Quotes about mystery
page 16

“Man is a mystery, a mystery to the investigating mind of the researcher into nature; but more so indeed is man a mystery to himself. Yet there is a solution of this mystery — a solution which is not new, which is older than the enduring hills.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Ch 2
Man in Evolution (1941)

Nature

“Absence and presence have very primal effects upon us. Too much presence suffocates; a degree of absence spurs our interest. We are marked by the continual desire to possess what we do not have—the object projected by our fantasies. Learn to create some mystery around you, to use strategic absence to make people desire your return, to want to possess you. Dangle in front of others what they are missing most in life, what they are forbidden to have, and they will go crazy with desire. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Overcome this weakness in yourself by embracing your circumstances, your fate.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 5 : Become an Elusive Object of Desire
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Fate, Grass, People, Learning

“The only mystery in life is why the kamikaze pilots wore helmets.”

Al McGuire (1928–2001) American basketball player and coach

Funny, Life

“Don’t ever be lazy enough, defeatist enough, cowardly enough to say “I don't understand it so it must be a miracle - it must be supernatural - God did it”. Say instead, that it’s a puzzle, it’s strange, it’s a challenge that we should rise to. Whether we rise to the challenge by questioning the truth of the observation, or by expanding our science in new and exciting directions - the proper and brave response to any such challenge is to tackle it head-on. And until we've found a proper answer to the mystery, it's perfectly ok simply to say “this is something we don't yet understand - but we're working on it.””

Richard Dawkins book The Magic of Reality

It's the only honest thing to do. Miracles, magic and myths, they can be fun. Everybody likes a good story. Myths are fun, as long as you don't confuse them with the truth. The real truth has a magic of its own. The truth is more magical, in the best and most exciting sense of the word, than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic - the magic of reality. Duke University, 01/03/2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYcOoqxuroI&t=54m51s The Magic Of Reality (2012)

God, Understanding, Question, Truth

“I wonder, one day, when I am long gone of course, if Astronists of the far future will be there when the greatest mysteries of The Cosmos are revealed. Oh, I do hope so”

Cometan

Book: Cometan, the Omnidoxy

Future, Hope

“To unlock the greatest mysteries we must accept that we are nothing and all that we do know is relative to the size of The Earth in the infinite cosmoses.”

Cometan

Book: Cometan, the Omnidoxy

“I am assuming that God exists and I am glad that there is no way to prove this. [Because] I would run through the proof once, and then I'd forget it, and I would never speculate about spiritual things and mysteries otherwise. And, I think, my life would be very incomplete.”

Donald Ervin Knuth (1938) American computer scientist

AI Podcast, December 30, 2019, Algorithms, Complexity, Life, and The Art of Computer Programming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BdBfsXbST8,

God, Forgetting, Thinking, Way

“There is... always, in a large population like that of France, a class which is ignorant, which suffers, covets, and struggles, placed between the brutish instinct which impels it to take, and the moral law which invites it to labour. In the grievous and oppressed condition in which it still is, this class, in order to maintain itself in probity and well-doing, requires all the pure and holy light that emanates from the Gospel; it requires that, on the one hand, the spirit of Jesus Christ, and, on the other, the spirit of the French Revolution, should address to it the same manly words, and should never cease to point out to it, as the only lights worthy of the eyes of man, the exalted and mysterious laws of human destiny,—self-denial, devotion, sacrifice, the labour which leads to material well-being, the probity which leads to inward well-being; even with this perennial instruction, at once divine and human, this class, so worthy of sympathy and fraternity, often succumbs.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part First, III
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Law, Light, Suffering, Self-confidence

“At certain epochs in history, the whole human race, from all points of the earth, fix their eyes upon some mysterious spot whence it seems that universal destiny is about to issue.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Book I, VI
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Universe, History

“Define God in a sufficiently nebulous way as beauty, love, mysterious complexity, or the ethereal taste of strawberry shortcake, and most atheists become theists. Still, although one can pose as Humpty Dumpty and aver, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less,” others needn’t play along.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Preface (p. xv; the quote is from Alice in Wonderland)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

God, Beauty, Way, Love

“Spiritual or mystical experience, the subject of this chapter, is the mirror image of science—a direct perception of nature's unity, the inside of the mysteries that science tries valiantly to know from the outside. This way of understanding predates science by thousands of years. Long before humankind had tools like quantum logic to describe events that ordinary reason could not grasp, individuals moved into the realm of paradox through a shift in consciousness. And there they know that what cannot be is.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eleven, Spiritual Adventure: Connection to the Source

Way, Science, Understanding, Nature

“Men don’t know anything! Men don’t know when their lives became so entirely awful, when everyone else turned into such a tosser! A man does not know how he came by the half a pie he is holding in his hand. And scientists—those frauds!—seize on this, and try to use it as proof of the mysteries of human consciousness and the unknowable nature of the brain, which is rubbish! The brain is the simplest organ in the body. It only has three bits. There’s the front bit, which is the bit you scratch when you come in at half one in the morning, and the person you live with says, “Where the fuck were you?””

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

The middle bit, which tries to come up with the excuse. And the back bit, which plays the last song that was on in the pub.
What It Is (2009)

Personality, Fraud, Men, Nature

“These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 2
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Soul, Heart, Pleasure, Joy

“Sickened by vermin
that feed, in the shade of the good,
on envy, greed, and suspicion,
by the snake-like hissing
of venomous tongues
that fear hate and revile
the mystery of free thought
and upright heart
The spirit would cast aside all deceit,
open his heart to the spirit he trusts,
and unite with him freely as one.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend

Fear, Hate, Heart, Envy

“Real sexiness is about confidence, intelligence, mystery, art and passion.”

Kate Nash (1987) English pop singer and actor

Source: The Independent, Kate, Nash, Kate Nash: 'Real sexiness is about art, mystery and intelligence', 29 October 2010 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/kate-nash-real-sexiness-is-about-art-mystery-and-intelligence-2119279.html,

Confidence, Intelligence, Art, Self-confidence

“Because human choice remains sacrosanct and mysterious, none of us can guarantee a transformation of society. Yet there is reason to trust the process. Transformation is powerful, rewarding, natural. It promises what most people want...The new world is the old—transformed.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy

World, People, Nature

“However, the question who built Taj Mahal no longer remains a mystery. Surely it was not built by Shah Jahan but by architects, calligraphers, masons, stone-cutters, and metal workers and ordinary laborers who built it and made it a symbol of creative mind of the Indian society.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

In Search of History, Chapter: Conspiring against Taj Mahal, p. 47
History, Architecture

Question

“To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of supreme importance and mystery. To the Chinese, it is something commonplace, obvious—a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the emotions.”

Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic

A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919), Introduction, p. 18

Relation ships

“Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC30/Berry.htm in Farming: A Hand Book (1970) Poems

Understanding, Future, Hope, World

“If I tell a lie, something is left out;
If I speak out the truth, there is a blaze.
My mind fears both the alternatives,
But haltingly my tongue speaks out.
Words that come to my tongue cannot be held back.
If I were to unravel the mysteries,
All would forget to discuss and debate.
They would then kill our friend Bullah,
For only the hidden truth befits here.”

Bulleh Shah (1680–1757) Punjabi poet

Bulleh Shah, The Love-Intoxicated Iconoclast, p. 130
Poetry

Truth, Lie, Fear, Forgetting

“Mystic Art affirms the holy mystery and the ideals of truth,
goodness and beauty. No other artistic ideal can fulfill the longing
soul like the creation and appreciation of relevant sacred art.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Seven Statements on Mystic Art

Truth, Beauty, Soul, Art

“But the Bible, we are told, reveals this great mystery. Where Nature is dumb, and Man ignorant, Revelation speaks in the authoritative voice of prophecy.”

Ernestine Rose (1810–1892) American feminist activist

1881, A Defence of Atheism: A lecture delivered in Mercantile Hall, Boston on 10 April, 1861, p. 7
A Defence of Atheism

Nature

“Life's big questions are big in the sense that they are momentous. However, contrary to appearances, they are not big in the sense of being unanswerable. It is only that the answers are generally unpalatable. There is no great mystery, but there is plenty of horror.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

Source: The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (2017), Introduction, p. 7

Sense, Life, Appearance, Question

“In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy. Besides (to say truth) nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body; and it addeth no small reverence, to men's manners and actions, if they be not altogether open.”

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 Simulation And Dissimulation

Truth, Men

“Poetry shows up where language shows up – a mysterious supplement, to borrow or deform an old Derrida epithet, that we cannot do without, and that just might be the basis of the material world as we know it. Well, if not language as such, then sound…”

Ariana Reines (1982) American writer

On poetry in “INTERVIEW WITH ARIANA REINES” http://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-ariana-reines/ in The White Review (July 2019)

World

“Is Corona laboratory-made? Nah. I think it's way more reasonable to assume that a bat fucked a pangolin. And some guy then fucked that pangolin. Mystery solved. Occam's razor.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

73rd Communique of the CPSUZoeD https://www.derstandard.at/jetzt/livebericht/2000116238563/ Quotes as Nikita P. Chrusov

Way, Guy, Thinking

“The doctrines of the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ also form part of the Lesser Mysteries, being integral portions of "The Solar Myth," and of the life-story of the Christ in man.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter VIII. Resurrection and Ascension

Life, Christ, Parting

“The attempts of some of our school authorities to prevent students from learning anything about Communism, for instance, are futile. Newspapers exist; correspondents report; people travel. It is quite impossible to act as though Russia did not exist, or were as inaccessible and mysterious as Mars.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 42
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

School, People, Learning, Communication

“I'm your narrator. It's my task to say
Just where and how things happen in our play,
Set the bare stage with words instead of props
And keep on talking till the curtain drops. …
It's an old task — old as the human heart,
Old as those bygone players and their art
Who, in old days when faith was nearer earth,
Played out the mystery of Jesus' birth
In hall or village green or market square
For all who chose to come and see them there,
And, if they knew that King Herod, in his crown,
Was really Wat, the cobbler of the town,
And Tom, the fool, played Abraham the Wise,
They did not care. They saw with other eyes.
The story was their own — not far away,
As real as if it happened yesterday,
Full of all awe and wonder yet so near,
A marvelous thing that could have happened here
In their own town — a star that could have blazed
On their own shepherds, leaving them amazed,
Frightened and questioning and following still
To the bare stable — and the miracle.”

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

Narrator
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Faith, Question, Star, Heart

“The Mystery Schools are the schools in which the training and disciplines for initiation are received. Colleges will be created from which those seen as ready for initiation will be drawn. The Mystery Schools themselves will be of two categories: preparatory and advanced. The aim is that all humanity should have taken at least the first initiation (and thus enter the Spiritual Hierarchy) in this coming Aquarian cycle. There will be a preparatory school in Japan, an advanced one in China; a preparatory one in Scotland, an advanced one in Ireland; a preparatory one in the American Midwest, an advanced one in California; a preparatory one in New Zealand, and advanced one in Australia; a preparatory one in Greece, an advanced one in Egypt; a preparatory one in Sweden, an advanced one in Russia; a preparatory one in France, an advanced one in Italy. Thus, the world as a whole will be covered to give precise teaching to those disciples who are ready for preparation for initiation.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. II (1993), p. 181

Training, World, School

“Time is truly elastic. If you just rock what you have to do, you'll get it done. And another thing, too, that I learned recently, it kind of put me more at ease with the day-to-day, is just there's some kind of energy and balance and something beautiful in the ups and downs of the day-to-day. You'll get great news and you'll get bad news, and this will all be in the same day, but there's something cohesive and the balance of that is comforting. Learning to be comfortable with the ups and downs of every day and knowing that's just the mystery of life and how it is, you know?”

Booboo Stewart (1994) American actor

Booboo Stewart on the Adorable Gift His GF Gave Him and the Last Thing He Watched https://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/booboo-stewart-last-call-interview-47953476 (November 9, 2020)

Time, Beauty, Bad luck, Learning

“It should also be remembered that the Bible is written in the language of symbols, a special category of literature designed both to conceal and to reveal spiritual truths. Blindness is a symbol for temporary unawareness of spiritual light. The Christ partly represents spiritual intuitiveness. When one who is spiritually blind becomes intuitively awakened and active or, symbolically, enters the presence of the Christ and is healed by him, the scales are said to have fallen from his eyes. This I believe to be the true symbolical interpretation; for I look upon the story as one of the many beautiful miniature mystery dramas to be found in the Bible, portraying in allegory and symbol the soul’s awakening from darkness to light. Nevertheless, symbolism apart, the answer given by the Lord was, as stated above, doctrinally and technically correct.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Reincarnation & Christianity (1967)

Soul, Light, Beauty, Truth

“The greatest degree of power which occult science can bestow is to be derived from knowledge of the unity and interaction between the Macrocosm and the microcosm, the Universe and man. “The mystery of the earthly and mortal man is after the mystery of the supernal and immortal One”, wrote Eliphas Levi. Lao Tzu also expresses this truth in his words: “The Universe is a man on a large scale.””

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible (1963), Volume III

Universe, Truth, Science, Knowledge

“...the great Book of Genesis—a marvellous cup filled with the “wine” of the esoteric knowledge of the Sanctuaries of ancient days. Temples of the Ageless Wisdom exist to-day, even if less easily discoverable, and in them are to be found the selfsame teachings, laws, successions, Initiations and radiations of the light of Truth. World changes are not reflected in the Mysteries, which are repositories and conveyors of eternal and unchanging Ideas. A sack of corn containing a silver cup awaits every Benjamin who finds himself called by a Hierophant (Joseph) from the “famine-stricken” outer world to the “storehouse” from which an elder brother (a Master) Who has already attained will, in prodigal abundance, supply a gift of the golden grain of eternal verities.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible (1963), Volume III

Law, Success, Light, Knowledge

“Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure — the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it — the humility of the intellect. The other great heritage is Christian ethics — the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual — the humility of the spirit.
These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent. But logic is not all; one needs one's heart to follow an idea. If people are going back to religion, what are they going back to? Is the modern church a place to give comfort to a man who doubts God — more, one who disbelieves in God? Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts? So far, have we not drawn strength and comfort to maintain the one or the other of these consistent heritages in a way which attacks the values of the other? Is this unavoidable? How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid? Is this not the central problem of our time?”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

remarks (2 May 1956) at a Caltech YMCA lunch forum http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/49/2/Religion.htm

God, Drawing, Religion, Time

“To know oneself is the equivalent of knowing God. But in order to acquire this knowledge, the disciple must submit to long and painful process of self-discipline. He must pass though all the test of the severest asceticism. Only after he has prepared himself, will the spiritual master open his heart and render him capable of perceiving the mysteries of the spiritual world.”

Shah Badakhshi Indian poet

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 202

God, Pain, Heart, Knowledge

“Few men, whatever their creed, would now seek their geology in the books of their religion, or, on the other hand, would fancy that the laboratory or the microscope could help them to penetrate the mysteries which hang over the nature and the destiny of the soul of man. ... We live in a small, bright oasis of knowledge, surrounded on all sides by a vast, unexplored region of impenetrable mystery.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech to the British Association (6 August 1894), quoted in The Times (9 August 1894), p. 6
1890s

Soul, Religion, Help, Nature

“I believe that nature and art can express one of the fundamental mysterious truths of life, equal to all of us.”

Giovanni Morassutti (1980) Italian actor, theatre director and cultural entrepreneur.

Truth, Life, Nature, Art

“In the mysterious way in which life is given to us in evolution on this planet, it pushes in the direction of its own expansion. We don’t understand it simply because we don’t know the purpose of creation; we only feel life straining in ourselves and see it thrashing others about as they devour each other. Life seeks to expand in an unknown direction for unknown reasons.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

Psychology and Religion: What Is the Heroic Individual?
The Denial of Death (1973)

Way, Life, Feeling, Understanding

“We want parents and teachers to regularly have conversations with young men and women about God’s plan for their lives. These should be ordinary conversations; otherwise, when the topic of vocations comes up, it seems like something arcane, unfamiliar, or mysterious.”

Paul Stagg Coakley (1955) Catholic archbishop

Oklahoma City’s archbishop on Satanists, vocations, and a unique canonization case https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/09/19/oklahoma-citys-archbishop-on-satanists-vocations-and-a-unique-canonization-case/ (September 19, 2016)

God, Teachers, Parent, Women

“For those who are not frightened by the solitude that reveals all mysteries, everything will have a different taste.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Solitude

Solitude

“The art and mystery of banks… is established on the principle that 'private debts are a public blessing.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the repayment of these debts beyond a give proportion (generally estimated at one-third). And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the same premium of six or eight per cent interest, and on the same legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt, when it shall be called for.
ME 13:420
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

Art

“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong… I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Source: Curious Character

Universe, Thinking, Way, Feeling

“True beauty lies in lap of the nature. When you see mysterious view of the nature, you find the real hidden beauty of the nature. Then you get to know about beauty everything better.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Beauty, Nature

“Reason quite properly rejects contradiction, but rationalism abhors mystery, which every heresy attempts in its own way to resolve.”

Michael Horton (theologian) (1964) American theologian

Source: Pilgrim Theology (2013), p. 177

Way

“In every religion there is always a touch of mystery. Letting the mind wander in unnecessary things.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Religion

“The mystery of knowledge is that once you know, you won't have anything more to ask. Thus, closing the door to ask more exciting questions.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Question, Knowledge

“Time, life and death are mysterious, and they will remain to be so until the day we will come to possess the key of all illusions.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Time, Life, Death

“Mystery does not enshroud Christ's teachings, and they are not theoretical and fragmentary, but practical and complete”

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

Source: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 98

Christ

“If faith is a mystery, it is because its nature is inexpressible in the measure that it is profound, for it is not possible to convey fully by words this vision which is still blind, and this blindness which already sees.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 97, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Spiritual life, Faith

Faith, Nature

“In pure theosophy there is no question of wishing to remove from God His mysteries by means of unveilings and specifications; for however acute our discernments, the divine mystery remains complete by reason of the Infinitude of the Real.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2014, In the Face of the Absolute, World Wisdom, 99, 978-1-936597-41-3]
God, Outline

God, Question

“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.

Secret

“Maybe it’s because women feel they want to maintain some mystery that they’re not gross, to be more attractive or something. For me it’s all part of intimacy. That’s how I define intimacy – living closer and being more honest, closer to what your real desires are – and it’s exciting.”

Ali Wong (1982) American actress, comedian, and writer

On her views as to why women are reluctant to talk intimately about their bodies in “'God, I was disgusting!' – Ali Wong on why women's bodies are the last taboo” https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/oct/17/god-i-was-disgusting-ali-wong-on-why-womens-bodies-are-the-last-taboo in The Guardian (2019 Oct 17)

Women, Feeling, Parting

“Men are adorable, but mysterious... How can he be so average, yet so full of confidence?”

Yang Li (1992) Chinese stand-up comedian

Source: "Stand-up is booming in China, with women centre-stage" in The Economist https://www.economist.com/china/2021/01/07/stand-up-is-booming-in-china-with-women-centre-stage (7 January 2021)

Confidence, Men

“For an average man, the world is weird because if he's not bored with it, he's at odds with it. For a warrior, the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable. A warrior must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous time.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "Journey to Ixtlan" (Chapter 8)

Time, World

“Time is both a mystery and a miracle. A marvel and magic! We live in time and time lives in us.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Source: The Wisest of All Times is Now! p. 7. (2021)

Time

“We unwittingly focus on fear and distrust, as if those were the only possible options available to us, while all along we have the alternative of deliberately centering our attention on the opposite, the mystery, the wonder of what is happening to us.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Source: The Eagle's Gift, (1981)

Fear

“The things that people do cannot under any conditions be more important than the world. And thus a warrior treats the world as an endless mystery and what people do as an endless folly.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from A Separate Reality (Chapter 6)

People, World

“I look to stories for consolation,the kind of small consolation that one needs to want to wake up everyday;as template for life;for news on how others live;for reminders that life's mysteries have no key”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

The Best Short Stories(2021)

Life

“Warriors speak of shamanism as a magical, mysterious bird which has paused in its flight for a moment in order to give man hope and purpose; warriors live under the wind of that bird, which they call the "bird of wisdom," the "bird of freedom."”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "The Power of Silence" (Chapter 18)

Freedom, Hope, Bird, Wisdom

“Love leads to knowledge of the Divine mysteries and those who love abide in God and look to Him only, and He is nearer to them than all else and to them in given a vision of Him unveiled and they see Him with the eye of certainty.”

Abu Talib al-Makki Scholar, mystic

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

God, Knowledge, Love

“Pure love of God illuminates the soul of the lover and the mysteries of His divinity are revealed by God when the vision of the Beloved is contemplated.”

Abu Talib al-Makki Scholar, mystic

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

Soul, God, Lovers, Love

“Search your heart within where lies the key to all Divine mysteries, and where God has placed treasures of Divine, mystical and spiritual powers.”

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (1209–1324) Indian Sufi saint

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 270

God, Search, Heart

“The Beloved created your being from His own love so that He could see His own beauty in the mirror of your heart and make you privy of His mysteries.”

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (1209–1324) Indian Sufi saint

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 270

Beauty, Love, Heart

“I read often but, the genre I go to is mystery. I like to write my own stories but as you know, people often die in mysteries, so someone often dies in my stories. Also, I like to go to art galleries on my day offs.”

Noa Tsurushima (2001) Japanese actress

Reading, People, Art

“There is no mystery about violence. It is the reflexive act of brutes, boors and moral defectives.”

Jack Vance book Night Lamp

Source: Night Lamp (1996), Chapter 3, section 1 (p. 37)

“Mystery is a word with no objective pertinence, merely describing the limitations of a mind. In fact, a mind may be classified by the order of the phenomena it considers mysterious.… The mystery is resolved, the solution made known. “Of course, it is obvious!” comes the chorus. A word about the obvious: it is always obvious.… The common mind transposed the sequence, letting the mystery generate the solution. This is logic in reverse; actually the mystery relates to the solution as the foam relates to the beer.…”

Jack Vance book The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph

The Unspeakable McInch (p. 39; all ellipses in the original)
Short fiction, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)

Beer

“I like my creations to be thought-provoking and not have a narrative. Creating mystery and questions are key elements in my work.”

John Jude Palencar (1957) American artist

Source: Beauty and mystery: An interview with John Jude Palencar https://vadamagazine.com/entertainment/arts/john-jude-palencar (27 November, 2015)

Question

“Happiness is strange; it comes when you are not seeking it. When you are not making an effort to be happy, then unexpectedly, mysteriously, happiness is there, born of purity, of a loveliness of being.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Happiness, Effort

“I love Wisconsin, I love coming here. I've performed here a lot because I've discovered that you people apparently have some sort of federal grant for drinking. [audience cheers] It's–you're insane! You pay less for liquor than anybody I know anywhere in the country. Nobody pays any less for liquor than you. What're you–what're you–HOW?! I don't know if you're using that farm subsidy money, or if you're just hijacking liquor trucks, but this is fucking insane. [audience member shouts something] Is it volume? It's unbe–fucking–lievable, it's staggering! I come here because basically if I spend four days here drinking, and even with the plane ticket, it's cheaper than drinking in New York. How do you know when it's New Year's? That's the big mystery to me. What's the difference? I've been in bars here and it's like New Year's every fucking night! "Uh, New Year's, that's when we–we drink with hats on."”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Source: The White Album (2000)

Drink, Night, Country, Love

“I do not intend to ask whether Christianity is “true” or “false,” or to establish, for example, the former hypothesis. Rather, what will be in question here is what Christianity considers as truth – what kind of truth it offers to people, what it endeavors to communicate to them, not as a theoretical and indifferent truth but as the essential truth that by some mysterious affinity is suitable for them, to the point that it alone is capable of assuring them salvation. We are trying to understand the form of truth that circumscribes the domain of Christianity, the milieu in which it spreads, the air that it breaths, one might say – because there are many sorts of truths, many ways of being true or false. And we are also perhaps trying to get away from the concept of truth that dominates modern thought and that, as much in and of itself as in its multiple implications, determines the world in which we live.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 1

Communication, Falseness, Understanding, Question

“He who meditates into the mysteries of the Holy Quran is sagacious in true sense.”

Sari al-Saqati (772–867) Iraqi sufi

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam, p. 43

Sense

“To destroy wonder and mystery, is to destroy the only elements that make existence tolerable.”

Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) American author

Quoted in The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith (1979)

“All the mysteries of the world seem normal after dark. If imagination shows dead thumbs aching for a ride, those dead folk only prove the hot and spermy goodness of life.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 469

Imagination, World, Dead, Life

“Priesthood still is the most marvelous gift and mystery – there is no end to the wonder of it; it's a joyful life.”

John Joseph Gerry (1927–2017) Australian priest

Holy Spirit takes care of early ‘wobbly knees’ https://catholicleader.com.au/news/holy-spirit-takes-care-of-early-wobbly-knees/ (9 July 2015)

Life

“I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. But then he'll say, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." I think he's kind of nutty. ... There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”

Richard Feynman book What Do You Care What Other People Think?

"The Making of a Scientist," p. 11: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=26s What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988)

Flowers, Science, Question, Understanding

“No doubt that there are laws in science, the discovery of which depended on the abilities and diligence of its discoverers, without whom, perhaps, they would still remain a mystery.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Science, Dependency, Law

“If the contingency is primordial, the mystery of evil is understandable.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Evil, Understanding

“The charm of a woman can be manifested in courage, mystery and her way of thinking.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Il fascino di una donna può manifestarsi nel coraggio, nel mistero e nel suo modo di pensare.
Source: prevale.net

Courage, Thinking, Way

“Interesting woman captivates mind, has rebellious personality. Her eyes, her lips and her face become a condemnation … because they taste of mystery.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La donna interessante rapisce la mente, ha una personalità ribelle. I suoi occhi, le sue labbra ed il suo volto diventano una condanna... perché sanno di mistero.
Source: prevale.net

Personality

“Life unfolds in very unique and mysterious ways. We are made by the actions we take or the inactions that solidifies with our environment to bring about a choice for us to take action or inaction and this cycle repeats and repeats to bring us to this point we are in time. When all of our individual actions accumulate this brings about a great change to our environment which in turn changes us as it slowly evolves.
When you contemplate this simple
concept further you realise at one point we have the ability to change our environment and at another point we can't help but be changed by our environment; our environment defines us as people and as people we shape our environment but as all great things we are limited by our very own environment but we still have the capacity of changing said environment, Here my friends is a paradox of life.”

N3du

People, Change, Time, Help

“How can we understand good if we don't know bad and evil? Perhaps therein lies the mystery of human existence. How will the Truth reveal itself. So that people think, that in order to find the truth, humans have to test the true quality of goodness. Because, only from kindness, we will find the real truth.”

Titon Rahmawan

People, Truth, Evil, Understanding

“The human mind is a world apart. Complex, mysterious and never fully known. For this reason, it will always intrigue the soul, body and another mind.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La mente umana è un mondo a parte. Complesso, misterioso e mai conosciuto completamente. Per questo motivo, intrigherà sempre l'anima, il corpo ed un'altra mente.
Source: prevale.net

Soul, World

Quotes about mystery page 16

Quotes about mystery
page 16