Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Paradox
For thence,—a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.
Robert Browning—Rabbi-Ben-Ezra. St. 7.
Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his flashing moments: “Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries.”
Holmes—The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. VI.
These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i’ the alehouse.
Othello. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 139.
You undergo too strict a paradox,
Striving to make an ugly deed look fair.
Timon of Athens. Act III. Sc. 5. L. 24.
The mind begins to boggle at unnatural substances as things paradoxical and incomprehensible.
Bishop South—Sermons.