Oscar Wilde is famous for his witty paradoxes--meaning, sentences that appear to contradict itself but contain certain truth at second glance. Another example from him is, "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

While people can appreciate and enjoy such literary tricks, it is usually harder to embrace emotional ambiguity and contradiction--we are compelled to categorize emotions as discrete entities: sadness, happiness, anger, fear, and so on.

“People believe that they know an emotion when they see it, and as a consequence assume that emotions are discrete events that can be recognized with some degree of accuracy, but scientists have yet to produce a set of clear and consistent criteria for indicating when an emotion is present and when it is not."