Source: The Witches of Worm
“Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.”
“There is no magic, only mysteries explained, and mysteries unexplained.”
Source: Titans of Chaos (2007), Chapter 8, “Pallid Hounds A-Hunting” Section 1 (p. 106)
“Ask yourself if there is any explanation of the mystery of your own life and death.”
The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice [Rose-Belford, 1878] ( p.288 https://books.google.com/books?id=zyFjcZUO3CUC&pg=PA288)
Also in The Supernatural And English fiction by Glen Cavaliero [Oxford University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-192-12607-5] (p. 39)
Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter I (p. 6)
Context: There is mystery here, but a soft, sure mystery that is understood and only remains a mystery because I want it so. The mystery of the nighthawk against a darkening sky, the puzzle of the firefly along the lilac hedge.
“The only mystery in life is why the kamikaze pilots wore helmets.”
Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 304
I Believe in Prayer - - How Prayer helps me The Dial Press 1955
Prose
15 January 1753
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5<!-- The sense of the ineffable, p. 89 -->
Context: Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition, faith is attachment to the meaning beyond the mystery.
Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith.
Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the world becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God.
