Matthew Henry 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.

Everything in life is gray, you know.

Everything has two sides - the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn.

You may find many contradictory statements and philosophies within my writings. However, to this I will say such is life, for life is full of contradictions.

In any work you do, you can be profound one minute, and then you be superficial the next, and you can be smart and insightful and then insipid. There can be room for all that.

In Chekhov, everything blends into its opposite, just fractionally, and this is sort of unsettling. And that's why you end up 100 years later asking, 'Is that moment tragic or comic?'

Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

It is best not to test the depth of a river with both feet.

Life is full of contrasts.

America is a funny place; it's a land of extremes, I think. There's fantastic, and there's gobsmackingly dreadful. In every realm you could imagine, they do extremes very well or badly, depending on how you look at 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.

Fish live in water. Men die in it.Nature is diverse, and not all tastes are the same.

The fish in the water is silent, the animals on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.

The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.

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!

Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true.

I asked the Zebra, are you black with white stripes? Or white with black stripes? And the zebra asked me, Are you good with bad habits? Or are you bad with good habits? Are you noisy with quiet times? Or are you quiet with noisy times? Are you happy with some sad days? Or are you sad with some happy days? Are you neat with some sloppy ways? Or are you sloppy with some neat ways? And on and on and on and on and on and on he went. I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.

So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

I think the best-written films or television series have a measure of the opposite of what they are.

All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.

For nothing was simply one thing.

Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.

There are mountains hidden in mountains. There are mountains hidden in hiddenness. This is complete understanding.

Simplicity and complexity need each other.