Quotes about mystery
page 4

“At night too, she puzzled the mystery of her desperate need of kindness. As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth, or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind.”

Anaïs Nin book A Spy in the House of Love

Source: A Spy in the House of Love

Girl, Lovers, Night, Wealth

“Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Source: The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982

Life, Truth

“There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

Imagination

“I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

As quoted in Shout! (1981) by Philip Norman, p. 365; and in An Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music (1981) by Nat Shapiro, p. 303

God

“When you were in love, you were capable of learning everything and of knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Variant: When you’re in love, you’re capable of learning everything and knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love is the key to understanding of all the the mysteries.
Source: Brida

Love, Understanding, Thinking, Learning

“All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter XI, Judge Holden
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Rage

“In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.”

John Fowles (1926–2005) British writer

Way

“Remember, children. For every exit, there is also an entrance. ~ Milligan, The Mysterious Benedict Society”

Trenton Lee Stewart (1970) Novelist

Children

“Some of the most relaxing weekends I have ever enjoyed were those I spent quietly with a sense of all work to date completed, and an absorbing mystery.”

Aung San Suu Kyi book Letters from Burma

Source: Letters from Burma

Sense

“If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.”

Charles Simic (1938) American poet

Religion, Soul, Night

“Persistence is the key to solving most mysteries.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Black Blood

“Anything you don’t understand, Mr. Rankin, you attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 10 (p. 166)

God, World, Intelligence, Understanding

“I and this mystery, here we stand.”

Walt Whitman Song of Myself

Source: Song of Myself

“There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

World, Music, Color, Sea

“Shay sometimes talked in a mysterious way, like she was quoting the lyrics of some band no one else listened to.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Way, Quotes

“Your heart is like the ocean, mysterious and dark.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Heart

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: The World As I See It

Beauty, Beauty, Art, Science

“A bluebear has twenty-seven lives. I shall recount thirteen-and-a-half of them in this book but keep quiet about the rest. A bear must have his secrets, after all; they make him seem attractive and mysterious.”

Walter Moers The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

Source: The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

Secret, Books

“A dream is the key that unlocks the mysteries of the waking world…”

Juliet Marillier (1948) New Zealand fiction writer

World, Dreams

“How mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhpas our greatest happinesses spring from such longings-being in love with one who is oblivious of you.”

Joyce Carol Oates Little Bird of Heaven (1st edition)

Source: Little Bird of Heaven

Love, Spring, Happiness

“A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

quote from Georges Jeanniot, in Souvenirs sur Degas (Memories of Degas, 1933)
quotes, undated

People, Painting

“Why do two people fall in love? It's a mystery.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Love, People

“Arson is a respected profession among certain subcultures in Jersey, and the good ones don't get caught. The good ones channel lightning and mysterious acts of spontaneous combustion.”

Janet Evanovich Twelve Sharp

Source: Twelve Sharp

“What we have here is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

Douglas Preston book Relic

Source: Relic

“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

World, Grass

“We know so very little about this strange planet we live on, this haunted world where all answers lead only to more mystery.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

World

“I'm dark matter. The universe inside of me is full of something, and science can't even shine a light on it. I feel like I'm mostly made of mysteries.”

Maria Dahvana Headley (1977) American writer

Source: Magonia

Feeling, Light, Universe, Science

“You’re shaking … so am I. It’s because of Jerusalem, isn’t it? One doesn’t go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That’s one of its mysteries.”

Elie Wiesel book A Beggar in Jerusalem

Source: A Beggar in Jerusalem

“There is too little mystery in the world; too many people say exactly what they feel or want.”

Robert Greene book The Art of Seduction

Source: The Art of Seduction

People, World, Feeling

“I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery. (Steve Jobs)”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

Religion, Thinking, Housing

“Many seek and never see,
anyone can tell them why.
O they weep and O they cry
and never take until they try
unless they try it in their sleep
and never some until they die.
I ask many, they ask me.
This is a great mystery.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: Collected Poems 1947-1997

Sleep, Cry

“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Source: The Sense of Wonder (1965), p. 55 and Back Cover

World, Sense, Joy

“There are mysteries in Everlost. Some of them are wonderful, and others scary. They should all be explored, though- perhaps that's why we're here: to experience the good and the bad that Everlost has to offer.”

Neal Shusterman book Everlost

Source: Everlost

“A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Life, Truth, Beauty, Search

“There's a reason for everything, you said, and though it's a mystery to me now, I know it won't always be so.”

Ben Sherwood book The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud

Source: The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud

“Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes?”

Agatha Christie book Lord Edgware Dies

Source: Lord Edgware Dies

Passion

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

World, Beauty, Time

“Love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

Love, Understanding

“Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes….”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Tear, Suffering, Joy

“… to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender…”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: A Field Guide to Getting Lost

“All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven't the time to write, and all those who have the time don't live them! D'you see?”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

Life, Time

“There is no beauty or romance or mystery in the sea except for the men that sail abroad upon it, and those who stay at home and dream of them.”

Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) Irish writer and dramatist

Men, Beauty, Dreams, Home

“All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.”

Anaïs Nin book Under a Glass Bell

"The Mohican"
Under a Glass Bell (1944)

“Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can’t explain them, and those who haven’t known them have no understanding of them at all.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Children, Way, Understanding, Passion

“Study is the child of silence and mystery.”

Henri Murger (1822–1861) novelist and poet from France

Source: The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter: Scenes de la Vie de Boheme

Study, Silence

“The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke.
We're so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we're stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can't stand ours.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Women, Men

“The mystery of the universe is not time but size.”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Variant: The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but Size.
Source: The Gunslinger

Universe, Time

“Love is mysterious and rad, like Steve Perry from Journey”

Diablo Cody book Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper

Source: Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper

Love

“The book that I shall make people read is the book of the heart, which holds the key to the mystery of life.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Part of his public message upon arrival on his second visit to America (19 May 1932).
General sources

Life, People, Books, Reading

“Love is one of the true mysteries,' he said at last. 'The truest and the deepest of all. One thing, Maerad: to love is never wrong. It may be disastrous; it may never be possible; it may be the deepest agony. But it is never wrong.”

Alison Croggon book The Riddle

Source: The Riddle

Love

“I've made the most important discovery of my life. It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logic or reasons can be found.”

Sylvia Nasar book A Beautiful Mind

Source: A Beautiful Mind

Love, Life

“I know I can do it," Todd Downey said, helping himself to another ear of corn from the steaming bowl. "I'm sure that in time her death will be a mystery, even to me.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: Two Past Midnight: Secret Window, Secret Garden

Death, Time, Help

“The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

“Happiness is a mysterious thing, to be found somewhere between too little and too much.”

Ruskin Bond (1934) British Indian writer

Source: A Book of Simple Living

Happiness

“I'm not short," Daisy muttered. "Short women are never mysterious, or elegant, or pursued by handsome men. And they're always treated like children. I refuse to be short.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Secrets of a Summer Night

Women, Men, Children

“There is no mystery-- that's the beauty of it. We are entirely explicable to each other, and yet we stay. What a miracle that is.”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

Source: Broken Verses

Beauty

“I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Life, World, Time

“MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Secret, Nature

“The corners of his lips curled. “You and your secrets. Ah,, just when I think I’ve solved one mystery about you, up comes another one. I will figure you out one day. Consider yourself warned.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Poison Princess

Secret, Thinking

“Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.”

Maud Hart Lovelace book Betsy in Spite of Herself

Source: Betsy in Spite of Herself

“Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Way, Feeling, Thinking

“When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Source: Arcadia

“Happy or Unhappy, families are all mysterious.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Family, Happiness

“Yes, I do enjoy walking at night. The world’s more to my liking then, not so loud, not so fast, not so crowded, and a good deal more mysterious.”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

World, Night

“The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.”

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) American author

Past, Future

“Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Way, Time

“Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“The mystery was gone but the amazement was just starting.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery…”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories

Love, Nature, Time

“Added to their loveliness was a new mysterious suffering, perfectly silent, visible in the blue puffiness beneath their eyes or the way they would sometimes stop in mid-stride, look down, and shake their heads as though disagreeing with life.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Life, Way, Suffering

“The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Light

“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes

“The search for God's presence was much of a mystery as God himself, and what was God if not a mystery?”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

God, Search

“When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the Uncarved Block: Life is Fun.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

The Tao of Who?
Source: The Tao of Pooh (1982)

Life, Secret, Way

“I’m done. I’m old, I’m sad - that’s on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Death, Sadness, Art

“Also, I do not like the companionship of women. They are petty and personal. They hang on to their mysteries and secrets, they act and pretend. I like the character of men better.”

Anaïs Nin book Delta of Venus

Source: Delta of Venus

Women, Men, Secret, Personality

“You're our honorary sixth member with mysterious abilities and visions of the future. The Snow White to our motley group of dwarfs. Plus, you're way better looking than the rest of these guys.”

Michelle Rowen (1971) Canadian writer

Source: Dark Kiss

Way, Guy, Future

“By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Heart

“In general, librarians enjoyed special requests. A reference librarian is someone who likes the chase. When librarians read for pleasure, they often pick a good mystery.”

Karen Joy Fowler (1950) American novelist, short story writer, editor

Pleasure, Reading

“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Context: 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.

Secret, World, Fear

“Three things no one has ever said about me:

You make it look so easy.

You are very mysterious.

You need to take yourself more seriously.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

“I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.”

Colette book The Pure and the Impure

Source: The Pure and the Impure

People

“In mysteries what we know, and our realization of what we do not know, proceed together; the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.”

Huston Smith book The World's Religions

Part of this quote may actually be by Ralph Washington Sockman.
The World's Religions (1991)
Source: Beyond the Post-Modern Mind: The Place of Meaning in a Global Civilization
Context: In mysteries what we know, and our realization of what we do not know, proceed together; the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. It is like the quantum world, where the more we understand its formalism, the stranger that world becomes.

Knowledge

“Do you have spies in Clan Heavy?”
“I have spies everywhere.”
I looked at Andrea, who was hoarding bacon on her plate.
“She had tea with Mahon’s wife.” Andrea said.
Aunt B looked at her. “You and I need to work on your air of mystery.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

Tea

“My life has a mysterious purpose that I don't understand, and day by day, conflict by conflict, I learn by going where I have to go.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Source: Odd Interlude: A Special Odd Thomas Adventure

Life, Understanding, Learning

“Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Life, Learning

“People quickly grow accustomed to being the slaves of mystery.”

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) French poet

Source: The Cubist Painters

People

“The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

“Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)
Context: I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.

Dance

“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.”

Richard Dawkins book The Magic of Reality

Duke University, 01/03/2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYcOoqxuroI&t=54m51s <br class="br">The Magic Of Reality (2012) <br class="br">Source: The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True <br class="br">Context: 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”. 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.

Truth, Reality, Sense, Science