Statement that seems to contradict itself or common sense, but which, on reflection, reveals a truth.
In The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
from which one might deduce that vice is often the manure of virtue
To claim that vice feeds virtue goes against common sense, but it offers Brás a convenient truth: what he did to Plácida would have yielded something good.
Chapters LXIV to LXXVI: The Little House, The Whip, and Dona Plácida, the narrator
Death does not grow old
Chapters CXXXVII to CLX: The Cap, the Ministry, and the Denials, the narrator
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