformation of your own consciousness. — Rajneesh

Writing should not be routine; writing should actually be the opposite of procedural because otherwise the written word would become a routine word. — Elie Wiesel

One might think that those who feast most often on communion with God are least hungry. They turn often from the innocent pleasures of the world to linger more directly in the presence of God through the revelation of his Word. And there they eat the Bread of Heaven and drink the Living Water by meditation and faith. But, paradoxically, it is not so that they are the least hungry saints. The opposite is the case. The strongest, most mature Christians I have ever met are the hungriest for God. It might seem that those who eat most would be least hungry. But that's not the way it works with an inexhaustible fountain, and an infinite feast, and a glorious Lord. When you take your stand on the finished work of God in Christ, and begin to drink at the River of Life and eat the Bread of Heaven, and know that you have found the end of all your longings, — John Piper

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

Now Lucy sighed on his behalf. Communication must be difficult when your ass whittled the opposite sex's vocabulary down to one word. — Tessa Bailey

If you cry 'Forward' you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions? — Anton Chekhov

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

Faith always presented to the mind the idea of an abnormal intellectual condition, of the subversion or suspension of the critical faculties. It sometimes comprised more than this, but it always included this. It was the opposite of doubt and of the spirit of doubt. What irreverent men called credulity, reverent men called faith; and although one word was more respectful than the other, yet the two words were with most men strictly synonymous. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. but many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite. — Richard Rohr

Madness and passion have always been interchangeable. Throughout the entire western literary tradition. Madness is an abundance of existence. Madness is a way of asking difficult questions. What did he mean, the powerless tyrant king? O Fool, I shall go mad.
Maybe madness is the excess of possibility, ... And writingis about reducing possibility to ne idea, one book, one sentence, one word. Madness is a form of self-expression. It is the opposite of creativity. You cannot make anything that can be separated from yourself if you are mad. And yet, look at Rimbaud
and your wonderful Christopher Smart. But don't harbour any romantic ideas about what it means to be mad. My language was my protection, my guarantee against madness and when there was no one to listen my language vanished along with my reader. — Patricia Duncker

As soon as she was close, she whispered, "you've got to get out of here."
"No, you've got to get out of here," he told her. "Go downstairs. Go now."
"No," she countered. "You go."
"Why?" he asked.
"You tell me first."
But before they could say another word, the last elevator slid slowly open and two men in masks rushed out. From the opposite side of the of the ballroom, shots rang out, rapid fire, piercing the ceiling, plaster falling onto the dance floor like snow.
And then Hale and Macey whispered in unison, "Because of that. — Ally Carter

Women have been taught that they are not powerful; they've been given an opposite description, that they are weak. The word "effeminate" implies weakness. — Frederick Lenz

Since the Protestant Reformation, it has been understood that there are two apparently opposite mistakes or errors into which you can fall so as to lose your grasp on this biblical gospel and its power. They are called "legalism," the view that we can put God in our debt and procure his blessing with our goodness, and "antinomianism," the idea that we can relate to God without obeying his Word and commands. Both words, derived from the Latin and Greek words for "law," miss a crucial aspect of how the gospel functions. — Timothy Keller

Jane: "Look, Dave Chandler left me on the ninth floor of our university research library without my panties after we lost our virginity together. He never called me again and actually turned on his heel and walked in the opposite direction whenever he saw me on campus. Unless you're going to do that, I don't think were gonna have a problem. Gabriel?"
Gabriel: "Sorry. Something strange happened inside my head when you said the word "panties". The overwhelming urge to kill Dave Chandler combined with a simultaneous loss of blood to the brain. — Molly Harper

There's a word like overprotective to describe some parents, but no word that means the opposite. What word do you use to describe parents who don't protect enough? Underprotective? Neglectful? Self-involved? Lame? All of the above. — R.J. Palacio

Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something. He kept thinking about one word - forever - and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage. — John Green

The word normal would lose all of its meaning if it didn't have an opposite. And if there were no normal people, the world would probably fall apart - because it's normal people who take care of all the normal things like making sure there is food at the grocery store and delivering the mail and putting up traffic lights and making sure our toilets work properly and growing food on farms and flying airplanes safely and making sure the president of the United States has clean suits to wear. — Matthew Quick

The associations get only richer and more intense when you realise that the very concept of truth - the cornerstone of philosophy and religion alike, let alone law - also rests heavily on the meaning of waking up. And you don't need a philosopher to appreciate it, because there are clues to its dependency in everyday phrases such as 'waking up to the truth', 'my eyes were opened' and even 'wake up and smell the coffee'. If such phrases hint that waking up and truth are bedfellows of some sort, you need only go back to the ancient Greek for corroboration. There you'll find that the word truth is 'aletheia', from which in English we get the word for 'lethargy'. But see how the Greek word is 'a-letheia' rather than letheia - that is truth is the opposite of lethargy. And what is opposite of lethargy, if not waking up? — Robert Rowland Smith

I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. Just as some people have a secret love for rainstorms, earthquakes, or blackouts, I liked that certain undefinable something directed my way by members of the opposite sex. For want of a better word, call it magnetism. Like it or not, it's a kind of power that snares people and reels them in. — Haruki Murakami

I don't buy into the word "failure." I used to but not anymore. Trying not to fail is the opposite of art. — Robert Piper

Without another word, he walked out. Gennie waited until she heard his footsteps on the stairs before she pressed a hand to her stomach. The next time she saw a light in the dark, she told herself, she'd run like hell in the opposite direction. — Nora Roberts

I knew it was too late. I knew she was dead. I knew it for sure because the pull was gone. I didn't feel any reason to be here beside her. She wasn't here anymore. So this body had no more draw for me. The senseless need to be near her had vanished. Or maybe moved was the better word. It seemed like I felt the pull from the opposite direction now. From down the stairs, out the door. The longing to get away from here and never, ever come back. — Stephenie Meyer

Without a word he started stalking down the street in the opposite direction my grandparents had taken. I started after him, my steps slower.
And then quite abruptly Caine whipped around and marched back toward me. Features etched with determination, he yanked me roughly to him and crushed his mouth down over mine. I made a noise of surprise in the back of my throat before my instincts took over. I couldn't help sinking into his kiss.
When he finally let me go we were both breathing hard. Caine smoothed his thumb over my cheek, his eyes still dark with passion and anger.
I could give a fuck who saw that. — Samantha Young

Lovers have a way of using this word, nothing, which implies exactly the opposite. — Honore De Balzac

The two roads that lead to poverty and riches travel in opposite directions. If you want riches, you must refuse to accept any circumstance that leads to poverty. (The word riches is here used in its broadest sense, meaning financial, spiritual, mental, and material estates). — Napoleon Hill

There is no idea that does not carry in itself a possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite. — Marcel Proust

I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people's time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Collectivists would have you believe that individualism is merely another word for selfishness, because individualists oppose welfare and other forms of coercive redistribution of wealth, but just the opposite is true. Individualists advocate true charity, which is the voluntary giving of their own money, while collectivists advocate the coercive giving of other people's money; which, of course, is why it is so popular. — G. Edward Griffin

Even natural languages have personalities. 'Escapement' is the name of a device, a toothed wheel, that controls the motion of the hands of the clock. The word has connotations of gaining freedom. The German equivalent is 'Hemmung.' It means 'restraint,' and also, 'inhibition.' It conjures up images of of losing freedom. In describing a presumably emotionally neutral gadget, the two languages perceive in its functions two diametrically opposite states of human condition. — J.T. Fraser

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

The discovery of this reality is hindered rather than helped by belief, whether one believes in God or believes in atheism. We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception. — Alan W. Watts

Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together. — Carl Sagan

When a person pauses in mid-sentence to choose a word, that's the best time to jump in and change the subject! It's like an interception in football! You grab the others guy's idea and run the opposite way with it! The more sentences you complete, the higher your score! The idea is to block the other guy's thoughts and express your own! That's how you win!

Conversations aren't contests!

Ok, a point for you, but I'm still ahead. — Bill Watterson

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

I'm not sure I have the words to describe that moment but if there's a word that means the exact opposite of "ladylike", that would be a good start. — Jenny Lawson

Unless you first do the hard work of answering those questions about a text, your meditations won't be grounded in what God is actually saying in the passage. Something in the passage may "hit" you - but it may hit you as expressing almost the opposite of what the biblical author, inspired by the Spirit, was saying. When that happens, you are listening to your own heart or to the spirit of your own culture, not to God's voice in the Scripture. A great number of books advise "divine reading" of the Bible today, and define the activity uncarefully as reading "not for information but to hear a personal word of God to you." This presents a false contrast. It is certainly true that meditation personalizes the Word, but before we can meditate on what the text personally means to us and our time, we must first need to know as much as possible what the author meant to say to his readers when he wrote it. — Timothy Keller

According to a group of New England college students, writing in the year 1920, an alien was the following:
"A person hostile to his country."
"A person against the government."
"A person who is on the opposite side."
"A native of an unfriendly country."
"A foreigner at war."
"A foreigner who tries to do harm to the country he is in."
"An enemy from a foreign land."
"A person against a country." etc ...
Yet the word alien is an unusually exact legal term, far more exact than words like sovereignty, independence, national honor, rights, defense, aggression, imperialism, capitalism, socialism, about which we readily take sides "for" or "against. — Walter Lippmann

Fifty is a big corner to turn. It used to mean being put out to pasture, but it's the opposite with me. I feel more vibrant; I'm more active than I've ever been. The F-word really is freedom. It's the freedom to have dropped the rock-the rock of addiction, of family, of comparisons with other people. It's being fit and focused and kind of furious. — Jamie Lee Curtis

There was always a second before the siren started when she was aware of a sound as yet unheard. It was like an echo, or rather the opposite of an echo. An echo came afterwards, but was there a word for what came before? — Kate Atkinson

I am unfortunate in using a word which may convey a meaning - and evidently does - quite opposite to my intention. — Charles Dickens

From a memory deep inside her, so faint it only held sounds and slips of color, a tiny, three-year-old Azalea wailed, "Papa."
"Papa," said Azalea to the lifeless form of the King. The word was so forgein, it choked her throat. "Papa ... you can't leave us, Papa ... It would be very ... out of order-"
Bramble knelt opposite her, grasping the King's bandaged hand.
"She's-she's right, Papa," Bramble stuttered. "We have ... rules ... "
Clover fell to her knees and pressed her handkerchief to his chest. Blood soaked through.
"Papa," she whispered.
The girls knelt around the King, their skirts spead out like forlorn blossoms, swallowing , and whispering one word.
"Papa."
"Papa."
"Papa. — Heather Dixon

Straightway is a power word. Straightway is an action word. It means immediately, without delay or hesitation. It means at once. Also, it is associated with having no curve or turn-a straight course, track, or path. Procrastination would be the very opposite of straightway. To procrastinate is to put off intentionally and habitually something that should be done. Procrastination is unproductive delay. — Marvin J. Ashton

I will tell you sincerely and without exaggeration that the best part of lunch today at the NASA Ames cafeteria is the urine. It is clear and sweet, though not in the way mountain streams are said to be clear and sweet. More in the way of Karo syrup. The urine has been desalinated by osmotic pressure. Basically it swapped molecules with a concentrated sugar solution. Urine is a salty substance (though less so than the NASA Ames chili), and if you were to drink it in an effort to rehydrate yourself, it would have the opposite effect. But once the salt is taken care of and the distasteful organic molecules have been trapped in an activated charcoal filter, urine is a restorative and surprisingly drinkable lunchtime beverage. I was about to use the word unobjectionable, but that's not accurate. People object. They object a lot. — Mary Roach

God never leads us to do anything that is contrary to His Word. But the opposite is also true: God always leads us to do everything that is in agreement with His Word. — Billy Graham

For every romantic possiblity, no matter how robust, there exists at least one equal and opposite sentence, phrase, or word capable of extinguishing it. — Malcolm Gladwell

For how smart we think we are, how facile with words, we don't have a word for this feeling, the feeling of being blessed by belonging. If the universe is an unfolding bud, then I am a part of its creative surge, along with the flowing of water and the growing of pines. I can find a kind of camaraderie in this universe, once I recover from the astonishment of it. Or maybe not camaraderie exactly. What is the opposite of loneliness? — Kathleen Moore

The following evening John left with Lady Shorne for the south of France, without so much as a word to me."
Alexa felt as if she were hearing that fateful cliche for the first time. "Without so much as a word." No matter how much she tried to see it from every point of view, its meaning was always clear. John was a coward. Anne was his victim. The roles were the opposite of what she had supposed. It was Anne who had been heroic, not John. John was a coward, a mere puppet into whom both Anne and Alexa had managed to breathe a semblance of life. He was as much the creation of one as of the other. — Violet Trefusis

Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned. — Chuck Palahniuk

The French called this time of day 'l'heure bleue.' To the English it was 'the gloaming.' The very word 'gloaming' reverberates, echoes - the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour - carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows. During the blue nights you think the end of the day will never come. As the blue nights draw to a close (and they will, and they do) you experience an actual chill, an apprehension of illness, at the moment you first notice; the blue light is going, the days are already shortening, the summer is gone ... Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning. — Joan Didion

My nose is Gargantuan! You little Pig-snout, you tiny Monkey-Nostrils, you virtually invisible Pekinese-Puss, don't you realize that a nose like mine is both scepter and orb, a monument to me superiority? A great nose is the banner of a great man, a generous heart, a towering spirit, an expansive soul
such as I unmistakably am, and such as you dare not to dream of being, with your bilious weasel's eyes and no nose to keep them apart! With your face as lacking in all distinction
as lacking, I say, in interest, as lacking in pride, in imagination, in honesty, in lyricism
in a word, as lacking in nose as that other offensively bland expanse at the opposite end of your cringing spine
which I now remove from my sight by stringent application of my boot! — Edmond Rostand

We rarely get the chance to see things anew. I remember a Latin translation that caused me to fail an exam at school because one of the words, translated for us at the bottom of the page and intended to help, was invalid. I read this to mean false, null, illegal. The opposite of valid. But it was meant to be understood as invalid as in a sick person. It torpedoed my entire translation. Instead of tending to the sick, priests were being accused of fraudulence and neglecting their duties. Even though it didn't match up with the grammar, or the story, I kept on returning to that word to check, and every time I saw it only as I had done already - invalid, null, void. — Olivia Sudjic

After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. — George Orwell

In our confusion, we're accustomed to according the titles of good news and "a positive message" to the most soul-sucking, sentimental fare imaginable. Any song or story that deals with conflict by way of a strained euphemistic spin, a cliche, or a triumphal cupcake ending strikes us as the best in family entertainment. This is the opposite of apocalyptic. Apocalyptic maximizes the reality of human suffering and folly before daring a word of hope. The hope has nowhere else to happen but the valley of the shadow of death. — David Dark

Often kids in a computer lab learn about word-processing, but if they want to write an essay, they write it by hand. This is exactly the opposite of what you want them to learn. They're approaching the computer as just another abstract school subject. — Seymour Papert

In the wildlife sanctuaries of literature, we study the species of speech, the flight patterns of individual words, the herd behavior of words together, and we learn what language does and why it matters. this is excellent training for going out into the world and looking at all the unhallowed speech of political statements and news headlines and CDC instructions and seeing how it makes the word or in this case, makes a mess of it. It is the truest, highest purpose of language to make things clear and help us see; when words are used to do the opposite you know you're in trouble and maybe that there's a cover-up. — Rebecca Solnit

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

I feel so strongly about the truths Our Lord taught us by word and example that I cannot help but see how everything done according to that teaching always succeeds perfectly well, while things done the opposite way have a quite different result. — Vincent De Paul

[A]s people are beginning to see that the sexes form in a certain sense a continuous group, so they are beginning to see that Love and Friendship which have been so often set apart from each other as things distinct are in reality closely related and shade imperceptibly into each other. Women are beginning to demand that Marriage shall mean Friendship as well as Passion; that a comrade-like Equality shall be included in the word Love; and it is recognised that from the one extreme of a 'Platonic' friendship (generally between persons of the same sex) up to the other extreme of passionate love (generally between persons of opposite sex) no hard and fast line can at any point be drawn effectively separating the different kinds of attachment. We know, in fact, of Friendships so romantic in sentiment that they verge into love; we know of Loves so intellectual and spiritual that they hardly dwell in the sphere of Passion. — Edward Carpenter

The word "religion" has been hi-jacked and debased by the priests of faiths like these, until now it has become a dirty word amongst intelligent, right-thinking people in the Western world. The word "religion" springs from roots meaning piety, the Latin religio, the opposite idea to negligens, negligent, uncaring, unaware. It also springs from a root meaning to join together things that are separate, which in fact is the same meaning as the word "yoga" (compare the English word yoke, which ties oxen together, for example). So religion is a word which describes the process of becoming aware and unified, of joining together all things which are diverse; it is the union of body and spirit, self and not-self, human and god. — Rodney Orpheus

A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning; or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. — George Orwell

The word emptiness comes a cross as a word that means dealing with a large void or insecurity within. When the opposite is true. Being in touch with emptiness means being in touch with your inner existence. — Matthew Donnelly