Lisa was thinking, as she climbed the apparently unending staircase, the she had taken pretty long odds. She had not hesitated to buck the Tiger, Life. Simon Iff had warned her that she was acting on impulse. But--on the top of that--he had merely urged her to be true to it. She swore once more that she would stick to her guns. The black mood fell from her. She turned and looked upon the sea, now far below. The sun, a hollow orb of molten glory, hung quivering in the mist of the Mediterranean; and Lisa entered for a moment into a perfect peace of spirit. She became once with Nature, instead of a being eternally at war with it.

~ Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley Contrast Dissonance Imagery Nature

To be happy to be sad and sad to be happy is to sing an echo in that beautiful language called Sorrow.

~ Criss Jami

Criss Jami Aria Artist Beauty Confusion Contentment Depression Despair Dissonance Distress Echo Emotions Expression Grief Happy Joy Language Literature Loneliness Loss Melancholy Melody Opera Pain Paradox Poetry Riddle Sacrifice Sad Singing Solitude Sorrow Suffering Vocal Voice

When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago--and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail--it's disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completely dead. They die long before you do. It's astonishing to consider all the things from your past that used to happen all the time but (a) never happen anymore, and (b) never even cross your mind. It's almost like those things didn't happen. Or maybe it seems like they just happened to someone else. To someone you don't really know. To someone you just hung out with for one night, and now you can't even remember her name.

~ Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman Dissonance Living Nostalgia Regret Remembering

A world constructed from the familiar is the world in which there's nothing to learn.

~ Eli Pariser

Eli Pariser Curiosity Dissonance Learning

The vast majority of Americans, at all coordinates of the economic spectrum, consider themselves middle class; this is a deeply ingrained, distinctly American cognitive dissonance.

~ Ellen Cushing

Ellen Cushing Americans Class Dissonance Economics Income Middle Class Poverty Wealth

It is an awful thing to be betrayed by your body. And it's lonely, because you feel you can't talk about it. You feel it's something between you and the body. You feel it's a battle you will never win . . . and yet you fight it day after day, and it wears you down. Even if you try to ignore it, the energy it takes to ignore it will exhaust you.

~ David Levithan

David Levithan Disability Dissonance Dysmorphia Fighting Yourself Imperfection Loneliness Struggling Transgender

This is the greatest mystery of the human mind--the inductive leap. Everything falls into place, irrelevancies relate, dissonance becomes harmony, and nonsense wears a crown of meaning. But the clarifying leap springs from the rich soil of confusion, and the leaper is not unfamiliar with pain.

~ John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck Crown Dissonance Harmony Inductive Leap Meaning Pain

The easiest way to disturb or create an element of horror is to take a positive emotion and put it in a negative situation, to create dissonance.

~ R.r. Hood

R.r. Hood Dissonance Horror

How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.

~ Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert Anger Dissonance Repression

Whether we do it consciously or subconsciously, we tend to organize our lives to display our identity as accurately as possible. Our lifestyle choices often reveal our values, or at least what we’d like people to perceive as our values…as we make our everyday choices, we continuously calculate not just which choices best match who we are and what we want but also how those choices will be interpreted by others. We look for cues in our social environment to figure out what others think of this or that, which can require being sensitive to the most localized and up-to-date details of what a particular choice means.

~ Sheena Iyengar

Sheena Iyengar Agency Authenticity Choice Dissonance Habitus Identity

Everything teeters between pathos and bathos: here you are, violating society's most fundamental taboos and yet formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant, so you also crave a burrito.

~ Paul Kalanithi

Paul Kalanithi Cadavers Dissection Dissonance Doctors Health Medical Students Medicine

So close to the powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely in their air.

~ Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton Anxiety Change Dissonance Sanctification

Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.

~ T.h. White

T.h. White Discipleship Dissonance Obedience Self Delusion

Because of propaganda induced cognitive dissonance, most people hate themselves and don't even know it.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Bryant Mcgill Dissonance Hatred Knowing Propaganda

Did I live? The human world is like a vast musical instrument on which we play our individual part while simultaneously listening to the compositions of others in an effort to contribute to the whole. We don't chose whether to engage, only how to; we either harmonize or create dissonance. Our words, our deeds, our very presence create and leave impressions in the minds of others just as a writer makes impressions with their words. Who you are is an unfolding narrative. You came from nothing and will return there eventually. Instead of taking ourselves so seriously all the time, we can discover the playful irony of a story that has never been told in quite this way before. -- Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs

~ Stephen Batchelor

Stephen Batchelor Creativity Dissonance Harmonize Play Playfulness Presence Unfolding