Opposite Quotes

Everybody says: the Kremlin, the Kremlin. They all go on about it, but I've never seen it. The number of times (thousands) I've been drunk or hung over, traipsing round Moscow, north-south, east-west, end to end, straight through or any old way - and I've never once seen the Kremlin.

For instance, yesterday - yesterday I didn't see it again, though I was buzzing round that area the whole evening and it's not as if I was particularly drunk. I mean, as soon as I came out onto Savyelov Station, I had a glass of Zubrovka for starters, since I know from experience that as an early-morning tipple, nobody's so far dreamed up anything better.

Anyway, a glass of Zubrovka. Then after that - on Kalyaev Street - another glass, only not Zubrovka this time, but coriander vodka. A friend of mine used to say coriander had a dehumanizing effect on a person, i.e, it refreshes your parts but it weakens your spirit. For some reason or other it had the opposite effect on me, i.e., my spirit was refreshed, while my parts all went to hell. But I do agree it's dehumanizing, so that's why I topped it up with two glasses of Zhiguli beer, plus some egg-nog straight from the bottle, in the middle of Kalyaev Street.

Of course, you're saying: come on, Venya, get on with it - what did you have next? And I couldn't say for sure. I remember - I remember quite distinctly in fact - I had two glasses of Hunter's vodka, on Chekhov Street. But I couldn't have made it across th ~ Venedikt Erofeev

Girls and women, in their new, particular unfolding, will only in passing imitate men's behavior and misbehavior and follow in male professions. Once the uncertainty of such transitions is over it will emerge that women have only passed through the spectrum and the variety of those (often laughable) disguises in order to purify their truest natures from the distorting influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life abides and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more trustingly, are bound to have ripened more thoroughly, become more human human beings, than a man, who is all too light and has not been pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of a bodily fruit and who, in his arrogance and impatience, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity which inhabits woman, brought to term in pain and humiliation, will, once she has shrugged off the conventions of mere femininity through the transformations of her outward status, come clearly to light, and men, who today do not yet feel it approaching, will be taken by surprise and struck down by it. One day (there are already reliable signs which speak for it and which begin to spread their light, especially in the northern countries), one day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer just signify the opposite of the male but something in their own right, something which does not make one think of any supplement or limit but only of life and existence: the female human being.

This ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The sine of an angle is the ratio of the lengths of the side of the triangle opposite the angle and the hypotenuse. ~ Keith Peters

(The feast-room in GUNNAR'S house. The entrance-door is in the back; smaller doors in the side-walls. In front, on the left, the greater high-seat; opposite it on the right, the lesser. In the middle of the floor, a wood fire is burning on a built-up hearth. In the background, on both sides of the door, are daises for the women of the household. From each of the high-seats, a long table, with benches, stretches backwards, parallel with the wall. It is dark outside; the fire lights the room.) ~ Henrik Ibsen

Oscar is the exact opposite of how I think you should behave. I just think of it as a negative view of the positive mind I have. Big Bird is sweet and nice and also sympathetic, as kids can identify with him even though he looks like such a bizarre character - great 8 feet 2 inches, a beak 18 inches long. ~ Caroll Spinney

Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite. ~ Aristotle.

Molly is the opposite. So many things have gone wrong for her in her seventeen years that she's come to expect it. When something does go right, she hardly knows what to think. ~ Christina Baker Kline

And sometimes in life, I imagine, good things do happen. Most of the time, it's the opposite, obviously. But I don't think you should rule out the possibility that just occasionally chance might deal you a good card. ~ Sebastian Faulks

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

Life uses information (stored in DNA) to capture energy (which it stores in a chemical called ATP) to create order. Humans burn prodigious amounts of energy - we generate about 10,000 times as much energy per gram as the sun. The sun is hotter only because it is much bigger. We use energy to create and maintain intricate cellular and bodily complexity, the opposite of entropy, just as we do in the economy, where the harnessing of power from burning fuel enables us to build skyscrapers and aeroplanes. ~ Matt Ridley

Our "in tune with my feelings" era believes that to be true to myself, to be authentic, means I need to act on my feelings. But the opposite is true. In fact, true authenticity means I maintain a trust through thick and thin. ~ Paul E. Miller

the simplicity of many of Bush's pronouncements is often misinterpreted as evidence that he has penetrated to the core of a complex issue, when in fact exactly the opposite is true: They often mark his refusal even to consider complexity. And that's particularly troubling in a world where the challenges America faces are often quite complex and require rigorous, sustained, disciplined analysis. ~ Al Gore

Opposites are joined at the hip. Night and day, poisons and pleasures, innovation and destruction are usually different facets of the very same thing. [...] Opposites work together in the very opposite of the way they seem - not tearing each other to bits or threatening to annihilate each other. ~ Howard Bloom

Who is a bad man and who is a good man? What is the definition? The bad man is one who is inconsiderate of others. The bad man is one who uses others and has no respect for others. The bad man is one who thinks he is the center of the world and everybody is just to be used. Everything exists for him. The bad man is one who thinks that other persons are just means for his gratification.

Keep this definition in mind because you ordinarily think the bad man is the criminal. The bad man may not be the criminal: all bad men are not criminals. All criminals are bad, but all bad men are not criminals. A few of them are judges, a few of them are very respectable people, a few of them are politicians, presidents and prime ministers, a few of them are even parading as saints.

So when we will be talking about this sutra, remember the definition of a bad man - Buddha says a bad man is one who has no consideration for others. He simply thinks about himself only - he thinks he is the center of existence and he feels the whole existence is made for him. He feels authorized to sacrifice everybody for his own self. He may not be bad ordinarily, but if this is the attitude, then he is a bad man.

Who is a good man? Just the opposite of the bad man: one who is considerate of others, who gives as much respect to others as he gives to himself, and who does not pretend in any way that he is the center of the world, and who has come to feel that everybody is the cent ~ Osho

Everyone has the right to their opinions on a matter but make sure to do your research and know the facts before your opinion crown you an ignorant fool. Keep this in mind, do not be lazy with your research and have conversations with opposite minds from your opinions of the matter. ~ Jesus Apolinaris

It is insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization. ~ John F. Kennedy

Hortensia set the tray down and brought a shawl and wrapped it protectively around Mama's shoulders. Esperanza couldn't remember a time when Hortensia had not taken care of them. She was a Zapotec Indian from Oaxaca, with a short, solid figure and blue-black hair in a braid down her back. Esperanza watched the two women look out into the dark and couldn't help but think that Hortensia was almost the opposite of Mama. ~ Pam Munoz Ryan

From the beginning it was never anything but chaos: it was a fluid which rnvcloped me, which I breathed in through the gills. In the substrata, where the moon shone steady and opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord. In everything I (plickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the unreal the irony, the paradox. I was my own worst enemy. There was nothing I wished to do which I could just as well not do. Even as a child, when I lacked for nothing, I wanted to die: I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had not asked for. Everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure, ridiculous. Especially the successful ones. The successful ones bored·me to tears. I was sympathetic to a fault, but it was not sympathy that made me so. It was a purely negative quality, a weakness which blossomed at the mere sight of human misery. I never helped anyone expecting that it would do any good; I helped because I was helpless to do otherwise. To want to change the condition of affairs seemed futile to me; nothing would be altered, I was convinced, except by a change of heart, and who could change the hearts of men? ~ Henry Miller

Physical life is characterized by defensiveness, whereas spiritual life is just the opposite. ~ Eben Alexander

Many people think that love represents chains, bondage, the opposite of freedom. But people who believe such things are simple-minded creatures who have been lied to, and who easily accept the general trend of the lie. It is in fact love that is the only thing powerful enough to set one free from even the most deeply-embedded and thoroughly-wound chains of the soul, the mind, and the body. The fact is that we are born into chains and born into bondages; these things are put upon us by fear, pain and doubt. When you are thoroughly loved by someone in mind and in heart, this has the power to set you so free, more free than you have ever been before. And that is because freedom is not the equivalent of detachment. Freedom is the equivalent of that which sets you free. And when someone loves you the way that only they can, that is what sets you free. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Now I'm just standing here on the conveyor. Along for the ride. I reach the end, turn around, and go back the other way. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. After a few hours of this, I notice a female on the opposite conveyor. She doesn't lurch or groan like most of us. Her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her. That she doesn't lurch or groan. I catch her eye and stare at her. ~ Isaac Marion

I never thought to ascribe my mother's emotional and physical exhaustion to the lack of a husband and father; rather, I ascribed it to my existence. In other words, I grew up learning the exact opposite of what Eisenhower was taught. I learned that if I didn't exist, the family would be better off. I grew up believing that if I had never been born, things would be easier for the people I loved. (page 35) ~ Donald Miller

So, what is the opposite of a "helicopter parent?" I wonder. A subway parent? A Sinking ship parent? A hibernating bear? ~ Wendy Wunder

Princess. This is surprising. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I need your help."

He chuckles. "Oh how the mighty have fallen. I love it. How can I be of service?"

I've never met another man who could so artfully convey in his tone the opposite of what his words mean. Sarcasm, thy name is Willard ~ Emma Chase

Our children will be told what Israel has done.' graffiti on the Wall in Bethlehem, opposite Aida refugee camp, 2008 ~ William Parry

If you feel trapped in the religion of your upbringing, it would be worth asking yourself how this came about. The answer is usually some form of childhood indoctrination. If you are religious at all it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents. If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination. Mutatis mutandis if you were born in Afghanistan. ~ Richard Dawkins

Only the best will do? In this age of unlimited variety, rather the opposite is true: 'good enough' is the new optimum ~ Rolf Dobelli

I'm sorry." [Burnett] sighed. "With all the things that have happened lately, I'm glad you're keeping your chin up."
*Chin up.* The words ran around Kylie's head. Miranda snorted another bit of laughter and faced the opposite direction. Kylie had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Then Della's chuckle sounded from across the room. ~ C.C. Hunter

Even the word 'unconditional' is superfluous, because love, by its true definition, is unconditional. 'Conditional love' is an oxymoron -- a contradiction in terms. As soon as we put a condition on love, it become something else entirely.... unconditional love is a state of being, not a emotion. It means it has no opposite. Human love is an emotion, and as with all other emotions, it's part of duality. An opposite emotion, such as fear or hate, balances it out. But unconditional love just IS. It's not one side of the coin -- it's the WHOLE coin. ~ Anita Moorjani

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

Dalinar took a deep breath, then forced himself to open his arms and pull back. "If you had hoped to
soothe my worries for the day, then this didn't help."
She folded her arms. He could still feel where her safehand had touched him on the back. A tender
touch, reserved for a family member. "I'm not here to soothe you, Dalinar. Quite the opposite."
"Please. I do need time to think."
"I won't let you put me away. I won't ignore that this happened. I won't - "
"Navani," he gently cut her off, "I will not abandon you. I promise."
She eyed him, then a wry smile crept onto her face. "Very well. But you began something today."
"I began it?" he asked, amused, elated, confused, worried, and ashamed at the same time.
"The kiss was yours, Dalinar," she said idly, pulling open the door and entering his antechamber.
"You seduced me to it."
"What? Seduced?" She glanced back at him. "Dalinar, I've never been more open and honest in my
life."
"I know," Dalinar said, smiling. "That was the seductive part." He closed the door softly, then let out
a sigh. Blood of my fathers, he thought, why can't these things ever be simple?
And yet, in direct contrast with his thoughts, he felt as if the entire world had somehow become
more right for having gone wrong. ~ Brandon Sanderson

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

In order that the concept of substance could originate
which is indispensable for logic although in the strictest sense nothing real corresponds to it
it was likewise necessary that for a long time one did not see or perceive the changes in things. The beings that did not see so precisely had an advantage over those who saw everything "in flux." At bottom, every high degree of caution in making inferences and every skeptical tendency constitute a great danger for life. No living beings would have survived if the opposite tendency
to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to err and make up things rather than wait, to assent rather than negate, to pass judgment rather than be just
had not been bred to the point where it became extraordinarily strong. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Kiaran tosses me his coat. "Here. There's a roll of bread for you in the inner pocket. You need to eat something."

The bread is wrapped in leaves that kept it dry. I gratefully murmur my thanks that Kiaran is so practical. Between the Morrigan's attacks and worrying over the Book, I didn't even notice how famished I was.

Kiaran gathers wood for a fire and I light it with my powers. A small bit of energy I'm willing to risk because I'm so bloody tired and I've never seen Kiaran look this rough, either.

Now you know how I feel, I think wryly as I move to sit near the flames. No invulnerable, shining fae skin. No immediate healing. Just the deep bone-tiredness of mortality.

Kiaran sits opposite, as far from me as possible. The scent of burning wood must mask the scent of my blood, at least a little. His eyes flicker to me in a quick, controlled assessment. "Your wounds need binding."

I can't help but smile. "First the bread, now my wounds. Is this the Kiaran MacKay way of fussing over someone?"

"I don't fuss," Kiaran says. "I give stern instructions, like: Bind your goddamn wounds."

"I don't like overbearing men."

His mouth quirks into a sly smile. "And yet I love assertive, stubborn women."

I laugh in surprise. "God, I adore you. ~ Elizabeth May

That's why we have memory. And the opposite of memory - hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can built off our pasts and make future. ~ Isaac Marion

…have you noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that in our Petersburg circles, if two clever men meet who are not intimate, but respect each other, like you and me, it takes them half an hour before they can find a subject for conversation – they are dumb, they sit opposite each other and feel awkward? Everyone has subjects of conversation, ladies for instance…people in high society always have their subjects of conversation, c'est de rigueur; but people of the middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don't want to deceive one another, I don't know. What do you think? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I knew I was in love with Lorri when I started to wake up in the middle of the night furious and cursing her for making me feel the way she did. It was pain beyond belief. Nothing has ever hurt me that way. I tried to sleep as much as possible just to escape. I was grinding my teeth down to nubs. Now, years later, it's exactly the opposite. Now there is no pain, yet she still makes my heart explode. Now there is only fun and love and silliness. She drives me to frenzy, because I can never get enough. ~ Damien Echols

They are called stuckerpillers because they get stuck together. They depend so much on each other even when they become unhappy living together. They can't leave each other because they've become one. They lose their own identity and then they get confused. They become helpless. When one stuckerpiller wants to go in one direction and the other stuckerpiller wants to go in the opposite direction, they end up pulling against each other, never really getting anywhere. ~ Jacqueline Edgington

Leanoardo wrote that a painter should begin every canvas wit a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. Most painters do the opposite, starting with a whitewash and adding the shadows last. But Paul, who knows Leonardo so well you'd thing the old man slept on the bottom bun, understands the value of starting with the shadows. The only things people can ever know about you are the ones you let them see. ~ Ian Caldwell

Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you invert the equation - expectation divided by reality - you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope. ~ Jodi Picoult

The notion that moving toward renewable energy will kill jobs is an absurdity on its face. The notion that we have to live smaller lifestyles; not have the American way of life or give up the American Dream is just ridiculous. It is the opposite of the case; a new energy paradigm will create opportunity. ~ Marshall Herskovitz

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

I very much enjoyed doing 'Law & Order,' playing a killer - that was fun, and they had a family feel around the set, so it was a happy show to do even though the subject matter was quite the opposite. ~ Carol Burnett

I told you, I don't want you riding with me."
"Which is why I waited," Frieze explained patiently. "To see what direction you were going in, so that I could make sure I took the opposite one. but of course, there may be wolves, or thieves, highwaymen or brigands, so I don't mind your company for the first hour or so. ~ Philippa Gregory

We have complaints that institutional dominance of the stock market has put 'the small investor at a disadvantage because he can't compete with the trust companies' huge resources, etc. The facts are quite the opposite. It may be that the institutions are better equipped than the individual to speculate in the market.But I am convinced that an individual investor with sound principles, and soundly advised, can do distinctly better over the long pull than large institutions. ~ Benjamin Graham

It looks like a group of evil f*cking gnomes came in here and decided to do the opposite of whatever they did for the shoemaker. ~ A.C. Warneke

It's good to be able to be a leading lady, to be a romantic lead, to play opposite people who are talented, and charismatic and stuff. ~ Heather Graham

Jane and Mr. Nobley entered the great hall, the ceiling dazzling with thousands of real candles that put fire into the white dresses and cravats. Five musicians were seated on a dais--a cello and two violins (or maybe a viola?), a harpsichord, and some kind of wind instrument. From keys and strings, they coaxed a grand prelude to the minuet. Jane looked at everything, smiling at the amusement park novelty of it all. She looked at Mr. Nobley. He was beaming at her. At last.
"You are stunning," he said, and every inch of him seemed to swear that it was true.
"Oh," she said.
He kissed her gloved fingers. He was still smiling. There was something different about him tonight, and she couldn't place what it was. Some new plot twist, she presumed. She was eager to roll around in all the plot she could on her last night, though once or twice her eyes strayed to spot Martin.
Mr. Nobley stood opposite her in a line of ten men. She watched Amelia and Captain East perform the figures. They held each other's gazes, they smiled with the elation of new love. All very convincing.
Poor Amelia, thought Jane.
It was a bit cruel, now that she thought about it, all these actors who made women fall in love with them. Amelia seemed so tenderhearted, and Miss Charming and her heaving breasts so delighted with this world. Jane caught sight of a very striking Colonel Andrews who, now that she watched him dance, might just be gay.
Jane felt a thrumming of foreboding. ~ Shannon Hale

Great material progress has not been matched by great spiritual progress. Quite the opposite. Indeed, from this point of view perhaps man has never been so poor as since he became so rich.
Letters against the war: Letter from the Himalayas, 2008. ~ Tiziano Terzani

Rand Paul ... said national health insurance is slavery. He said, I'm a physician, and if there's national health insurance, the government is forcing me to take care of somebody who is ill. Why should I be a slave to the state? Here we're getting capitalist pathology in its most extreme, lunatic form. It is the opposite of solidarity, mutual support, mutual help. ~ Noam Chomsky

Many people felt much closer to their own sex than to what was seen as the literally "opposite" - and alien - sex. In letters and diaries, women often referred to men as "the grosser sex. ~ Stephanie Coontz

Communism is not a political party nor a political plan under the Constitution; it is a system of government that is the opposite of our Constitutional government, and it would be necessary to destroy our government before Communism could be set up in the United States ... [Communism] even reaches its hand into the sanctity of the family circle itself, disrupting the normal relationship of parent and child, all in a manner unknown and unsanctioned under the Constitutional guarantees under which we in America live. ~ David O. McKay

Whatever power of the earth rampages, we turn to it dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever the name of the catastrophe, it is never the opposite of love. ~ Mary Oliver

IT is not impossible that among the English readers of this book there may be one who in 1915 and 1916 was in one of those trenches that were woven like a web among the ruins of Monchy-au-Bois. In that case he had opposite him at that time the 73rd Hanoverian Fusiliers, who wear as their distinctive badge a brassard with ' Gibraltar ' inscribed on it in gold, in memory of the defence of that fortress under General Elliot; for this, besides Waterloo, has its place in the regiment's history.

At the time I refer to I was a nineteen-year-old lieutenant in command of a platoon, and my part of the line was easily recognizable from the English side by a row of tall shell-stripped trees that rose from the ruins of Monchy. My left flank was bounded by the sunken road leading to Berles-au-Bois, which was in the hands of the English ; my right was marked by a sap running out from our lines, one that helped us many a time to make our presence felt by means of bombs and rifle-grenades.

I daresay this reader remembers, too, the white tom-cat, lamed in one foot by a stray bullet, who had his headquarters in No-man's-land. He used often to pay me a visit at night in my dugout. This creature, the sole living being that was on visiting terms with both sides, always made on me an impression of extreme mystery. This charm of mystery which lay over all that belonged to the other side, to that danger zone full of unseen figures, is one of the strongest impressions that the wa ~ Ernst Junger

I rarely acquire any enthusiasm for the opposite sex outside of being drunk. ~ Claire-Louise Bennett

Bell seated himself behind the desk, motioning for Nancy to stand opposite him. There was tense silence for a moment. Then Bell reached for a desk telephone.
"I am going to call the police, Miss Drew, and turn you over to them on a charge of trespassing, breaking, and entering with an attempt to steal."
"I wish you would," Nancy replied. "if it is possible over that dummy telephone. ~ Carolyn Keene

I conclude that the musical notes and rhythms were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex. ~ Charles Darwin

I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true. ~ Michael Connelly

My first speaking part was to read for John Forsythe for Bachelor Father. I was the lead, opposite him. ~ Linda Evans

The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy. ~ Mehmet Oz

Just to get through life was no ambition. It was the opposite of ambition. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Fear and desire for pleasure. Aggressiveness comes out of fear, predominantly, and sexuality predominantly out of the other. But they mix in the middle. Anyway, both of these impulses can destroy order, which comes out of both drives, and which is another human need I haven't yet fit into my scheme. So both have to be controlled. But in fact, despite religious commands to the contrary, aggressiveness has never really been condemned. It's been exalted, from the Bible through Homer and Virgil right down to Humbert Hemingway. Have you ever heard of a John Wayne movie being censored? did you ever see them take war books off the bookstands? They leave the genitals off Barbie and Ken, but they manufacture every kind of war toy. Because sex is more threatening to us than aggression. There have been strict rules about sex since the beginning of written rules, and even before, if we can believe myth. I think that's because it's in sex that men feel most vulnerable. In war they can hype themselves up, or they have a weapon. Sex means being literally naked and exposing your feelings. And that's more terrifying to most men than the risk of dying while fighting a bear or a soldier. Look at the rules! You can have sex if you're married, and you have to marry a person of the opposite gender, the same color and religion, an age close to your own, of the right social and economic background, even the right height, for God's sake, or else everybody gets up in arms, they disinherit you or threa ~ Marilyn French

You get your heart stomped by the opposite sex, and you're hurting so badly that you write 'Sometimes When We Touch.' But then what happens when you've been married for 25 years? You can't rely on those emotional male-female roller coasters. You have to start using your imagination and the powers of empathy more. ~ Dan Hill

Thus, flexibility, as displayed by water, is a sign of life. Rigidity, its opposite, is an indicator of death. ~ Anthony Lawlor

There were times when it would have been easy to fall apart or to go in the opposite direction, but somehow I felt that if I took on more step, someone would come along to join me. ~ Rosa Parks

The difference between the Japanese and the American is summed up in their opposite reactions to the proverb (popular in both nations), "A rolling stone gathers no moss." Epidemiologist S. Leonard Syme observes that to the Japanese, moss is exquisite and valued; a stone is enhanced by moss; hence a person who keeps moving and changing never acquires the beauty and benefits of stability. To Americans, the proverb is an admonition to keep rolling, to keep from being covered with clinging attachments. ~ Carol Tavris

For I was not, as I liked to think, the indulgent pleasure-loving opposite of the cold rigid Colonel. I was the lie that Empire tells itself when times are easy, he the truth that Empire tells when harsh winds blow. ~ J.M. Coetzee

An existence devoted to reading would have been his ultimate fulfillment, but it had not been given to him. He would have had to choose that path much earlier, to have known what he wanted to do...To have had a life plan. At first it had been interested to be recognized as a promising young banker, to climb the hierarchy, to have responsibilities and to earn a lot of money. Up until the day he had started to feel, dimly at first, then more and more clearly, that the man he had become was the absolute opposite of what he really was. Although the dichotomy weighed heavily on him, for a while the money he was earning was compensation enough, but then it could no longer make up for it. The gap between his ideal and his reality was too great. The weight turned into an anguish that was succeeded by the intolerable idea that he was wasting his life --or even that he had already wasted it. ~ Antoine Laurain

There are strong reasons for believing that space goes on beyond the limits of our observational horizon. There are strong reasons because if you look in opposite directions, conditions are the same to within one part in 100,000. So if we are part of some finite structure then, if the gradient is so shallow, it is likely to go on much further. ~ Martin Rees

Do you need us to get you anything, sweetie?" Kincaid asked, sitting on the opposite side of the bed from Finn. "Water? A pill? A former football player in his underwear? Because we've got the last one covered. And I can make the first two happen."

Liv looked up at that, registering the fact that Finn was shirtless and his thick hair was sticking up every which way. Her gaze drifted down to his black boxer briefs. "You're in your underwear."

"'Fraid so," he said. "Good thing I don't sleep naked. ~ Roni Loren

Knowledge [...] no longer consists in a manipulation of man and nature as opposite forces, nor in the reduction of data to mere statistical order, but is a means of liberating mankind from the destructive power of fear, pointing the way toward the goal of the rehabilitation of the human will and the rebirth of faith and confidence in the human person. ~ Ruth Nanda Anshen

Most people have friends, but no money. I have the opposite. I don't have a chance to talk to my real friends, the ones I've had since I was 5 years old. Sometimes I wish I could bring Czechoslovakia to America. Then I would be the happiest guy in the world. ~ Jaromir Jagr

The colonel laughed, effectively halting Bingley's speech. "Uncharacteristically reclusive? Do we speak if the same man? Darcy's very character is defined by his reclusiveness! He prefers to keep his own counsel, especially when he ought to do the opposite - the bacon-brained buffoon. ~ KaraLynne Mackrory

People mistakenly assume that if I'm against government involvement in health care, I must favor an alternative where profits drive decisions and businesses take center stage.

The opposite of government isn't business. The opposite of government is voluntary.
[Health Care Without (much) Government, medium.com] ~ Russ Roberts

One of the lines in Finn's code is that you're not to say anything about Finn being attractive to the opposite sex. I'm not sure which exact statue governs this, but it's closely related to the one that won't let you thank him.
Something about compliments and Finn don't work. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

The average politician was crooked. That was my ambition, to be a crooked politician. I'd see them in these restaurants, and they'd all hold these conferences. I'd see politicians who were supposed to be on opposite sides of issues all together at one table. ~ Jack Kirby

It is very important to understand that emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence, it is not the triumph of heart over head - it is the unique intersection of both. ~ David Caruso

The tragedy of government welfare programs is not just wasted taxpayer money but wasted lives. The effects of welfare in encouraging the break-up of low-income families have been extensively documented. The primary way that those with low incomes can advance in the market economy is to get married, stay married, and work - but welfare programs have created incentives to do the opposite. ~ Michael Tanner

I think that the future belongs to democracy, but not to capitalism, because they are opposite camps. ~ Ricardo Alarcon

When you're happy you don't always have to be laughing, and when you're sad you don't have to be crying; sometimes it's the opposite. You laugh when you're the most upset. ~ Freddie Highmore

When Allah makes us aware of a sin we committed, He is not punishing us, but rather inviting us toward His presence. In this way, the moment we are drawn to sincere repentance, we are in effect unveiling the forgiveness that Allah has already written for us to experience. Someone asked the great eighth-century mystic Rabia Al-Adawiyya, "I have sinned much; if I repent, will Allah forgive me?" She profoundly replied, "It is the opposite; if Allah forgives you, you are capable of repentance. ~ A. Helwa

The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry. ~ Peter Kreeft

Beside the bat, on the opposite window, was the image of a raven painted in a mixture of black, blue and purple. I had to step back to realize the creature's wings were curved into the shape of the upper half of a heart, while their bottom halves were connected at the tail to form the end of the heart. ~ K.A. Poe

In Britain, it's bred into you, the idea that you can't really change anything, so why bother. When I went to school in America, it was the total opposite view - you, as an individual, can change anything and everything. It's how you're raised. ~ Heather Brooke

I think music is about our internal life. It's part of the way people touch each other. That's very precious to me. And astronomy is, in a sense, the very opposite thing. Instead of looking inwards, you are looking out, to things beyond our grasp. ~ Brian May

A transposable aphorism is a malaise of the urge to be witty, or in other words, a maxim that is untroubled by the fact that the opposite of what it says is equally true so long as it appears to be funny. ~ Umberto Eco

Or one can visualize the process as follows: as the planet approaches the sun, its speed increases. It shoots past the sun, but as it does so, the clutching hand of gravity swings it round - as a running child grabbing at a maypole is swung around it - so that it now continues in the opposite direction. If its velocity on the approach-run had been exactly the amount required to prevent it from falling into the sun, it would continue in a circle. But as it was slightly greater, the receding run will carry it into an elongated path, which the planet pursues at slackening speed in the teeth of the sun's attraction, as it were, gradually curving inward; until, after passing the aphelion, the curve again approaches the sun and the whole cycle starts again. ~ Arthur Koestler

Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It's absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors. ~ Paul Schrader

A Course in Miracles says that only love is real: The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. ~ Marianne Williamson

It is an oversimplification to say that the opposite of irony is oversimplification. ~ Jedediah Purdy

For in disease the most voluntary or most special movements, faculties, etc., suffer first and most, that is in an order the exact opposite of evolution. Therefore I call this the principle of Dissolution. ~ John Hughlings Jackson

The more perfect something is, the less it can be loved -- like a face, a body, voice, tone, color, or music itself. In playing a piece, don't strive for perfection: it will kill the piece in that it will prevent it from entering the emotions. That's the kind of advice you can't do anything with except perhaps later, when you don't even know you're doing it. It's part of the freeze of counterpoint.'
'I've never heard that expression,' she said.
'Stasis may be a better word -- the liberation of the space between two contradictions. Let me explain if I can. If two waves of equal but opposite amplitude meet in water, what do you get'
'Flat water.'
'In sound?'
'Silence.'
'Right. From agitation, peace, a perfection that you might have thought unobtainable from the clash of contradictory elements.'
'I think you've explained the magic of counterpoint very well.'
'Not really. It's inexplicable. I've noted it, that's all. Half of humanity's troubles arise from the inability to see that contradictory propositions can be valid simultaneously. ~ Mark Helprin

The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Indifference creates evil. Hatred is evil itself. Indifference is what allows evil to be strong, what gives it power. ~ Elie Wiesel

Gradually, I was getting worn down. My sense of direction had evaporated by our fourth day. When south became the opposite of east, I bought a compass, but going around with a compass only made the city seem less and less real. The buildings began to look like backdrops in a photography studio, the people walking in the streets like cardboard cutouts. ~ Haruki Murakami

If asked in a court of law what happened and what was said, I could only attest to the words "heading," "stagnating" and "peaceable." I'd never thought of myself as peaceable - or its opposite - until then. I would also swear to the truth of the biscuit tin; it was burgundy red, with the Queen's smiling profile on it. ~ Julian Barnes

So it is not an accident that the Nazi lads vent a particular fury against (Einstein). He does truly stand for what they most dislike, the opposite of the blond beast intellectualist, individualist, supernationalist, pacifist, inky, plump ... How should they know the glory of the free-ranging intellect and soft objective sympathy to whom money and violence, drink and blood and pomp, mean absolutely nothing? ~ John Maynard Keynes

Dialectics is the philosophy of opposites."
I thought about this. "How do you make a philosophy out of opposites?"
"Well, you know how people are. They like to see things in black and white? Up or down, male or female?"
She had my attention now. "Uh-huh."
"Well, dialectics says that's all bullshit. That life is not about opposites, but about finding the balance between all these extremes."
I tried to sound less interested than I actually was. "How do you do that?" I said. "Find balance, I mean?"
"By paying attention," she said. "By trying to see how everything also contains its opposite." She took a drag on her cigarette. "Because if you live your life at the extremes, you go nuts. If you want to make any sense out of the world, you have to live in the gray."
"That sounds hard," I said.
"The hell yes it's hard," she said. "People don't like gray. It makes people uncomfortable. ~ Jennifer Finney Boylan

Two diametrically opposed points of view concerning religion in the West are to bee seen among Muslims. Some consider all Westerners to be Christians, with the small Jewish minority being of course an exception, and often refer to Westerners as "those Christians" as if the West were of the Middle Ages when the Crusades were carried out and when Western civilization lived in what has been called the Age of Faith. Another group of Muslims hold the opposite view that all Westerners are materialists or agnostics and skeptics and in fact there is no religion among the Westerners. Now it is essential to insist that both of these views are false. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Socrates: So was I.
Bertha: Are you saying you're as great as him, then?
Socrates: No, no, on the contrary, I'm assuming just the opposite! ~ Peter Kreeft

There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible: truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths, until we come to those which are primary. ~ Gottfried Leibniz