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21 " The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. "
― Edmund Burke , Speech on Conciliation with America
22 " Equality of condition, though it is certainly a basic requirement for justice, is nevertheless among the greatest and most uncertain ventures of modern mankind. The more equal conditions are, the less explanation there is for the differences that actually exist between people; and thus all the more unequal do individuals and groups become. This perplexing consequence came fully to light as soon as equality was no longer seen in terms of an omnipotent being like God or an unavoidable common destiny like death. Whenever equality becomes a mundane fact in itself, without any gauge by which it may be measured or explained, then there is one chance in a hundred that it will be recognized simply as a working principle of a political organization in which otherwise unequal people have equal rights; there are ninety-nine chances that it will be mistaken for an innate quality of every individual, who is “normal” if he is like everybody else and “abnormal” if he happens to be different. This perversion of equality from a political into a social concept is all the more dangerous when a society leaves but little space for special groups and individuals, for then their differences become all the more conspicuous. "
― Hannah Arendt , The Origins of Totalitarianism
23 " A Christian is supposed to be in the world, and yet not of the world--a Both/And as perplexing and demanding as the Either/Or that precedes the life of faith. I'm at once a pure, beautiful, genderless soul, but at the same time a gendered body full of flaws, sins, and wanting. This contradiction, the Both/And, is the Cross. "
― Therese Doucet
24 " How long you guys been renovating?” Craig asked Arianna.“About a month.”“How much longer?”Arianna sighed. “The contractor messed up the counters, so who knows.”“Preaching to the choir.”“Yeah?”“Oh, yeah. But in the end everything turned out for the best.”“How so?”“Well, for one, I switched from laminate to granite.”“Granite . . .” She exhaled, confounded, as if the granite countertop quandary was the most perplexing philosophical question of all time. “Yeah . . .We’re torn.”“More expensive, but aesthetically superior,” Craig lobbied. “Also retains value longer.”Knowing the sexual perversity about to transpire, I couldn’t reconcile that I was suddenly in an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Granted, I didn’t know from normal pre–group sex discussion topics, but I was pretty sure home improvement wasn’t on the list. "
― Daniel Stern , Swingland: Between the Sheets of the Secretive, Sometimes Messy, but Always Adventurous Swinging Lifestyle
25 " Because, as I would always tell myself so many years later, lying here in my bed: You can't start out again in life, that's a carriage ride you only take once, but with a book in your hand, no matter how confusing and perplexing it might be, once you've finished it, you can always go back to the beginning; if you like, you can read it through again, in order to figure out what you couldn't understand before, in order to understand life, isn't that so, Fatma? "
― Orhan Pamuk , Sessiz Ev
26 " The want of a thing is perplexing enough, but the possession of it is intolerable. "
― John Vanbrugh
27 " The most perplexing yet marvellous phenomena to me so far, is that connecting the dots and seeing patterns of one's life only happens backward and time only happens forward.You can't catch a pattern from the future and you can't catch time from the past. Only by the memories from the past a one tackles the complexity of the present and uncertainty of the future and while everything changes, the mechanism is always the same, and this itself is a pattern. "
28 " Right and wrong stood for him as immutable as the two poles. He had never wandered in that twilight country where the nuances of evil and good cast their perplexing shadows. "
― P.D. James , A Mind to Murder (Adam Dalgliesh #2)
29 " It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have 'something worth fighting for' they do not feel like fighting. "
30 " The want of a thing is perplexing enough but the possession of it is intolerable. "
31 " When you do find humor in trying times, one of the first and most important changes you experience is that you see your perplexing problems in a new way - you suddenly have a new perspective on them. "
32 " Perhaps many of the perplexing problems of the new music could be put into a new light if we were to reintroduce the ancient idea of music being a reflection of nature. "
33 " Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, 'Why not?' and the other, 'Why bother?' "
