Paradox of Existence Quotes

Paradoxically, life is worth living for those who have something for which they will gladly give up life.

Isn’t everyone’s life a mass of contradictions?

There's not one person in the world that's not a living, walking contradiction.

What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality. It may sound paradoxical, but it is in fact reality which forms the mystery of our existence.

How can this world, which is so beautiful, include so much horror?

Humanity is a crazy contradiction. I accept us for who we are. We're not that great. Every time we take a step forward we go back to the same primitive behavior. We're meant to be this way. It's not our fault, it's just who we are.

song of elli (old age) "What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain What is gone is gone... What is sea-born dies on land, Soft is trod upon. What is given burns the hand - What is gone is gone... Here is there, and high is low; All may be undone. What is true, no two men know - What is gone is gone... Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose - What is gone is gone.

There is both joy and suffering on planet Earth because this beautiful world is a world of duality - a world of opposites. There is an opposite side to everything.

One realizes after a long time that, actually, we are contradictory, all of us.

This is Darrow, Inadequately scrawled, with his young, old heart, And his drawl, and his infinite paradox And his sadness, and kindness, And his artist sense that drives him to shape his life To something harmonious, even against the schemes of God.

In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over other claims.

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising.

We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church.

Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.

Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.

We wept when we were born though all around us smiled; so shall we smile when we die while all around us weep.