32 Quotes About Duality

Being human is a complicated thing. It’s hard to know what we really want or who we really are. We are often torn between two different sides of ourselves, and one half may be more important than the other. These duality quotes are here to remind you that it is okay to have both sides of yourself, and that they are both equally important.

You asked me how to get out of the finite...
1
You asked me how to get out of the finite dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don't use logic when I do it. Logic's the first thing you have to get rid of. J.d. Salinger
2
Is the god the source, or is the god a human manner of conceiving of the force and energy that supports the world? In our tradition God is a male. This male and female differentiation is made, however, within the field of time and space, the field of duality. If God is beyond duality, you cannot say that God is a "He." You cannot say God is a "She." You cannot say God is an "It." (18) Joseph Campbell
3
The Garden is a metaphor for the following: our minds, and our thinking in terms of pairs of opposites--man and woman, good and evil--are as holy as that of a god. (50) Joseph Campbell
4
...the mind is just as immeasurable as the vast universe. An integral being settles his mind just as the vast universe settles itself. He unites his mind with the unnameable Subtle Origin of the multi-universe in which there is no past, present or future. This is how an integral being deals with his mind. Lao Tzu
...all that we do is governed by the law of...
5
...all that we do is governed by the law of opposites in which every so-called positive act is exactly and equally balanced by its opposite. Tony Parsons
6
In his article, Bogen concluded: “I believe [with Wigan] that each of us has two minds in one person. There is a host of detail to be marshaled in this case. But we must eventually confront directly the principal resistance to the Wigan view: that is, the subjective feeling possessed by each of us that we are One. This inner conviction of Oneness is a most cherished opinion of Western Man.. .. Philip K. Dick
7
Here we have both a paradox, and a beautiful symmetry. It is a duality. I am the earth and you are the moon, and you are the earth and I am the moon. Joshua Edward Smith
8
She finally understood that sex was never about orgasms. Sex was merely a vehicle to achieve connection. It wasn't the destination that mattered - only the journey. Joshua Edward Smith
9
Did you have a nice nap?' he asked. 'Yes, Sir. Naps are tricky. There's a little window of how long you can sleep that will leave you feeling awake and refreshed. But if you miss it and you nap less or more than that amount, you feel like crap the rest of the day. And then you will have insomnia, probably.' 'You're a real risk-taker, " he said. Joshua Edward Smith
10
Does she want me to cum? he thought. This was the frustrating part about vanilla sex. He never got to decide anything, and if he asked any question he would "ruin the moment." So it was all up in the air, never knowing exactly what the fuck was going on. Joshua Edward Smith
11
The DARRYL part of him that exploded on stage made its spellbinding, turbulent presence most felt off stage when we made love. He was a symphony of contradiction; tender, yet fierce; sweet, yet riotous; impassioned, yet leisurely; giving, yet unquenchable. We lay there naked on the carpet a long time afterward, both too depleted–and too content–to move. Raynetta Manees
12
It was the perfect set. Theseus gave a great war cry and brought his sword arcing up toward Sheba’s throat - but the monster of the labyrinth lives inside us all. She is the dark, devouring hunger that is never sated, the creeping shadow that ever plays the fiend to our seraphim, the secret rage hidden in our hearts; deny her, and we become her slaves; fight her, and we make her invincible. By now, you must know that no monster can ever be killed, not really - […]. Troy Denning
13
We all feel that the opposite of our own highest principle must be purely destructive, deadly, and evil. We refuse to endow it with any positive life-force; hence we avoid and fear it. C.g. Jung
14
And was it not perhaps more childlike and human to lead a Goldmund-life, more courageous, more noble perhaps in the end to abandon oneself to the cruel stream of reality, to chaos, to commit sins and accept their bitter consequences rather than live a clean life with washed hands outside the world, laying out a lonely harmonious thought-garden, strolling sinlessly among one's sheltered flower beds. Perhaps it was harder, braver and nobler to wander through forests and along the highways with torn shoes, to suffer sun and rain, hunger and need, to play with the joys of the senses and pay for them with suffering. At any rate, Goldmund had shown him that a man destined for high things can dip into the lowest depths of the bloody, drunken chaos of life, and soil himself with much dust and blood, without becoming small and common, without killing the divine spark within himself, that he can err through the thickest darkness without extinguishing the divine light and the creative force inside the shrine of his soul. Hermann Hesse
15
[T]his jealousy gave him, if anything, an agreeable chill, as, to the sad Parisian who is leaving Venice behind him to return to France, a last mosquito proves that Italy and summer are still not too remote. But, as a rule, with this particular period of his life from which he was emerging, when he made an effort, if not to remain in it, at least to obtain a clear view of it while he still could, he discovered that already it was too late; he would have liked to glimpse, as though it were a landscape that was about to disappear, that love from which he had departed; but it was so difficult to enter into a state of duality and to present to oneself the lifelike spectacle of a feeling one has ceased to possess, that very soon, the clouds gathering in his brain, he could see nothing at all, abandoned the attempt, took the glasses from his nose and wiped them; and he told himself that he would do better to rest for a little, that there would be time enough later on, and settled back into his corner with the incuriosity, the torpor of the drowsy sleeper in the railway-carriage that is drawing him, he feels, faster and faster out of the country in which he has lived for so long and which he had vowed not to allow to slip away from him without looking out to bid it a last farewell. Marcel Proust
16
Are you in pain?' I asked, because I know that everything in the world that matters shows up as some kind of pain. Or pang. Joy included. Andrea Seigel
17
This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil. Robert Louis Stevenson
18
Not long ago, man grew a sense of conscience. He defined himself by what he is, what he thinks, and, more importantly, what he feels–failing to realize that all come from One single source. All of man’s qualities come from One divine being. And that One being has bestowed nature’s hand with the ability to balance itself. Where there is good, there is also evil. And where evil arises, so does good . Soroosh Shahrivar
19
He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working. His (Korean) friends nod and smile and eat the food they've taken from tins and say no pleasantly. Robert M. Pirsig
20
From "Wetness and Water"How does a part of the world leave the world? How can wetness leave water? Do not try to put out a fireby throwing on more fire. Do not wash a wound with blood. No matter how fast you run, your shadow more than keeps up. Sometimes it's in front. Only full, overhead sundiminishes your shadow. But that shadow has been serving you. What hurts you blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest. Jalaluddin Rumi
21
It's like there was a fellow in every man that's done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment. William Faulkner
22
I am two people. One goes through the motions, rolling from one thing to the next; the other is withdrawn, watching a complete stranger. Unknown
23
Gamache nodded. It was what made his job so fascinating, and so difficult. How the same person could be both kind and cruel, compassionate and wretched. Unraveling a murder was more about getting to know the people than the evidence. People who were contrary and contradictory, and who often didn't even know themselves. Louise Penny
24
I am the lion and you are the lamb and as prophesied, we will lie down together. Thomas Lloyd Qualls
25
Balsa seemed invincible, endowed with powers no other warrior could match, but in her profile he could glimpse the shadow of a young girl, hurt and buffeted by a cruel and hopeless fate. If he had never experienced what it was like to be at the mercy of fate himself, he would not have noticed, but now he could see it with unbearable, heartrending clarity. Nahoko Uehashi
26
We think the fire eats the wood. We are wrong. The wood reaches out to the flame. The fire licks at what the wood harbors, and the wood gives itself away to that intimacy, the manner in which we and the world meet each new day. Jack Gilbert
27
A beam or pillar can be used to batter down a city wall, but it is no good for stopping up a little hole - this refers to a difference in function. Thoroughbreds like Qiji and Hualiu could gallop a thousand li in one day, but when it came to catching rats they were no match for the wildcat or the weasel - this refers to a difference in skill. The horned owl catches fleas at night and can spot the tip of a hair, but when daylight comes, no matter how wide it opens its eyes, it cannot see a mound or a hill - this refers to a difference in nature. Now do you say, that you are going to make Right your master and do away with Wrong, or make Order your master and do away with Disorder? If you do, then you have not understood the principle of heaven and earth or the nature of the ten thousand things. This is like saying that you are going to make Heaven your master and do away with Earth, or make Yin your master and do away with Yang. Obviously it is impossible. Zhuangzi
28
For the hundredth time, he examined his face in the bathroom mirror, patiently touched every scratch with the styptic pencil, and repowdered them. He ministered to his face and hands objectively, as if they were not a part of himself. When his eyes met the staring eyes in the mirror, they slipped away as they must have slipped away, Guy thought, that first afternoon on the train, when he had tried to avoid Bruno’s eyes. Patricia Highsmith
29
The world by day is like European music; a flowing concourse of vast harmony, composed of concord and discord and many disconnected fragments. And the night world is our Indian music; one pure, deep and tender raga. Rabindranath Tagore
30
One thing yo learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light. Neal Shusterman
31
We are most of us two people, your Highness. There is something lacking in the man who is one thing only, and so, as he believes, at peace with the world and with himself. Robert Aickman