William Empson Quotes

Isn’t everyone’s life a mass of contradictions?

I say things that contradict each other, that are in real tension with each other, that compose me, that make me live, and that will make me die.

My lyrics are a big pile of contradictions.

That’s the thing about life, he knew. There was always a but.

I'm a weird mixture of being cynical but at the same time wanting to live in a world where Bigfoot lives.

You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?

How can a man be so brave and so stupid, so gentle and so cruel, so warming and so detestable -- all at the same time?

I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.

Faith embraces itself and the doubt about itself.

It hurts to want everything and nothing at the same time.

Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.

We must learn to live with contradictions, because they lead to deeper and more effective understanding.

Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy of being No-one's sleep under so many lids.

I don't even know what I'm looking for, although I hope I'll know it if I find it along the way. Sometimes I want to simplify my life into a simple bare thing. And other times I want to complicate it so thoroughly that everything I touch will become bound in some way to me. I've become quite aware of my contradictions, but there's no true resolution in that.

God is cruel and not cruel. He is all being and not being at the same time. Hence He is all contradictions. Nature also is nothing but a mass of contradictions.

We need things, and the opposite of them, and we are so rarely completely comfortable.

I'm not interested in a good man's life. I'm interested in contradiction.

I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy

It is, at the most basic level, a bundle of contradictions: a desire for power that strips you of all power. A gesture of strength that divests you of all strength.

There's not one person in the world that's not a living, walking contradiction.

Aren't you an enigma wrapped in a thick coating of contradictions.

I'm aware that I'm kind of a paradox, and at times a bit ill-suited to my profession. But there's something that brings me back. There's something in me that feels like I have to do this, that this is what I'm meant to be doing. If I didn't feel this way, I wouldn't do it. But it's full of contradictions, for sure.

Sometimes those demons are frightening and sometimes they're beautiful.

Sharp and mild, dull and keen, well known and strange, dirty and clean, where both the fool and wise are seen: All this am I, have ever been, - in me dove, snake and swine convene!