where extremes meet

Here are five examples where extremes meet and result in sameness despite the diametrically opposed states of mind.

Happiness

Pathologically happy ones do not worry because they do not realize that there is anything worth worrying about. Severely depressed ones do not give a shit about anything neither, but theirs is a wise apathy that knows itself.

Knowledge

Knowledge has two extremes which meet; one is the pure natural ignorance of every man at birth, the other is the extreme reached by great minds who run through the whole range of human knowledge, only to find that they know nothing and come back to the same ignorance from which they set out, but it is a wise ignorance which knows itself.

- Blaise Pascal

Reality

That Nirvana and Samsara are one is a fact about the nature of the universe; but it is a fact which cannot be fully realized or directly experienced, except by souls far advanced in spirituality.

Aldous Huxley - The Perennial Philosophy (Page 70)

Empathy

One study found that the most empathetic nurses were most likely to avoid dying patients early in their training, before they had learned to deal with the distress caused by empathizing too much. Overempathy can look from the outside like selfishness - and even produce selfish behavior.

Bruce D. Perry - Born for Love (Page 44)

Sense of Heat

The human sense of hot or cold exhibits the queer feature of ‘les extremes se touchent’: if we inadvertently touch a very cold object, we may for a moment believe that it is hot and has burnt our fingers.

Erwin Schrödinger - Mind and Matter (Page 158)