Basil of Caesarea Quotes

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.

Life really is a series of contrasts.

You'll have to forgive me this boldness, but I think women are very fortunate that men exist! The gods are very wise and certainly knew what they were doing. They created the sun and the moon, light and darkness, the eagle and the serpent, all for the same reason. They are perfect complements and the mechanism we use to reach heaven.

I love to have contrast.

This principle of opposites is at the very root of Creation, which is divided between the rule of the King and the Queen; Night and Day; the One and the Varied; the Eternal and the Evolving.

You cannot dissociate birth from death, creation from destruction, good from evil. Thus any art is a form of drama standing between the two extreme poles of birth and death, just like life is drama. This is not sad, because to be alive means to be mortal, to pass through.

Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.

The unifying of opposites is the eternal process.

The art of living is based on rhythm - on give & take, ebb & flow, light & dark, life & death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good & bad, right & wrong, yours & mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, 'the dance of life,' metamorphosis.

Two things of opposite natures seem to depend / One on another, as Logos depends / On Eros, day on night, the imagined On the real. / This is the origin of change.

The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites.

And the wind that saddens, the sea that gladdens, Are singing the selfsame strain.

God is in the tiger as well as in the lamb.

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind; Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily; Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness; Sometimes one is up and sometimes down. Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency.

People ask me if I believe in things: in God, in astrology, and I say, absolutely! I believe in everything! And I believe in its opposite. Like the positive and negative volts on a battery, you need both for power.

There is nothing in nature that can't be taken as a sign of both mortality and invigoration.

Every breath you take, you are getting closer to the grave. But every breath you take, you can also get closer to your liberation.

The rose and thorn, the treasure and dragon, joy and sorrow, all mingle into one.

at your weakest, you end up showing more strength; at your lowest, you are suddenly lifted higher than you’ve ever been. They all border one another, these opposites and show how quickly we can be altered.

If a union is to take place between opposites like spirit and matter, conscious and unconscious, bright and dark, and so on, it will happen in a third thing, which represents not a compromise but something new.

Water and stone Flesh and bone Night and morn Rose and thorn Tree and wind Heart and mind

Death belongs to life as birth does The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down

Is life a pregnancy? That would make death a birth.

All is waiting and all is work; all is change and all is permanence.