Janus Quotes

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  We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.

  Carson McCullers

  Travel, Jukebox, Road Trip

  Carson McCullers (2017). “Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays & Other Writings”, p.408, Library of America

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• It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the roller-coaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.

  Carson McCullers

  Country, Home, Simple

  Carson McCullers (1975). “The mortgaged heart”, Penguin Books Ltd

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• A friend is Janus-faced: he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Children, Future

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1347, Delphi Classics

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• I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past - a combination of both.

  Ray Bradbury

  Past, Two, Half

  "Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction No. 203". Interview with Sam Geller, www.theparisreview.org. 2010.

  17 Copy quote

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• 

  We are homesick most for the places we have never known.

  Carson McCullers

  Jukebox, Homesick, Nostalgia

  Carson McCullers (2017). “Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays & Other Writings”, p.408, Library of America

  73 Copy quote

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• Repentance is a one-faced Janus, ever looking to the past.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Past, Repentance

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1852). “Romance and reality”, p.39

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• Everything is bilateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are binary. Janus is the myth of criticism and the symbol of genius. Only God is triangular!

  Honore de Balzac

  Ideas, Criticism, Genius

  9 Copy quote

• No man is an island- he is a holon. A Janus-faced entity who, looking inward, sees himself as a self-contained unique whole, looking outward as a dependent part. His self-assertive tendency is the dynamic manifestation of his unique wholeness, his autonomy and independence as a holon. Its equally universal antagonist, the integrative tendency, expresses his dependence on the larger whole to which he belongs: his 'part-ness.'.

  Arthur Koestler

  Unique, Men, Islands

  13 Copy quote

• He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost everywhere two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise the other.

  John Dryden

  Two, Faces, Admiration

  'Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age' (1672)

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• Entropy is Janus-faced. Its upside surprises are redemptive and favorable to freedom. It is freedom of choice. But the carrier itself requires constant vigilance against entropic noise. Order is not spontaneous, but it is a necessary condition for all the surprises of freedom and opportunity.

  George Gilder

  Opportunity, Order, Choices

  George Gilder (2013). “Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World”, p.84, Regnery Publishing

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• I know [my label], in any case: a double face, a charming Janus, and underneath, the house motto: "Be wary". On my business cards:"Jean-Baptiste Clamence, actor".

  Albert Camus

  Hypocrisy, House, Labels

  9 Copy quote

• Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art everything? When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity - then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!

  Charles Lamb

  Art, Past, Looks

  Charles Lamb (1860). “Essays of Elia”, p.23

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• Hermes rolled his eyes. "Surely you've seen network TV lately. It's clear they don't know whether they're coming or going. That's because Janus is in charge of programming. He loves ordering new shows and cancelling them after two episodes. God of beginnings and endings, after all. Anyway, I was bringing him some magic doormats, and I was double-parked -" "You have to worry about double-parking?" "Will you let me tell the story?" "Sorry."

  Rick Riordan

  Sorry, Eye, Two

  "The Demigod Diaries". Book by Rick Riordan, August 14, 2012.

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• Jonah peered critically up at the Renaissance masterpiece. "Man, those copies don't due it justice. This one's the truth!" "Only a Janus," groaned Hamilton.

  Gordon Korman

  Men, Justice, Renaissance

  7 Copy quote