Quotes about Opposites

"It is in vain that we search for an essential difference between good and evil, for their constituents are the same. The crucial distinction lies in their structure, i.e., the manner in which the pieces are assembled. Evil is disintegration, an angry juxtaposition of alienated opposites, with parts always striving to repress other parts. Good is the synthesis and reconciliation of these same pieces."

....all the things and events we usually consider as irreconcilable, such as cause and effect, past and future, subject and object, are actually just like the crest and trough of a single wave, a single vibration.  For a wave, although itself a single event, only expresses itself through the opposites of crest and trough, high point and low point.  For that very reason, the reality is not found in the crest nor the trough alone, but in their unity...

Have the strength not to compare and contrast opposites but rather, balance and combine them.

Love and hate are opposites. If people say love is the most important thing in the world, then what is hate?

Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.

Every pair of opposites is divided by an equilibrium which is a balance between the two, but that balance is nit either of the two. Sodium-chloride is an equilibrium which voids both sodium and chlorine, for neither is present in it. Likewise, water is the equator which voids hydrogen and oxygen.
All opposites of all kinds extend from a mutual equator which is their common unity, and to that equator they must eventually return in order to repeat. Every pair must become one in order to again become two.
Men and women do not escape this two-way reciprocatve law. Each becomes what the other is. Both are always compromising each other’s unbalance. If the two unbalances are equal and opposite, each type will survive and grow mentally, spiritually and physically. If the two unbalanced mates are unequal in their opposition, the penalty is degeneration – mentally, spiritually and physically. The quality of one mate is a compromise with the quality of the other. The pattern resulting from this spiritual, mental and moral development is compromised for good or bad by every contact between them – no matter how slight. This is true even outside the sex union.

Know the male,
yet keep to the female:
receive the world in your arms.
If you receive the world,
the Tao will never leave you
and you will be like a little child.

Know the white,
yet keep to the black:
be a pattern for the world.
If you are a pattern for the world,
the Tao will be strong inside you
and there will be nothing you can't do.

Know the personal,
yet keep to the impersonal:
accept the world as it is.
If you accept the world,
the Tao will be luminous inside you
and you will return to your primal self.

The world is formed from the void,
like utensils from a block of wood.
The Master knows the utensils,
yet keeps to the the block:
thus she can use all things.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.

Fifty or sixty shooters had already arrived and managed to look studiously bored. I knew a few of them and nodded politely. No one asked me to sit next to them, nor would I have accepted if they had. It's better that way, in case you end up on opposite sides of a fight, and a whole lot safer. Friends can betray you. Strangers can't.

Any way you measure it, the happiest and most successful people in the world are those with the most political and economic freedom. Our elected representatives are working overtime in the opposite direction.

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

To remember anything it must be associated with something you already know. You must see it in your mind. Create action and detail to improve the image. It should be like, near or opposite that which is to be remembered.

When you are young, women tell you, "Look but do not touch." As you get older you hear just the opposite.

If pro is the opposite of con, is Progress the opposite of Congress?

The pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity, infernal paradise, and celestial hell - in short, harmony of opposite yearnings, sorrowful laughter, soft diamond.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But it also gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth.

Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.

If "con" is the opposite of "pro," then what is the opposite of progress?

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.

Though he avoided outright endorsement of the view, fifth-century Church Father Saint Augustine was clearly familiar with the theory of the spherical earth: "They [those who believe that "there are men on the other side of the earth"] fail to observe that even if the world is held to be global or rounded in shape, or if some process of reasoning should prove this to be the case, it would still not necessarily follow that the land on the opposite side is not covered by masses of water."

Being with the right person is caring for another physically, mentally and spiritually. It is caring for another's soul. As the relationship grows deeper over the years each kiss is still as new and exciting as the first, each embrace is a song of ever-deepening love, and each night becomes a celebration of unity and fulfillment. Every day becomes richer and fuller. Being with the right person answers one of the deeper longings of the human soul. It represents the union of opposites, the fulfillment of the law of creation, and is a rare and precious gift from our Creator.

There's more to light than the opposite of dark.

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.

The essence of peace is to merge two opposites.   Therefore your notions should not scare you if you see another, who absolutely opposes you, and you presume that there is no chance for peace between you two.   On the same token when you see two individuals who are exactly two opposites, never say it would be impossible for them to reconcile.   On the contrary, and this is the perfection of peace to make it between two opposites.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to receive a great deal, you first have to give a great deal. If each individual will give of himself to whomever he can, wherever he can, in any way that he can, in the long run he will be compensated in the exact proportion that he gives.

He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this: The communist, seeing the rich man and his fine home, says: "No man should have so much." The capitalist, seeing the same thing, says: "All men should have as much."