Quotes about secrets (2118 quotes, page 21)

“We believe that when this secret is finally unlocked, every member of the Unbroken Spine who ever lived…will live again.”

Robin Sloan (1979) American writer

A Messiah, a first disciple, and a rapture. Check, check, and double-check. Penumbra is, right now, teetering right on the boundary between charmingly weird old guy and disturbingly weird old guy. Two things tip the scales toward charm: First, his wry smile, which is not the smile of the disturbed, and micromuscles don’t lie. Second, the look in Kat’s eyes. She’s enthralled. I guess people believe weirder things than this, right? Presidents and popes believe weirder things than this.
Source: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012), Chapter 15 “The Strangest Clerk in Five Hundred Years” (p. 136)

“It is indeed strange that Indian critics should react to this novel so puritanically, forgetting the fact that a masterpiece of erotics i. e. Kama Sutra was produced by Vatsayana in the ancient days in India. Like all semi or fully pornographic novels, The Company of Women is widely sold, secret and publicly condemned.”

Vātsyāyana Indian logician

Source: Literary Vision, p. 127

Forgetting , Women

“With his rotund ecclesiastical side, Dior was like a cathedral, a repository of countless secrets no one else had access to.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

Genevieve Page, in p. 31
Christian Dior: The Man who Made the World Look New

“Brijmohan Maharaj’s Kamdeva matched grace with grace. To the loving he added fear, and a secret knowledge of his fate. Together they devised a poignancy that was memorable and must surely be rare in dance.”

Birju Maharaj (1938) Indian dancer

His dance in the ballet choreography Rati Kamdeva performed along with co-artiste Kumudini Lakhi reviewed in the Statesman in "Movement in Stills: The Dance and Life of Kumudini Lakhia}, page=115.

Fate , Knowledge , Dance , Love

“Ever since I’d shown my bleeding arms to my sweetheart we hadn’t spoken a word. I’d simply decided to wait until she told me she appreciated carved tatoos. But she never did. She just ignored my obvious suffering. The pain in my gut, the secret gnawing at my belly didn’t concern her one damn bit. Things got so bad for me I finally took to smoking like all my buddies were already doing. I rolled up whole pages of old funny books and smoked the shit until my lungs ached. I’d cut vines from the ivy that crawled up the sides of the chicken coop and puff on my homemade cigars until my head buzzed.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 91.

Pain , Waiting , Bad luck , Suffering

“Today we are sacks of shit bundled into flying tubes with a security warning secreted inside every orifice.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

Rumble In The Jungle: Ali v Foreman, p. 133
The Joke's Over (2006)

Flying

“The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of this world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Fear , Fate , Way , Decision

“I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that He has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 9, A Boat.

God , People , Learning , Spring

“Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.”

Paul Fussell (1924–2012) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

… They have experienced secretly and privately their natural human impulse toward sadism and brutality. As I say in this new book of mine, not merely did I learn to kill with a noose of piano wire put around somebody's neck from behind, but I learned to enjoy the prospect of killing that way. It's those things that you learn about yourself that you never forget. You learn that you have much wider dimensions than you had imagined before you had to fight a war. That's salutary. It's well to know exactly who you are so you can conduct the rest of your life properly.
Humanities interview (1996)

“What would you think the odds were that this town could keep that secret for this long?”

W. Mark Felt (1913–2008) Whistleblower who exposed the Watergate scandal

Benjamin C. Bradlee, former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, who, along with Woodward and Bernstein, were the only ones publicly known to know the identity of "Deep Throat."

Thinking

“To few men was it given to realize so completely the element of eternity — of time-effacing enjoyment in work — as it was to John Muir. The secret of it all was in his soul, the soul of a child, of a poet, and of a strong man, all blended into one. … An innate nobility of character, an unstudied reverence for all that is sublime in nature or in life, unconsciously called forth the best in his friends and acquaintances. In the spiritual as in the physical realm flowers blossomed in his footsteps where he went. After all it is to such men as John Muir that we must look for the sustenance of those finer feelings that keep men in touch with the spiritual meaning and beauty of the universe, and make them capable of understanding those rare souls whose insight has invested life with imperishable hope and charm. … To all who knew John Muir intimately his gentleness and humaneness toward all creatures that shared the world with him, was one of the finest attributes of his character. … Among those who have won title to remembrance as prophets and interpreters of nature he rises to a moral as well as poetical altitude that will command the admiring attention of men so long as human records shall endure.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

William Frederic Badé (pages 38-40)
Sierra Club Bulletin - Memorial Issue

Soul , Time , Understanding , Strong

“Most works in realism tell a succession of such abject truths; they are deeply in earnest, every detail is true, and yet the whole finally tumbles to the ground — true but without significance. How did Jane Austen save her novels from that danger? They appear to be compact of abject truth. Their events are excruciatingly unimportant; and yet, with R. Crusoe, they will probably outlast all Fielding, Scott, George Elliot, Thackeray, and Dickens. The art is so consummate that the secret is hidden; peer at them as hard as one may; shake them; take them apart; one cannot see how it is done.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Thornton Wilder, A preface for Our Town (1938)

Success , Art , Truth , Appearance

“There is no combination of characters one can make — dhcmrlchtdj, for example — that the divine Library has not foreseen and that in one or more of its secret tongues does not hide a terrible significance. There is no syllable one can speak that is not filled with tenderness and terror, that is not, in one of those languages, the mighty name of a god.”

Jorge Luis Borges book The Library of Babel

"The Library of Babel" ["La Biblioteca de Babel"] (1941)

God , Making love

“Perhaps the physical and the metaphorical meanings are clumsy ways of understanding what happens when two beings need, not just to be close together, but to become so totally ductile that each becomes the other. To be who I am because of you. To be who he was because of me. To be in his mouth while he was in mine and no longer know whose it was, his cock or mine, that was in my mouth. He was my secret conduit to myself—like a catalyst that allows us to become who we are [...].”

André Aciman book Call Me By Your Name

Part 2, p. 143
Call Me By Your Name (2007)

Way , Understanding

“Some things stayed secrets even when you told them.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 3 (p. 33)

“Let us ask ourselves seriously and honestly, " What do I believe after all? What manner of man am I after all? What sort of show would I make after all, if the people around me knew my heart and all my secret thoughts?"”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

What sort of show then do I already make in the sight of Almighty God, who sees every man exactly as he is?

P. 276.
Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Making love , People , Heart

“You know, the dirty little secret is no longer sex; the dirty little secret is hatred and rage. It's the tirade that's taboo. Odd that this should be so a hundred years after Dostoyevsky (and fifty after Freud), but nobody nice likes to be identified with the stuff. It's the way folks used to feel about fellatio in the good old days. "Me? Never heard of it. Disgusting."”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

But is it "hostile," really, to take a look at the ferocity of the emotion they call "hostility"?
Paris Review Interview (1986)

Sex , Rage , Way , Feeling

“Congress... has become a secret tyrannical bastion of Wall Street, and that outrages people...”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

"How The Rats Reformed The Congress" (2018)

People

“It’s time to let the secret out: mathematics is not primarily a matter of plugging numbers into formulas and performing rote computations. It is a way of thinking and questioning that may be unfamiliar to many of us, but is available to almost all of us.”

John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Introduction (p. 3)
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

Time , Question , Thinking , Mathematics

“We are now raring to die for our country's sake
Let's see how much of strength the assassin can display!
O traveller on the path of love, do not drop mid-way,
It is the distance of the goal that glorifies the chase.
It is the distance of the goal that glorifies the chase.
Standing by the gallows the hangman makes a call,
Come, if there be any, by the martyr's zeal enthralled.
We'll tell you all, O sky, wait till he time arrives,
How can we at this stage, our secret plans unveil?
O martyrs in the nation's cause, kudos to your sacrifice,
Even in the enemy they talk of you with praise.
Fired by patriotic fervour, many a maddened youth.
Has gathered at the crossing, itching for the cross.
Why are they mute and silent? no whisper, no talk,
Everyone that I see has got his lips locked.”

Ram Prasad Bismil (1897–1927) revolutionary, poet & writer

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 109
Poetry, Desire for Self-sacrifice (Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna)

Time , Waiting , Country , Youth

“Across the globe, in dark places of the earth, secret lairs were rarely caves of monsters or marvels but markets. Shops. The worst-kept secret in circulation was that certain activities invested items in their proximity with certain affects, effects, and powers, and made them hugely valuable. And that thus it was imperative that they be sold. That, certainly, had been the case for as long as there had been people and things, but there were always fluctuations. The occult economies of charged items were always jostling.”

China Miéville book The 9th Technique

The 9th Technique (p. 101)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

People

“Wisdom of what herself approves makes choice,
Nor is led captive by the common voice.
Clear-sighted Reason Wisdom's judgment leads,
And Sense, her vassal, in her footsteps treads.
That thou to Truth the perfect way may'st know,
To thee all her specific forms I'll show:
He that the way to honesty will learn,
First what's to be avoided must discern.
Thyself from flatt'ring self-conceit defend,
Nor what thou dost not know to know pretend.
Some secrets deep in abstruse darkness lie:
To search them thou wilt need a piercing eye.
Not rashly therefore to such things assent,
Which, undeceived, thou after may'st repent;
Study and time in these must thee instruct,
And others' old experience may conduct.
Wisdom herself her ear doth often lend
To counsel offer'd by a faithful friend.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

Source: Of Prudence (1668), line 11

Faith , Study , Time , Search

“I have found heaven on earth, since heaven is God and God is in my soul. The day I understood that, everything became clear to me, and I would like to share this secret with all those I love so that they, too, might cling to God through everything, so that this prayer of Christ might be fulfilled: "Father, may they be made perfectly one!"”

Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880–1906) French Carmelite nun and mystic

Letters to Madame de Sourdon, L 122, 15 June 1902; as quoted in Always Believe in Love: Selected Writings of Elizabeth of the Trinity by Marian Murphy, 2017, p. 109 https://books.google.it/books?id=JX3LDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA109.

Soul , God , Christ , Love

“The tainted milk scandal shows us that the more dark secrets are exposed, the better. You can't cure the disease, or save the Chinese people, until you get to the root of the problem.”

Bao Tong (1932–2022) Policy secretary of former Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang

On the 2008 Chinese milk scandal

"If the Chinese government tries to play down this incident, there will be no social stability in China, let alone harmony... It will mean that this government has lost the most basic level of trust."[7] -

"Uproar Over China Milk Scandal". Radio Free Asia. September 23, 2008.
2000s

Problem , People , Disease

“Benevolence is the foundation of Justice, since we are forbidden to injure those we are bound to assist. A prophet may reveal the secrets of Heaven and futurity, but in his moral precepts he can only repeat the lessons of our own hearts.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

EGPaIV" Edward Gibbon, [1788], Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gibbon/05/daf05010.htm, Vol. 5, Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. Part IV.
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)

Future , Justice , Heart

“Caste is real. The working class is real. Being a Naga is real. But ‘India is just a geographical expression!’ Similarly, being a Muslim of course is real – Islam must be seen and talked of as one block of granite – ... But Hinduism? Why, there is no such thing: it is just an aggregation, a pile of assorted beliefs and practices – ... And anyone who maintains anything to the contrary is a fascist out to insinuate a unity, indeed to impose a uniformity, where there has been none. That is what our progressive ideologues declaim, as we have seen. In a word, the parts alone are real. The whole is just a construct. India has never been one, these ideologues insist – disparate peoples and regions were knocked together by the Aryans, by the Mughals, by the British for purposes of empire. Anyone who wants to use that construct – India – as the benchmark for determining the sort of structure under which we should live has a secret agenda – of enforcing Hindu hegemony.
This is the continuance of, in a sense the culmination of, the Macaulay-Missionary technique. The British calculated that to subjugate India and hold it, they must undermine the essence of the people: this was Hinduism, and everything which flowed from it. Hence the doggedness with which they set about to undermine the faith and regard of the people for five entities: the gods and goddesses the Hindus revered; the temples and idols in which they were enshrined; the texts they held sacred; the language in which those texts and everything sacred in that tradition was enshrined and which was even in mid-nineteenth-century the lingua franca – that is, Sanskrit; and the group whose special duty it had been over aeons to preserve that way of life – the Brahmins. The other component of the same exercise was to prop up the parts – the non-Hindus, the regional languages, the castes and groups which they calculated would be the most accessible to the missionaries and the empire – the innocent tribals, the untouchables.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

God , Faith , People , Way

“The secret of a Scientist is not what he knows. It’s what he asks.”

Stephen Baxter book Raft

Source: Raft (1991), Chapter 4 (p. 45)

“The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Variant translation: The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he.
Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Appearance , People

“Here then is the secret: You must give yourself, if you desire to find yourself. "Give up thy life if thou wouldst live."”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Give up the small life, the petty life, the mean life, the restricted life, the little personal life which shuts you in - give it up and follow the light of the Star within you.
The Masters and the Path of Occultism (1939)

Life

“Beyond the heaven there is the country of heart,
here dwell the deepest secret nobody knows,
here the bud see the bud, the mind
can't hide its darkness and the shadow
of the soul is illuminated,
and this is the miracle that's keeping
the stars in harmony orbit.”

alexis karpouzos

spirituality and wisdom

Soul , Country , Star , Heart

“Let the music keep our spirits high
And let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

Before the Deluge (1974) from For Everyman (1973)

Music , Children

“…I have discovered that plays are easier to write than novels if the writer has a certain verbal facility, a certain capacity for the colloquial, an ear for the secret cadences of the spoken word. A play can be written with more ease than a novel…”

Luis Rafael Sánchez (1936) Puerto Rican playwright and novelist

On plays versus novels in “Luis Rafael Sánchez: Counterpoints" https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00096005/00024/14j (Sargasso, 1984)

“…There's no secret, no shortcut. Once you accept that being a writer or a creator is just really hard and takes a lot of hours of slogging through crappy first drafts, you just keep producing, and then you turn around and it's done. That's the magic.”

Esperanza Spalding (1984) American jazz bassist and singer

On becoming a writer in “Esperanza Spalding Talks Recording an Album in 77 Hours, Sexism in Music & Nicki Minaj” https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7973640/esperanza-spalding-77-hours-livestream-album-interview in Billboard (2017 Sep 22)

“Every person in this world wants to know the secrete behind success in professional as well as personal life. Having positive attitude is the key to achieving success in life.”

Gaur Gopal Das (1973) Indian spiritual leader, lifestyle coach and motivational speaker

[Positive attitude key to success, says Gaur Gopal Das, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/positive-attitude-key-to-success-says-gaur-gopal-das/articleshow/62501124.cms, Times of India, 15 January 2018]

Success , Personality , World , Life

“You’re the secret to change your life, you’re the key to your own happiness. It's not the happy people who are thankful, it’s the thankful people who are happy.”

Gaur Gopal Das (1973) Indian spiritual leader, lifestyle coach and motivational speaker

[Power to choose is much bigger than the challenges one faces,says Gaur Gopal Das, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/raipur/power-to-choose-is-much-bigger-than-the-challenges-one-faces-says-gaur-gopal-das/articleshow/65516324.cms, Times of India, 23 August 2018]

Happiness , People , Life , Change

“You are welcome in my mind
Follow me we're going deeper
To a place thats hard to find
Tell me, can you keep a secret
I know I know
Something you dont know
I know how to shake
To turn you on
Dont put on the breaks
Lemme keep it rolling
Can you keep it going?”

Antonio Fresco (1983) American DJ, music producer, and radio personality

Written by Antonio Fresco, Patricia Possollo, Lorena J'zel
Song lyrics, Rattlesnake https://genius.com/Antonio-fresco-patricia-possollo-rattlesnake-lyrics (2019)

“O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.”

William Blake The Sick Rose

The Sick Rose, plate 39.
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Night , Art , Joy , Love

“The joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter the other.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Parents and Children

For Parents , Fear , Joy , Parent

“The secret of liberty is to enlighten men, as that of tyranny is to keep them in ignorance.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

As quoted in Human Rights and Freedoms in the USSR (1981) by Fedor Eliseevich Medvedev and Gennadiĭ Ivanovich Kulikov, p. 221
Original: Le secret de la liberté est d'éclairer les hommes, comme celui de la tyrannie est de les retenir dans l'ignorance
Variant: The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
Source: Public statement (November 1792), quoted in Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre (1840), Volume 2, p. 253 http://books.google.com/books?id=iSMVAAAAQAAJ

Men

“Would you that spangle of Existence spend
About the Secret — Quick about it, Friend!
A Hair perhaps divides the False and True —
And upon what, prithee, may life depend?”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

Source: The Rubaiyat (1120)

Life , Falseness , Dependency

“If you keep sugar apart from us, we cannot have experience of its sweetness. If we eat it, then only we know its taste. A man cannot get Mukti if he simply repeats 'Rama, Krishna, or Govinda' for a thousand years. He must repeat it heartily (knowing the secret).”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

30
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

“In our secret depths, wherever we do our unspoken wishing, either we want life to be tidy, clear, fully understood, contained within definite limits, or we long for it to seem larger, wilder, stranger. Faced with some odd incident, either we wish to cut it down or to build it up.
On this level, below that of philosophies and rational opinions, either we reject or ignore the unknown, the apparently inexplicable, the marvellous and miraculous, or we welcome every sign of them. At one extreme is a narrow intolerant bigotry, snarling at anything outside the accepted world-picture, and at the other is an idiotic credulity, the prey of any glib charlatan. At one end the world becomes a prison, at the other a madhouse.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 8, p. 183

World , Life

“…I remember as a child holding these long notes, so there’s something that’s already there. But I do think it’s a constant question of knowing and taking care of yourself. It doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have a tequila or a mezcal once in a while…In my case, it’s very important to have it because through that you express the emotion you have from within. Sometimes that gives you some more secrets about how to handle your instruments.”

Lila Downs (1968) Mexican American singer-songwriter

On her vocal style in “Lila Downs Reminds Us of the Strength Women Bring to Latin America and its History” https://sheshredsmag.com/lila-downs-14/ in She Shreds (2018 May 3)
Music and culture

Thinking , Question

“For those slain at once.
For those living through the months and years
Enduring, watching, hoping, going each day
To the work or the queue for meat or the secret club,
Living meanwhile, begetting children, smuggling guns,
And found and killed at the end like rats in a drain.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

Children , Hope

“Finally, our greatest asset in this struggle is the American people--their willingness to pay the price for these programs--to understand and accept a long struggle--to share their resources with other less fortunate people-to meet the tax levels and close the tax loopholes I have requested--to exercise self-restraint instead of pushing up wages or prices, or over-producing certain crops, or spreading military secrets, or urging unessential expenditures or improper monopolies or harmful work stoppages--to serve in the Peace Corps or the Armed Services or the Federal Civil Service or the Congress--to strive for excellence in their schools, in their cities and in their physical fitness and that of their children--to take part in Civil Defense-to pay higher postal rates, and higher payroll taxes and higher teachers' salaries, in order to strengthen our society--to show friendship to students and visitors from other lands who visit us and go back in many cases to be the future leaders, with an image of America--and I want that image, and I know you do, to be affirmative and positive-and, finally, to practice democracy at home, in all States, with all races, to respect each other and to protect the Constitutional rights of all citizens.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

School , Democracy , Peace , Home

“The faith commended to their faithful by all religions, and considered by them as a virtue essential for him who hopes for eternal salvation, is nowise approved in the Secret Teachings. Based on the advice given by the Buddha to His disciples, the primary recommendation that the Masters give to neophytes is: Doubt! Doubt is an incitement to research, and research is the Way which leads to Knowledge.”

Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist and writer

Source: The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects (1964)

Faith , Religion , Hope , Knowledge

“The Masters of the secret teachings say that the truth learned from another is of no value, and that the only truth which is living and effective, which is of value, is the truth which we ourselves discover.”

Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist and writer

Source: The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects (1964)

Truth , Learning

“War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end. To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

As quoted in Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (1904) by George Francis Robert Henderson http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12233, Ch. 25 : The Soldier and the Man, p. 481
Q him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow…]]

Time , Success , Business , Country

“My Pussy Queen
Knows all my secrets.
I'll never fall in love again.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

Love , Making love

“Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to Bernard Berenson (13 September 1952); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

People , Boy , Fish , Sea

“Having fun is an art and the secret is playing DJ.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Divertirsi è un'arte e il segreto è giocare DJ.
Source: prevale.net

Art

“The secret of success is understanding what it can affect.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il segreto del successo è capire ciò che può colpire.
Source: prevale.net

Understanding , Success

“The secret is to act not to react.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il segreto è agire non reagire.
Source: prevale.net

“The sworn secret is out. Pope Francis named me auxiliary bishop and I am waking up to what it means. Put a few prayers in for me. I will need them and be grateful.”

Gregory J. Studerus (1948) Roman Catholic priest

Hudson pastor becomes a bishop https://www.nj.com/opinion/2020/02/hudson-pastor-to-become-a-bishop-faith-matters.html (Februay 27, 2020)

“Of the origin of things we know nothing, and can know nothing. Perfection does not reveal itself to us as existent in the beginning; but as something that ought to be, something new which we are to help create. Somehow the secret of the universe is hidden in our breast. Somehow the destinies of the universe depend upon our exertions.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 2 : Religion
Life and Destiny (1913)

Perfection , Universe , Dependency , Help

“Here is the secret: I have been at probably every powerful table that you can think of — I have worked at non-profits, I have been at foundations, I have worked in corporations, served on corporate boards, I have been at G-summits, I have sat in at the UN — they are not that smart.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (3 December 2018) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46434147
2010s

Thinking

“Ask yourself the secret of your success. Listen to your answer, and practice it.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Success

“To follow, without halt, one aim: There is the secret of success.”

Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) Russian ballet dancer

Success

“Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Soul , Wisdom , Art , Thinking

“It is only a certain type of mind that scorns what is known by all and reads secrets as jewels.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Five Thousand Years Later” (p. 749)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Reading

“Let me tell you, young man—the dirty little secret of democracy is that just because you get a vote, doesn’t mean you get your choice.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Cryoburn (2010), Chapter 3 (p. 51)

Democracy

“There is always a good time to start a business, considering you have the Internet in your pocket, you are in this game 24/7/365, which is the ultimate secret weapon.”

Vladimer Botsvadze

Time , Business , Game

“The secret to solving a problem always lies in finding the most suitable path: reflect, try, don't give up, be constant and you will get it.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il segreto per risolvere un problema sta sempre nel trovare la strada più adatta: rifletti, prova, non arrenderti, sii costante ed otterrai.
Source: prevale.net

Problem

“Having fun is an art and the secret is playing DJ.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

(it) Divertirsi è un'arte e il segreto è giocare DJ.

Art

“Friends are admiring my age and health, and asking me the secret to live to such an age in good health. I usually answer them frankly: I have never paid attention to my health and age.”

Peter Chung Hoan Ting (1928) Malaysian catholic priest

Archbishop Emeritus Peter Chung celebrates his 90th birthday http://www.heraldmalaysia.com/news/archbishop-emeritus-peter-chung-celebrates-his-90th-birthday/44331/1 (September 21, 2018)

Health , Age

“Lodges are occult and secret centers of power! Journalists/politicians should be required by law to publicly declare whether they are members!”

Filip Dewinter (1962) Flemish politician

Filip Dewinter: Following the series in De Standaard, here's an anthology of tweets: http://vrijmetselarijvoordummies.blogspot.com/2012/02/twitter.html

Law

“We are afraid of what we do not know. Therefore, the secret of fear is in knowing as much as you can. Leaving all the dogmas behind you!”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Fear

“If our petitions are sincere, we labor for what we ask; and our Father, who seeth in secret, will reward us openly.”

Mary Baker Eddy book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

Source: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 13

Sincerity

“Any woman who tries to influence a man in subtle ways is a fool. Every woman should influence her man, but she should do it as a full and open partner—and not in some secret fashion.”

Martha Beall Mitchell (1918–1976) Wife of American politician

[Martha Mitchell, Saturday Evening Post, Fall 1971, 243, 2, 50-53]

Fools , Way , Fashion

“The desert reveals its secrets; the great mystery of interior Africa is revealed day by day.”

Émile Banning (1836–1898) academic, civil servant

All the King's Men' A search for the colonial ideas of some advisers and "accomplices" of Leopold II (1853-1892). (Hannes Vanhauwaert), Emile Banning (1836-1898): The Don Quichotte of the ‘liberal civilization’ in Congo, Emile Banning's Colonial Career. http://www.ethesis.net/leopold_II/leopold_II.htm#_ftn194 On January 17, February 14 and 15, 1876, Emile Banning wrote three articles in L'Echo du Parliament on the new developments in the discovery and exploration of Central Africa. See ARAB. Papiers Banning, VII, 118, Les voyages de découverte dans l'Afrique, February 15, 1876.

“The secret irony pervading these arguments [on objections to the goodness of God] is that they would never have occurred to consciences that had not in some profound way been shaped by the moral universe of a Christian culture.”

David Bentley Hart (1965) American theologian

Source: The Doors of the Sea (2005), Chapter 1, Section 2, location 144

God , Universe , Way

“I don’t think it’s right to keep secrets from parents about challenges their kids are going through.”

Jason Kenney (1968) Canadian politician and 18th Premier of Alberta

On whether schools should automatically notify parents if a student joins a Gay-Straight Alliance club https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/kenney-parents-should-be-told-if-child-joins-gay-straight-alliance (29 March 2017)
2010s

Thinking , Parent

“The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.”

Knute Rockne (1888–1931) American college football player and college football coach (1888-1931)

As quoted in Coaching Champions: The Privilege of Mentoring (1994) by Jess Gibson, p. 160

For Team

“The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice of problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in the scientific world.”

Henry Tizard (1885–1959) British chemist

Undated attributed quote

Question , Problem , World , Science

“People knelt in prayer, some moving their lips. Envy 'em, really I do. I envy God, too, privy to their secrets. Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I've stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

Source: Cloud Atlas (2004), Letters from Zedelghem (Part 1) p. 75

God , People , Faith , Time

“The secret which will solve this impasse is that true independence and individuality can only successfully exist in group form!”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Introduction p. I - XII

“When Jesus' disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray He warned them against making a display of their praying in order to be seen of men. They should retire to their "inner chamber" and pray to the Father who sees in secret and rewards openly. Then He said, "After this manner therefore pray."”

Charles Fillmore (1854–1948) American mystic

Source: Teach Us to Pray with Cora Fillmore (1941)

Men

“The secret of mission work especially in areas with different cultures is to respect the people and the people will respect you.”

Gilles Côté (bishop) (1945) Canadian-born bishop

Source: An Exclusive Interview with Bishop Gilles Côté, SMM http://www.montfortian.info/en/blog/?an-exclusive-interview-with-bishop-gilles-côté,-smm (27 June 2018)

People

“Life, we now know, is nothing but a vast array of coordinated chemical reactions. The “secret” to that coordination is the breathtakingly complex set of instructions inscribed—again, chemically—in our DNA.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

Coda: Our Genes and Our Future (p. 430)
Source: DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003/2017)

Life

“You care passionately about this thing…That is what makes you so valuable. That and your talents, your allergies, your tame pathologies, the things that make you a secret legend in the world of marketing.”

William Gibson Blue Ant trilogy

Source: Blue Ant trilogy, Pattern Recognition (2003), Chapter 7, "The Proposition" (Bigend to Cayce, about the footage)

World , Passion

“Gnosis truly, is a light which God casts into the heart. True knowledge of God is gained when the lover comes in contact with the Beloved through secret communion with Him.”

Abu Talib al-Makki Scholar, mystic

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 86

God , Light , Heart , Knowledge

“Maybe it’s a mark of a maturing culture, do you think, that secrets aren’t kept, that truth is told, that things are talked out?”

Arthur C. Clarke A Time Odyssey

Source: 2000s and posthumous publications, A Time Odyssey, Firstborn (2007), Chapter 49, “Areosynchronous” (p. 313)

Truth , Thinking

“I can be pretty much an open book but, like everyone, I have my little secrets and moments I keep to myself and for my family. The key for me is to always add value. It could be a jollof rice hack or sharing an experience; whatever it is, I hope it helps my audience somehow.”

Sisi Yemmie (1984) Nigerian Youtuber

Source: https://guardian.ng/life/spotlight/sisi-yemmie-the-inspirational-vlogger/ Sisi yemmie speaking at an interview.

Books , Family , Hope , Help

“My secret weapon is my anger. That's what stimulates me as an artist. I want change. I want it yesterday. I'm pissed off at America. Society. American movies. American TV. American culture. American politicians. Capitalism. [...] Impatience and rage are always just beneath the surface for me.”

Dan Fante (1944–2015) American writer

Dan Fante [quote appears on Goodreads but does not state a source]
Unsourced

Rage , Change , Anger

“One thing was certain: when someone searched into secret places, he often came up with things he would rather not have found.”

Jack Vance book Night Lamp

Source: Night Lamp (1996), Chapter 5, section 3 (p. 81)

Search

“Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide,
Like all created things, secrets from me,
And stand a barrier to eternity.”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

Source: Preludes (1875), "To a Daisy", p. 70

Art

“People predict by making up stories.
People predict very little and explain everything.
People live under uncertainty whether they like it or not.
People believe they can tell the future if they work hard enough.
People accept any explanation as long as it fits the facts.
The handwriting was on the wall. It was just the ink that was invisible.
People often work hard to obtain information they already have and avoid new knowledge.
Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic Universe. In this match, surprises are expected.
Everything that has already happened must have been inevitable.
A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.
The difference between being very smart and very foolish is often very small.
So many problems occur when people fail to be obedient when they are supposed to be obedient, and fail to be creative when they are supposed to be creative
The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
It is sometimes easier to make the world a better place than to prove you have made the world a better place.”

Amos Tversky (1937–1996) Israeli psychologist

Source: Notes made by Tversky for a scientific paper, c.1972. Michael Lewis. "The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World". Penguin, 2016 (ISBN 9780141983035).

Knowledge , Problem , Thinking , People

“The secret of American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way children learn, and it isn't supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order. It wasn't made for the benefit of kids and families as those individuals and institutions would define their own needs. School is the first impression children get of organized society; like most first impressions, it is the lasting one. Life according to school is dull and stupid, only consumption promises relief: Coke, Big Macs, fashion jeans, that's where real meaning is found, that is the classroom's lesson, however indirectly delivered.”

John Taylor Gatto book The Underground History of American Education

Source: The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling (2001), pp. 105-106

Fashion , Life , Children , Learning

“Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do. Bells are the secret logic of school time; their logic is inexorable. Bells destroy the past and future, rendering every interval the same as any other, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 6

Mountain , World , School , Time

“I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can’t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: "I Quit, I Think" (1991)

Children , People , Teachers , Training

“Luscious feet that listened to the soil and stole its secrets.”

Fannie Hurst (1889–1968) novelist

Lummox (1923)

“Lunatics with a speculative bent can sometimes stumble overly close to certain guarded cosmic secrets.”

Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) American author

"Schizoid Creator" (1953)

“Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.”

Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) American author

Opening lines of "The Hashish Eater; or, the Apocalypse of Evil" (1920)

World , Sun , Dreams , Color

“The secret of life is knowing and applying the secrets of life.”

- Goa

Life

“If, fourteen years ago, he had entertained secret hopes of leaving a discernible, enduring mark on the legacy of humankind, he was now fully disabused of them.”

Charles E. Gannon (1960) American novelist

Source: Fire with Fire (2013), Chapter 11 (p. 153)

Hope

“The secret that our poets and philosophers have been trying to tell us for centuries, is that our longing is the great gateway to belonging.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Bittersweet Introduction at p. xxvii

“The political friend of today is the possible enemy of tomorrow. And vice versa. All those who work by a calculation of interest in politics must take that into account. Neither give your secrets to the friend nor give the adversary blows that cannot be forgotten.”

Daniel Salamanca (1863–1935) President of Bolivia (1863-1935)

“I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heat of the known awaits just around the corner.”

Alex Webb (photographer) (1952) American photojournalist

Source: Bubacz, Kate (June 6, 2017). "6 Photographers On What It Means To Be Close Enough" https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katebubacz/get-closer. BuzzFeed.

Confidence , Waiting

“Would it not have startled the old economists to hear that the secret of the most efficient system of wealth production was conformity on a national scale to the ethical idea of equal treatment for all embodied by Jesus Christ in the golden rule?”

Edward Bellamy book Equality

Equality (1897)

Idea , Wealth , Christ

“The strength of America is our diversity of people, ethnicities, cultures, languages, religions — this is the secret sauce of our dynamism and resilience.”

Gary Locke (1950) American politician

"Gary Locke keynotes anti-hate summit" in Northwest Asian Weekly https://nwasianweekly.com/2021/10/gary-locke-keynotes-anti-hate-summit/ (29 October 2021)

Religion , People

Quotes about secrets page 21

Quotes about secrets
page 21