The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.
The true paradox of consciousness is that the more we know of ourselves, the more we become strangers to ourselves; for knowledge itself is a kind of forgetting—we lose the immediate simplicity of mere being in the complications of understanding what we are.
The true paradox of human freedom is that we are most ourselves when we are most constrained by love for something outside ourselves.
A man may take to drink on account of his wife, but he ought never to take to drink on account of his wife's husband.
The sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
The true paradox of consciousness is that we become most fully conscious precisely when we cease to think about consciousness at all, and surrender ourselves to the world.
The true paradox is that we become most fully alive at the moment when we cease to live for ourselves alone. It is in the surrender of self that self is found.
The true paradox of consciousness is that it cannot be fully grasped by introspection alone; the observer is always part of the observed, creating an irreducible gap between the thinking subject and its own thought.
The true paradox of consciousness is that the more we think about it directly, the more it eludes us; yet in the very act of eluding our grasp, it reveals itself most fully.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
The true paradox of the human condition is that we are simultaneously utterly insignificant and infinitely precious—strangers to the universe yet the only part of it that knows itself.
The paradox only disappears when we recognize that the contradictions of life are not errors to be eliminated but the very substance from which meaning emerges.
The paradox of Jason Lee—to me, The Enemy, at least—is that he is a celebrity who openly invites fans to come hang out with him on a regular basis, but who also has historically remained a notably private person.
Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
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