A Quote by Daniel Pennac

The paradoxical virtue of reading lies in distancing ourselves from the world so that we may make sense of it.

Daniel Pennac

Quote Topics

Lies Make Make Sense May Ourselves Paradoxical Reading Sense Virtue World

Quote Author

Daniel Pennac
French - Writer
Born: 1944

Fake it may be, lies and deceptions, but this is the world in which we find ourselves, and here we must make our little lives.

Ian McDonald

For what accords better and more aptly with faith than to acknowledge ourselves divested of all virtue that we may be clothed by God, devoid of all goodness that we may be filled by him, the slaves of sin that he may give us freedom, blind that he may enlighten, lame that he may cure, and feeble that he may sustain us; to strip ourselves of all ground of glorying that he alone may shine forth glorious, and we be glorified in him?

John Calvin

Results only come to those who master the paradoxical art of doing and not doing, of letting go as a person in order that the immanent and transcendent unknown quantity may take hold. We cannot make ourselves understand; the most we can do is to foster a state of mind in which understanding may come to us.

Aldous Huxley

Everything. A letter may be coded, and a word may be coded. A theatrical performance may be coded, and a sonnet may be coded, and there are times when it seems the entire world is in code. Some believe that the world can be decoded by performing research in a library. Others believe that the world can be decoded by reading a newspaper. In my case, the only thing that made sense of the world was you, and without you the world will seem as garbled and tragic as a malfunctioning typewrit9.

Daniel Handler

Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth.

Jeanette Winterson

Today, all physicists know from studying Einstein and Bohr that sometimes an idea which looks completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all detail and in experimental situations, may, in fact, not be paradoxical.

Richard P. Feynman

Modern humanity's sense of alienation lies in the fact that we have cut ourselves adrift from both the natural world and from the roots of our past.

Philip Carr-Gomm

We need to empower ourselves and believe in ourselves, and not allow the world to take that away from us. No matter how dark we may think our world is, it's been much darker in the past, and we will make it through this.

Gale Anne Hurd

All rituals are paradoxical and dangerous enterprises, the traditional and improvised, the sacred and the secular. Paradoxical because rituals are conspicuously artificial and theatrical, yet designed to suggest the inevitability and absolute truth of their messages. Dangerous because when we are not convinced by a ritual we may become aware of ourselves as having made them up, thence on the paralyzing realization that we have made up all our truths; our ceremonies, our most precious conceptions and convictions - all are mere inventions.

Barbara Myerhoff

And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world.

Rebecca Goldstein

Things that appear unlikely, impossible, or paradoxical from one point of view often make perfectly good sense from another.

Hugh Nibley

We cannot give what we do not have: We cannot bring peace to the world if we ourselves are not peaceful. We cannot bring love to the world if we ourselves are not loving. Our true gift to ourselves and others lies not in what we have but in who we are.

Marianne Williamson

Paradoxical as it may seem, God means not only to make us good, but to make us also happy, by sickness, disaster and disappointment.

C. A. Bartol

Writing and reading fiction is, I think, a human effort to make sense of the world.

Robin Hobb

In some respects, if I had to choose just one (virtue on the spiritual path), I'd feel safest with a sense of humor. We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, have a good laugh about human nature, and get on with our journeys.