80 Contrast Quotes

It seems then that it is not the excellence of any two things (or more) in themselves, but those two things as viewed by the light of each other, that makes beauty.

Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty.

How all becomes clear and simple when one opens an eye on the within, having of course previously exposed it to the without, in order to benefit by the contrast.

The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.

Zippers are primal and modern at the very same time. On the one hand, your zipper is primitive and reptilian, on the other, mechanical and slick. A zipper is where the Industrial Revolution meets the Cobra Cult.

One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.

Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service - but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay - and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops - Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes - they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they - Darius!

Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread; Now that I am without you, all is desolate; All that was once so beautiful is dead.

In the city a funeral is just an interruption of traffic; in the country it is a form of entertainment.

What you do for Jewish New Year is you go down to Times Square... It's a lot quieter than the regular New Year. It's just a few Jews walking around going, ''sup?'

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

What is Freedom? - ye can tell That which slavery is, too well - For its very name has grown To an echo of your own.

I feel like one, Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

So weak thou art, that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls.

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

Far beneath the tainted foam That frets above our peaceful home, We dream in joy and wake in love Nor know the rage that yells above.

On the one hand, you've got people who're working here to alleviate poverty, to help rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS. They're working on ways to have a clean environment... And on the other hand, you've got people killing innocent people. The contrast couldn't be clearer, between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill: those who've got such evil in their hearts that they will take the lives of innocent folks. The war on terror goes on. - July 7, 2005; speaking to the press outside the G8 Conference at Gleneagles, in response to the London bombings. BBC News 24.

Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Twinkle, twinkle little star, How I wonder what you are. Shine upon the parking lot, As I eat my girlfriend's twat!

Dorothea blew out her candle and settled down in the middle of the big spare room bed. An owl called in the woods. 'Not a barn owl, but a tawny,' thought Dick, listening to the sharp 'Gewick! Gewick!' as he fell asleep. A smell of new-mown hay drifted from the meadows on the further side of the river. 'There isn't a lovelier place in all the world,' thought Dorothea. London last night, and now Beckfoot. The summer holidays had begun.

He was by his whole style and nature so much the most deeply 'silent' of the silent comedians that even a smile was as deafeningly out of key as a yell. In a way his pictures are like a transcendent juggling act in which it seems that the whole universe is in exquisite flying motion and the one point of repose is the juggler's effortless, uninterested face.

Now, as discord is allowable, and even necessarily opposed to concord, why may not noise, or a seeming jargon, be opposed to fixed sounds and harmonical proportion? Some of the discords in modern music, unknown till this century, are what the ear can but just bear, but have a very good effect as to contrast. The severe laws of preparing and resolving discord, may be too much adhered to for great effect; I am convinced that provided the ear be at length made amends, there are few dissonances too strong for it.

Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,- So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace When the drear soul desires thee.

The wind, the birds, do not sound poorer but clearer, recalling our agony, and the way we danced.

That he, in his developed manhood, stood A little sunburnt by the glare of life; While I . . it seemed no sun had shone on me.

But fair the exil'd Palm-tree grew Midst foliage of no kindred hue; Through the laburnum's dropping gold Rose the light shaft of Orient mould, And Europe's violets, faintly sweet, Purpled the mossbeds at its feet.

How sweet the air does smell - even the air of a back-street in the suburbs - after the shut-in, subfaecal stench of the spike!

When you get off stage with all these thousands of people loving you, the saddest part is to go back to your hotel room by yourself.

The juxtaposition of Western civilization's most terrifying scientific achievement with the most dazzling description of the mystical experience given to us by the Bhagavad Gita, India's greatest literary monument.

The glory of the day was in her face, The beauty of the night was in her eyes.

'Without hatred where's the light? Without darkness where's the love?'

Italy invented fascism. Mussolini in 1922 said 'Right, we're all fascists', but most Italian people are always on scooters, going, 'Ciao!'

I'd like to be in the country so that I'd could like being in the city.

Bob Crosby: That's like keeping the smog and throwing away Los Angeles.

Bob Hope: [on being on a CBS show] I feel like Zsa Zsa at a P.T.A. meeting.

No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by. The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm, Its chimneys steady against the mackerel sky.

Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.

In beauty faults conspicuous grow; The smallest speck is seen on snow.

Fate presented itself to some like a chinese fan--one side black, the other side gilded with flowers.

An Assyrian wax statue, effeminate, but with the vitality of twenty men.

My Aunt Agatha, for instance, is tall and thin and looks rather like a vulture in the Gobi desert, while Aunt Dahlia is short and solid, like a scrum half in the game of Rugby football. In disposition, too, they differ widely. Aunt Agatha is cold and haughty, though presumably unbending a bit when conducting human sacrifices at the time of the full moon, as she is widely rumoured to do, and her attitude towards me has always been that of an austere governess, causing me to feel as if I were six years old and she had just caught me stealing jam from the jam cupboard: whereas Aunt Dahlia is as jovial and bonhomous as a dame in a Christmas pantomime.

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.

Sorrows remembered sweeten present joy.

A light here required a shadow there.

Mozart has the classic purity of light and the red ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both. ~ Henri-Frederic Amiel

There was nothing exceptional about the physical presence of this extraordinary man; he was small and his appearance gave no sign of his genius, apart from his large intense eyes. [...] But in this ungainly body there dwelt an artistic genius such as Nature rarely bestows even upon her most treasured darlings. ~ Franz Niemetschek

We and They, st. 1

Gary Snyder