Quotes about mystery (1583 quotes, page 5)

“Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Sabriel

Death

“It's hard to maintain a reputation for being grim and mysterious when you're accompanied by a brightly clad young thing, skipping merrily along at your side, holding your hand, and smiling sweetly on one and all.”

Simon R. Green (1955) British writer

Source: The Unnatural Inquirer

Smile

“And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Star , Heart , Parting

“Such days of autumnal decline hold a strange mystery which adds to the gravity of all our moods.”

Charles Nodier (1780–1844) French author

Source: Smarra & Trilby

Mood , Autumn

“It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.”

Diane Ackerman book A Natural History of the Senses

Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1991)

Beauty , Country

“It is not mysterious to be home on a Saturday night, reading a novel in a pile of smelly golden retrievers.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Home , Reading , Night

“We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE!”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

The Bridge Across Forever (1984)
Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Love , Pleasure , Learning , Sea

“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 , Art

“I think fantasy is best described as a kind of fiction that evokes wonder, mystery or magic, a sense of possibility beyond the ordinary world in which we live, and yet which reflects and comments upon that known world.”

Kate Forsyth (1966) Australian writer

World , Thinking , Sense

“… a full moon shimmered over central Louisiana. This was no rinky-dink moon. This was a moon you had to curtsy to. A big, heavy, mysterious, beautiful, bossy moon. The kind you want to serve things to on a silver platter.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Beauty

“You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Miserables

Star

“The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought.”

Eudora Welty book The Optimist's Daughter

Source: The Optimist's Daughter

People

“I wish to confound all these people, to create a work of art of a supernatural realism and of a spiritualist naturalism. I wish to prove… that nothing is explained in the mysteries which surround us.”

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) French novelist and art critic

People , Art , Nature

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Love , Color , Sun

“Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

“His smile was like lightning in the darkness, blinding and beautiful and mysterious, and I wanted him so badly it was physically painful.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Pain , Smile , Beauty

“No one could suspect the intricate mysteries of her heart.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Heart

“People like you and me never grow old. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”

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

In a letter to Otto Juliusburger, September 29, 1942. Available in Einstein Archives 38-238
1940s
Variant: Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.
Context: People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live... [We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.

Children , People

“There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Source: America

Dreams , Communication

“When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.”

Katherine Dunn book Geek Love

Source: Geek Love

“I'm still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

Love , Children , Waiting

“The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis (1969).
Source: Contingencies Of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis

Men , Question , Thinking

“All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and contours. You feel the inspiration of its possibilities and the wonder of its mysteries.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Color , Feeling , Soul , Sense

“Life, he realized, was much like a song.
In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Steve Miller, Chapter 36, Steve, p. 376
Source: 2000s, The Last Song (2009)

Life

“Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

"The Absolute Collective", an essay first published in The Criterion on The Absolute Collective : A Philosophical Attempt to Overcome Our Broken State by Erich Gutkind, as translated by Marjorie Gabain
The Wisdom of the Heart (1941)
Context: All about us we see a world in revolt; but revolt is negative, a mere finishing-off process. In the midst of destruction we carry with us also our creation, our hopes, our strength, our urge to be fulfilled. The climate changes as the wheel turns, and what is true for the sidereal world is true for man. The last two thousand years have brought about a duality in man such as he never experienced before, and yet the man who dominates this whole period was one who stood for wholeness, one who proclaimed the Holy Ghost. No life in the whole history of man has been so misinterpreted, so woefully misunderstood as Christ's. If not a single Man has shown himself capable of following the example of Christ, and doubtless none ever will for we shall no longer have need of Christs, nevertheless this one profound example has altered our climate. Unconsciously we are moving into a new realm of being; what we have brought to perfection, in our zeal to escape the true reality, is a complete arsenal of destruction; when we have rid ourselves of the suicidal mania for a beyond we shall begin the life of here and now which is reality and which is sufficient unto itself. We shall have no need for art or religion because we shall be in ourselves a work of art. This is how I interpret realistically what Gutkind has set forth philosophically; this is the way in which man will overcome his broken state. If my statements are not precisely in accord with the text of Gutkind's thesis, I nevertheless am thoroughly in accord with Gutkind and his view of things. I have felt it my duty not only to set forth his doctrine, but to launch it, and in launching it to augment it, activate it. Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery. I am one man who can truly say that he has understood and acted upon this profound thought of Gutkind's —“the stupendous fact that we stand in the midst of reality will always be something far more wonderful than anything we do."

“Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”

Stephen King Pet Sematary

Stephen King in introduction.
Source: Pet Sematary (1983)

Death , Secret

“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke

“Why are you smiling?'
'I'm relieved,' I said honestly. 'I was worried I'd given myself cadmium poisoning, or I had some mysterious disease. This is just someone trying to kill me.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Variant: Wilem looked at me 'Why are you smiling?'

"I'm relieved", I said honestly." I was worried I had given myself cadmium poisoning, or had a mysterious disease. This is just someone trying to kill me.
Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Disease , Smile

“Too much mystery is merely an annoyance. Too much adventure is exhausting. And a little terror goes a long way.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

Way

“If you need to stop an asteroid, you call Superman. If you need to solve a mystery, you call Batman. But if you need to end a war, you call Wonder Woman.”

Gail Simone (1974) writer

War

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”

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

“Milligan! Come and tell us why you're so dreadfully glum!" ~ Constance, The Mysterious Benedict Society”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society

“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Love , Men , Faith

“one must not allow the clock and the calender to blind him to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle --and mystery”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

Life

“A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him - the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed.”

Matt Ridley (1958) economist

Source: Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

Motivation , Knowledge

“One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Learning

“Divine sound is the cause of all manifestation. The knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Universe

“Do act mysterious. It always keeps them coming back for more.”

Carolyn Keene book Nancy's Mysterious Letter

Source: Nancy's Mysterious Letter

“Nancy, every place you go, it seems as if mysteries just pile up one after another.”

Carolyn Keene book The Message in the Hollow Oak

Source: The Message in the Hollow Oak

“Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.”

Alice Walker book The Temple of My Familiar

Source: The Temple of My Familiar

Help , Joy

“And she would not hold back his limbs when his heart was gone to the woods, for it is ever the way of witches with any two things to care for the more mysterious of the two.”

Lord Dunsany book The King of Elfland's Daughter

Source: The King of Elfland's Daughter

Way , Heart

“God might work on mysterious ways, but hell worked on efficient ones.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Shadows

God , Way , Hell

“Ned said "Nancy Drew is the best girl detective in the whole world!"
"Don't you believe him," Nancy said quickly. "I have solved some mysteries, I'll admit, and I enjoy it, but I'm sure there are many other girls who could do the same.”

Carolyn Keene book Nancy's Mysterious Letter

Source: Nancy's Mysterious Letter

World , Girl

“People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a part of it.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Life , People , Parting

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Knowledge , Sense

“Life, not death, is the great mystery you must confront.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Life , Death

“He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Fear , Faith , Soul

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

Thomasina. Then we will dance. Is this a waltz?”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Act II
Source: Arcadia (1993)

Dance

“All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)

Music , Feeling , Motivation

“A family is a mystery.”

Sharon Olds (1942) American poet

Family

“What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.”

David Malouf book An Imaginary Life

Source: An Imaginary Life

Pain

“He wanted to take his love back from her so badly. The old techniques didn’t work anymore. In fact, they’d never worked. How do you stop loving someone? It was one of the world’s more brutal mysteries. The more you tried, the less it worked.”

Ann Brashares (1967) American children's writer

Love , World

“All of us, all of us, all of us trying to save our immortal souls, some ways seemingly more round about and mysterious than others. We are having a good time here. But hope all will be revealed soon.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: All of Us: The Collected Poems

Hope , Way , Soul , Time

“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. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.”

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

Variant translations: The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties — this knowledge, this feeling … that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.
As quoted in After Einstein : Proceedings of the Einstein Centennial Celebration (1981) by Peter Barker and Cecil G. Shugart, p. 179
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
As quoted in Introduction to Philosophy (1935) by George Thomas White Patrick and Frank Miller Chapman, p. 44
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
Context: 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. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.

Beauty , Art , Science , Dead

“There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information

Wisdom , World , Fools , Understanding

“Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”

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

The Sense of Wonder (1965)
Context: Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

Life , Beauty

“At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Source: The Holy Terrors

World , Childhood

“Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Life , Hope , Knowledge

“Feeling scared yet? Want to go somewhere safe?" "It won't help, will it? We'd just run into Godzilla or the Vampire from Hell. Trouble just follows you around." "Hey, Trouble. Let's find out what your mysterious Indian wanted us to know.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Feeling , Hell , Help

“You are mysterious, I love you. You’re beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that’s the rarest known combination.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Love , Beauty , Intelligence

“As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, "To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

Life , God , People , Way

“We all contain mysteries, especially when seen from the inside.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”

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

Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Heart

“We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence…”

Annie Dillard book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Source: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Death , Beauty

“The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Children

“If you can't be free, be a mystery.”

Rita Dove (1952) American poet and author (1952)

“Somewhere far away a bittern cried, a hollow, melancholy sound like a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes close to the pond, and in the fields the nightingales were trilling. The cuckoo kept reckoning someone's years and losing count and beginning again. In the pond the frogs called angrily to one another, straining themselves to bursting, and one could even make out the words: "That's what you are! That's what you are!" What a noise there was! It seemed as though all these creatures were singing and shouting so that no one might sleep on that spring night, so that all, even the angry frogs, might appreciate and enjoy every minute: life is given only once.”

Anton Chekhov book In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 8, pp. 224

Life , Spring , Bird , Sleep

“The self-delusion that mysterious forces and persons unknown are conspiring against us is, surprisingly, a comforting belief, because it means we’re significant enough in this anarchic world to warrant someone’s enmity. That delusion saves us from the far more difficult to accept reality: that we’re not that important to anyone. That the universe just isn’t “into” us.
Paranoia is the emotive-psychestructure’s response to feeling ignored, unloved, or forgotten in an existence filled with random acts of destructive indifference emphasizing the inherent futility of life and struggle. If you’re ever to achieve serenity, ultimately you must accept that in such a vast cosmos, you simply don’t matter very much.”

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 6 “Up is Down: The Path Inside is Outside” (p. 185)

Life , World , Feeling , Reality

“The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 259.

God , World , Law , Feeling

“What has art to do with those things [Revolution, socialism]? Art will never come except from some little disregarded corner where some isolated man is studying the mysteries of nature, fully assured that the answer which he ﬁnds and which is good for him is good also for humanity, whatever may be the number of succeeding generations.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

as quoted by Romain Rolland in his book Millet, c. 1900; transl. Miss Clementina Black; published by Duckworth & Co, Londo / E. P. Dutton & Co, New York, 1919, p. 8
undated quotes

Art , Nature , Study

“He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue.”

Arthur Symons book The Symbolist Movement in Literature

Gérard de Nerval.
The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899)

Beauty , Perfection

“I have very strongly this feeling… that our everyday life is at one and the same time banal, overfamiliar, platitudinous and yet mysterious and extraordinary.”

Bryan Magee (1930–2019) British politician

Heidegger and Modern Existentialism (1977), BBC Productions

Life , Feeling , Time

“It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 64

Feeling , Sense

“She was goddess because of her force; she was the animated dynamo; she was reproduction — the greatest and most mysterious of all energies; all she needed was to be fecund.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Animals

“I was a bookish kid. I spent long hours in the library reading everything I could find, histories, biographies, science fiction, fantasy, mysteries. I was curious about the world and there’s no better way to find things out than through the pages of a book. Even today if some kid asks me what’s the first step to take to become a doctor, I answer, “Read, read, read.””

Sanjay Gupta (1969) journalist, medical correspondent, neurosurgeon

Finding My Path in Life (2011)

Books , World , Way , History

“Religion as a word points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage; where he senses meanings no less overwhelming because they can be only hinted at in myth and ritual; where he glimpses a destination that he can never know fully until he reaches it.”

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

Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner (1992)

Religion , Way , Sense

“The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Sex

“Her face was that of a boy gang-leader, smooth with the innocence of one who, by the same quirk as blinds a man to the mystery of whistling or riding a bicycle, has never mastered the art of affection or compassion or properly learned the moral dichotomy.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

Art , Boy , Learning

“For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water.
No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water.
Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity.
Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 6 (pp. 137-138)

Life , God , Hate , People

“The spectator of a sculpture, modern or ancient, is not called to examine his own or the sculptor's knowledge of anatomy but to participations, so to say, a participation where the motions which have strangulated the carver, while working, must operate the same mysterious attraction and inexpressible miracle of forms and lines, its dramaticism, its graphic tragedy, or its smiling gaiety and happiness: its words carved out of forms and sown with lines into phrases of philosophy, religion.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

n.p.
1960 - 1968, Plastic Language, Ossip Zadkine

Religion , Smile , Knowledge , Happiness

“My father, William C. Boulding, was a working plumber in business for himself. At the back of the house was the yard, a corrugated iron shed full of pipes, wrenches, and blow torches, and other mysterious and rather frightening apparatus. He had two faithful employees, Billy Fox, who was moody and regarded as a little queer, and Billy Sankey, who was short and cheerful. They and my father always smelled strongly of some kind of grease. My father was a gentle man. I never I never heard his voice raised in anger. He had had a very hard childhood. His father died soon after he was born; his mother married again, a man known in the family legends as "Pa Hardacre," about whom endless stories were told. He was a bigamist. He drove my father out of the house at the age of twelve to earn his own living on the streets of Liverpool. He constantly mistreated my half-aunts, Ethel and Rosie. He died before I was born, but my mother's accounts of him sounded like something out of Dickens.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1980s, Illustrating Economics: Beasts, Ballads and Aphorisms, 1980, p. 5

Age , Family , Faith , Business

“But ignorance exists in the map, not in the territory. If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my own state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself. A phenomenon can seem mysterious to some particular person. There are no phenomena which are mysterious of themselves. To worship a phenomenon because it seems so wonderfully mysterious, is to worship your own ignorance.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

Mysterious Answers To Mysterious Questions http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_questions/ (August 2007); Yudkowsky credits the map/territory analogy to physicist/statistician Edwin Thompson Jaynes.

Personality

“A great deal of her obscurity and cant, Tenar had begun to realize, was mere ineptness with words and ideas. Nobody had ever taught her to think consecutively. Nobody had ever listened to what she said. All that was expected, all that was wanted of her was muddle, mystery, mumbling. She was a witchwoman. She had nothing to do with clear meaning.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, Tehanu (1990), Chapter 5, "Bettering"

Idea , Thinking

“To oppose the torrent of scholastic religion by such feeble maxims as these, that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, that the whole is greater than a part, that two and three make five; is pretending to stop the ocean with a bullrush. Will you set up profane reason against sacred mystery? No punishment is great enough for your impiety. And the same fires, which were kindled for heretics, will serve also for the destruction of philosophers.”

David Hume The Natural History of Religion

Part XI - With regard to reason or absurdity
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

Religion , Parting

“It has seemed to me that our search for this mysterious factor of difference must lead to the conclusion that it was not a single factor but the united workings of at least three forces, that brought about the wide difference.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)

Search

“So, my brethren, let us do our work, that others entering on it may carry it forward through after generations. Thus shall the work of the fathers become the glory of fheir children; and in the end, when the mystery of God shall be finished, we shall see, in its completed beauty and proportion, the great fabric into which we put our little all; and we shall rejoice at once in the skill of the Architect and the diligence of the successive builders.”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 126.

God , Children , Beauty , Success

“In retrospect, the reason for the assassination is hardly a mystery. It is now abundantly clear … why the C. I. A.'s covert operations element wanted John Kennedy out of the Oval Office and Lyndon Johnson in it. The new President elevated by rifle fire to control of our foreign policy had been one of the most enthusiastic American cold warriors…. Johnson had originally risen to power on the crest of the fulminating anti-communist crusade which marked American politics after World War II. Shortly after the end of that war, he declaimed that atomic power had become 'ours to use, either to Christianize the world or pulverize it' -- a Christian benediction if ever there was one. Johnson's demonstrated enthusiasm for American military intervention abroad … earned him the sobriquet 'the senator from the Pentagon….”

Jim Garrison (1921–1992) American judge

[On the Trail of the Assassins (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988)]

War , World

“It is in this wrestling that Jacob 'prevails with God', and realises that he has seen God face to face. He has overcome not God but his own rivalry. After this mysterious struggle he was able to recognise his wrongdoing and look his brother Esau in the face. Thus he was able to learn to live in peace with his brother—and become Israel, a community of brethren.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), "Jesus' fraternal relocation of God", p. 76.

God , Peace , Communication , Learning

“The present painter is concerned not with his own feelings or with the mystery of his own personality but with the penetration into the world-mystery. His imagination is therefore attempting to dig into metaphysical secrets.”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 1. 1943-1945, p. 140

Secret , World , Feeling , Imagination

“All the mystery and wisdom of the Masters, when it’s out in the daylight, doesn’t amount to so much, you know. Tricks of the trade—wonderful illusions. But people don’t want to know that. They want the illusions, the mysteries. Who can blame them? There’s so little in life that’s beautiful or worthy.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“Dragonfly” (p. 199)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Life , Wisdom , People , Beauty

“Its life depends on the degree to which it is inhabited by mystery, speaks to us of the unknown.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

"The Painter in the Press", 'X magazine, Vol. I, No.4 (October 1960).

Life , Dependency

“Anyone who really carries out this existence [ of the Discalced Carmelites ] in spirit and letter must see it as a foretaste of death, of the radical and irrevocable parting from all things that make life rich, sweet and attractive. It is a venturing into death in the hope of receiving a new, mysterious life from the hand of the Lord.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

The Hidden Face p. 142.

Life , Death , Hope , Parting

“I'm always working on the same thing, the creation of an identity. It's mysterious: We think identity is genetically given, but I believe there is creative will involved with the decision of who we are going to be. All my movies are concerned with this.”

David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor

Cronenberg: An intellectual with ominous powers http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/arts/19iht-dupont.html (May 19, 2006)

Thinking , Decision

“well boss
mehitabel the cat
has reappeared in her old
haunts with a
flock of kittens

archy she said to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens
i look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another
i am a dancer archy
and my only prayer
is to be allowed
to give my best to my art
but just as i feel
that i am succeeding
in my life work
along comes another batch
of these damned kittens
it is not archy
that i am shy on mother love
god knows i care for
the sweet little things
curse them
but am i never to be allowed
to live my own life
i have purposely avoided
matrimony in the interests
of the higher life
but i might just
as well have been a domestic
slave for all the freedom
i have gained
i hope none of them
gets run over by
an automobile
my heart would bleed
if anything happened
to them and i found it out
but it isn t fair archy
it isn t fair
these damned tom cats have all
the fun and freedom
if i was like some of these
green eyed feline vamps i know
i would simply walk out on the
bunch of them and
let them shift for themselves
but i am not that kind
archy i am full of mother love
my kindness has always
been my curse
a tender heart is the cross i bear
self sacrifice always and forever
is my motto damn them
i will make a home
for the sweet innocent
little things
unless of course providence
in his wisdom should remove
them they are living
just now in an abandoned
garbage can just behind
a made over stable in greenwich
village and if it rained
into the can before i could
get back and rescue them
i am afraid the little
dears might drown
it makes me shudder just
to think of it
of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyhow
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop them in myself
but a mother s love archy
is so unreasonable
something always prevents me
these terrible
conflicts are always
presenting themselves
to the artist
the eternal struggle
between art and life archy
is something fierce
yes something fierce
my what a dramatic
life i have lived
one moment up the next
moment down again
but always gay archy always gay
and always the lady too
in spite of hell
well boss it will
be interesting to note
just how mehitabel
works out her present problem
a dark mystery still broods
over the manner
in which the former
family of three kittens
disappeared
one day she was talking to me
of the kittens
and the next day when i asked
her about them
she said innocently
what kittens
interrogation point
and that was all
i could ever get out
of her on the subject
we had a heavy rain
right after she spoke to me
but probably that garbage can
leaks so the kittens
have not yet
been drowned”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

mehitabel and her kittens http://donmarquis.com/reading-room/kittens/
archy and mehitabel (1927)

Love , Life , Wisdom , God

“At the heart of the mystery of corruption lies the desire of one man to impose his will on others to the largest possible extent.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

The Five faces of Corruption, p. 45
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Heart

“But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us, to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"The Buried Life" (1852), st. 6

Life , World , Knowledge , Heart

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life…. people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail…. We conclude the line should be drawn at viability, so that, before that time, the woman has a right to choose to terminate her pregnancy…. there is no line other than viability which is more workable. To be sure, as we have said, there may be some medical developments that affect the precise point of viability, but this is an imprecision within tolerable limits…. A husband has no enforceable right to require a wife to advise him before she exercises her personal choices.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=505&invol=833 (29 June 1992) (joint opinion coauthored with Justices Souter and O’Connor).

Life , People , Exercises , Universe

“These plays and stories have for their continual theme the passing away of gods and men and cities before the mysterious power which is sometimes called by some great god's name but more often 'Time.' His travellers, who travel by so many rivers and deserts and listen to sounding names none heard before, come back with no tale that does not tell of vague rebellion against that power, and all the beautiful things they have seen get something of their charm from the pathos of fragility. This poet who has imagined colours, ceremonies and incredible processions that never passed before the eyes of Edgar Allen Poe or of De Quincey, and remembered as much fabulous beauty as Sir John Mandeville, has yet never wearied of the most universal of emotions and the one most constantly associated with the sense of beauty; and when we come to examine those astonishments that seemed so alien we find that he has but transfigured with beauty the common sights of the world.”

Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) Irish writer and dramatist

About

Men , God , World , Beauty

“The sharp side of the knife goes away from you. Pure reason does not trump brute force but suprisingly few people know what hot peppers look like when the teacher asks if you have enough to share with everyone. Never take the lid of a pressure cooker 'to see if it's done yet'. Even if you are careful with the picric acid that won't matter if you are careless with other items next to it. Move *away* from mysterious burglar alarms. Do not append 'you moron' to exposition directed at people who have just broken into your building. 'We need to talk' is overwhelmingly unlikely to precede good news. A rough brick wall may be used to sort socks or as a backdrop for sock-art (The Neglected Art). A silent cat is Up to Something. Lungs are unsuited for many possible atmospheres, including that of London, and anything with a high content of industrial cleaners. Youth will not save you from Newton's Laws. Or Darwin's.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

Facebook post (2014) https://www.facebook.com/james.nicoll.927/posts/10152710405547985
2010s

People , Youth , Law , Art

Quotes about mystery page 5

Quotes about mystery
page 5