Wilhelm von Humboldt Quotes

When I define polarities in my work, I actually create the space between things. I point to the question I am actually interested in, without naming it.

This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds - the most beautiful senses, the most exquisite emotions.. the most malevolent desires, the darkest deeds. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached.

Simplicity and complexity need each other.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

Everything in life is gray, you know.

Every side of a coin has another side.

In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.

Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.

I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex.

I think of masculine and feminine energy like two sides to a battery. There's a plus side and a minus side, and in order to make something turn on, you need to have opposites touching. It's the same in relationships.

I have an appetite for the normal in my life, as well as the abnormal.

Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.

You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.

Dramatically, I like darkness, I like conflict - but I don't see the world as defined by them.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

I guess I found it useful to realise that everything is true at once, you know? You can pull back and say, 'Everything will be fine,' but you can also be in a situation and say, 'Not everything is going to be fine.'

I have on my bookshelf a series of books with opposite titles: 'The Alpha Strategy' and the 'Omega Strategy'; 'Asia Rising' and 'Asia Falling'; 'Free to Choose' and 'Free to Lose'; 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' and 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.' Visitors love the collection.

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression.

Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity.

I don't think there are in life, pure darkness or pure light. Everyone's got a little of everything.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.

The truth is balance. However the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.

Shallows where a lamb could wade and depths where an elephant would drown.

When I'm good I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.