Contrasts Quotes

“Ever and again, our mind may become befuddled when we have to find out what is heads or tails. Ever and again, bewilderment may strike our brain when we have to interpret the contrasts between the dark and the bright sides of things when we have got to read complex cases and assess the divergences between the iridescent outward appearances and the grisly undercurrents of particular characters. (‘"Côté cour…Côté jardin" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“It was a cruel city, but it was a lovely one; a savage city, yet it had such tenderness; a bitter, harsh, and violent catacomb of stone an steel and tunneled rock, slashed savagely with light, and roaring, fighting a constant ceaseless warfare of men and of machinery; and yet it was so sweetly and so delicately pulsed, as full of warmth, of passion, and of love, as it was full of hate.”
― Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock

“...for without contrasts, how does one appreciate the different forms that joy can take?”
― N.K. Jemisin, How Long 'til Black Future Month?

“La variété, c'est la vie, l'uniformité, c'est la mort."

[De l’esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation dans leur rapports avec la civilisation européenne (1914)]”
― Benjamin Constant

“India, it’s the centre of the world. A land of intense contrasts, and if it wasn’t for Kingfisher beer and chicken bacon we felt we could live there forever.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“Night and day. Summer and winter, boys. Seedtime and harvest. Life and death. That's what Halloween is, all rolled up in one.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

“Sacrifice” and “self” both begin with the same letter, but the spelling is way different after that.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Although Japanese cooking aims to spotlight the natural flavors of ingredients, zesty accents often appear to provide contrast. A blast of pungent wasabi counterposes the oily richness of raw fish. A shake of spicy herbal sansho cuts through the fatty succulence of grilled eel. And a dab of stinging yellow mustard offsets the mild sweetness of boiled greens.”
― Victoria Abbott Riccardi, Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto

“Other people's houses always intrigued her by the contrast they offered to Greystones; she would see suddenly -- with detached interest and quite without envy or criticism -- the extent to which other people's preoccupations differed from her own.”
― Penelope Lively, Passing On

“If you stay long enough in a city, it reverberates inside you as both a celebration and a mourning.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“Evelyn is a drawing in sharp black and white, and I'm - I'm just a subdued pastel.”
― Georgette Heyer, Pastel

“Life is full of contrasts.”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Washingtonians love the "So-and-so is spinning in his grave" cliché. Someone is always speculating about how some great dead American would be scandalized over some crime against How It Used to Be. The Founding Fathers are always spinning in their graves over something, as is Ronald Reagan, or FDR. Edward R. Murrow is a perennial grave spinner in the news business (though in fact, Murrow was cremated).”
― Mark Leibovich, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral — plus plenty of valet parking! — in America's Gilded Capital

“Mumbai is a city of stark contrasts - providing opportunities to millionaires to pursue their riches and millions of poor to pursue livelihood. For many, Mumbai is a city where their dreams begin; for many others, it marks and end of a dream.”
― Duvvuri Subbarao, Who Moved My Interest Rate: Leading the Reserve Bank Through Five Turbulent Years

“She watched as her sister appeared at the kitchen door and, as always, was struck by her beauty; while she was blonde and fair-skinned, Julia was dark and exotic. Her thick mane of mahogany hair framed her fine-featured face, the weight she had recently lost only serving to highlight her luminous, almond-shaped, amber eyes and high cheekbones.”
― Lucinda Riley, The Orchid House

“I suppose that Lucy and I were worthy of the male gaze, what with her pale blond beauty shown off nicely in a peach summer frock, in contrast to my black hair set against light skin. Tonight I wore my favorite dress of pale green linen, which everyone said complemented my eyes, and a cotton bolero jacket perfect for a summer evening.”
― Karen Essex, Dracula in Love

“ವಿಕಾರಗಳ ಮುಂದೆ ನಡೆಯುವ ಸಹಜತೆಗಳು ಭಯ ಹುಟ್ಟಿಸುವಂಥದ್ದು”
― Karanam Pavan Prasad, ನನ್ನಿ | Nunni

“I would eat this liver for breakfast, lunch, and dinner." "The airiness and crunch of the bread is a perfect contrast to the smooth, thick texture of the liver." "I love that these onions and leeks are hovering just on the edge of burned. It adds a wonderful complexity to the dish." "I'm enjoying the tartness of these pickled gooseberries in contrast to the richness of the rest of the plate.”
― Amanda Elliot, Sadie on a Plate

“I knew there would be a talk coming, but obviously we couldn't let the food get cold. Or warm, in the case of the tuna tartare with benne seeds I finally got to compare to Jada Knox's review. It really did taste a little bit like coffee, which, contrasted with the cold, clean chunks of tuna and hits of acid, was the perfect mellowing factor. The red stew, with a tender chicken thigh nearly falling apart in the spicy, sharp broth, was both hearty and exciting, the bland, fluffy fufu it was served over the perfect contrast. And the curried goat with roti and crispy potatoes? The whole fried red snapper with jerk seasoning? All the contrasts of flavor and texture made me want to eat and eat and eat until I burst.”
― Amanda Elliot, Best Served Hot

“This world was one of great contrasts, she thought, and if the richest part of it was to be fenced off so that people like herself could only look at it with no expectation of ever being able to get inside it, then it would be better to have been born blind so you couldn't see it, born deaf so you couldn't hear it, born with no sense of touch so you couldn't feel it. Better still, born with no brain so that you would be completely unaware of anything, so that you would never know there were places that were filled with sunlight and good food and where children were safe.”
― Ann Petry, The Street

“Necessary Equals by Stewart Stafford

The grandest hearth cannot warm,
Once grave chills touch the aged,
The beggar donates his last coin,
At a counting house of the well-waged.

The giant is meek and misunderstood,
As the slighted short one grows fiery,
Life's spun gold pawned for pennies,
The stricken strive to buy back entirely.

In old age, winter shadows lengthen,
As babes on tiptoes crave growth,
So-called leaders spit out patron's lies,
As a street madman roars his frank oath.

Opposing siblings they are, but needed,
Fellow travellers orbit on a path seeded.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“We're quite happy to shrug and swap raisins for currants, if that's what we happen to have in our cupboard, an orange for a lemon, a chicken for a rabbit, a saucepan for a frying pan, and I suppose that attitude stimulates inventiveness. (But rule-breaking and multifariousness aren't good for a writer who is striving to discern patterns and draw tidy conclusions.)
One of the privileges of researching a book of this kind is the opportunity to travel, and I have seen different versions of England over the past year--- the England of new red-brick bungalows and modern white-tiled factories and the coal-blackened terraces of Industrial Revolution England. I've visited timeless cathedral-city England, the landscapes of Wordsworth and Jane Austen, recognizable still, and the England of village greens and fleeces and orchards full of shiny apples. I've seen silenced shipyards, rusting cranes and queues outside Labour Exchanges, and the England of lidos, motor cafés and nightclubs, all presently coexisting, and I've been struck by what a land of contrasts and contradictions this is. As much as I have asked myself "What is English food?," I have pondered, "Where---and what--- is England?" A land of contrasts (and it always has been, I suspect) creates a food of contrasts. English food is elaborate and simple, conservative and adventurous, regionalized and international.”
― Caroline Scott, Good Taste

“Germany at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries offers an example of the high efflorescence of culture; it then became famed as the land of ‘poets and philosophers’. Few epochs have displayed as much will to genius. In the course of several decades the world was enriched by such geniuses as Lessing and Herder, Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Fichte, Hegel and Schelling, Schleiermacher and Schopenhauer, Novalis and all the romantics. Succeeding ages will look back with envy at this great age. Windelband, the philosopher of its decline, remembers this time of spiritual integrity and spiritual genius as a lost paradise. But had the age of Goethe and Kant, Hegel and Novalis, attained to the authentic higher ‘life’? All evidence tends to show that everyday life in Germany was then poor, middle class and oppressed. Germany was weak, wretched and split up into minute states; the power of ‘life’ had nowhere been realized; and the cultural efflorescence affected only the highest strata of the people whose general condition was lamentable enough.”
― Nicolas Berdyaev, The Meaning of History

“Flowers bloom in secret. Animals build in silence. Humans crave attention.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Pour Like Rain

“Sleep is rest for the rich, but laziness for the poor.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Pour Like Rain

“The saddest part of reality is that while a few are belching, a great many are yawning.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Burn Like Fire

“There are universes within the same universe, and there is a universe where a few wake up to live, and another where a great many wake up to survive.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Burn Like Fire

“Waking up is magical; falling asleep is a miracle.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Burn Like Fire