Mystery Quotes

Ergo, while the Argument from Design appears to be a nice, neat answer to account for the presence of a multifarious Universe, the truth is that it backfires on itself, shifting the need for an explanation back and back and back…and back…without end, without resolution. This is called an infinite regress, and its presence in the logic of the argument fails to prove the existence of God; if anything, it reveals that the idea of a designer is patently ridiculous, even more so than a godless Cosmos. The argument therefore answers nothing; it merely moves the mystery of origins to an even higher level, demanding that the Creator have his own Creator. ~ Michael Vito Tosto

In our humanness we can't handle all His holiness; so God, in mercy, raises the veil and dwells in mystery. ~ James MacDonald

If you act for self-gain then no good can come of it. If you act selflessly, then you act well for all and you must not be afraid. ~ Rand Miller

Death is not a mystery; it is very simple and clear! It is the life which is the complex and the mystic one! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I think 'The Searcher' is a departure from my first because it's less grounded in religion and is far more rooted in the mythic tradition: more of an existential thriller where the main character is actually the central mystery, and his journey is all about trying to figure himself out. ~ Simon Toyne

I have always loved horror very much. I used to write stories for DC's House of Mystery. It was one of my first jobs writing for comics, and I loved it. ~ Sergio Aragones

It's as if they've planned out my life for me and I'm expected to live it for them. I hate it. So I don't tell anyone much. It's easier that way." ~Dani O'Meara from the forthcoming amateur sleuth mystery, Dangerous Days for Dani ~ Claire A. Murray

The mosquitos are so big they eat you alive wear your shoes. ~ Joe R. Landon

Facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter,' as my friend the late Maya Deren once phrased the mystery. ~ Joseph Campbell

The very mystery of him excited her curiosity like a door that had neither lock nor key. ~ Margaret Mitchell

She held out a small voice recorder. 'By the way, could you describe exactly how you felt at the moment of impact? I'm writing this short story
'
'Put that away, Hazel,' hissed Mam. 'The poor boy is in pain.'
Hazel persisted. 'Would that be a white-hot pain? Or more of a dull throbbing pain? ~ Eoin Colfer

There are things I need to say first. Things you need to hear before we go any further."
She tensed. "Oh, God, are you married?"
He chuckled. "No, nothing like that."
"Good," she replied, letting out a relieved breath.
"I want you to know you've made this very difficult for me. I had a speech prepared. Then I see you like this." His finger continued to trail down her stomach, tracing the rim of her panties. "And I can't even remember my damn name. ~ Stacey O'Neale

It is only through my daughter that I have come to realise that a life without femininity – devoid of mystery, emotion, gentleness and the unerring power of a woman's love – is no life at all. ~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Love all of God's creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love. ~ Brian McLaren

We were the creatures desired throughout the ages ... foolish humans didn't even realize it, living in their own little world. ~ Kay Harding

More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn't get any better than that. ~ Tom Robbins

It isn't about the looks; gorgeous women get dumped every day. It isn't about intelligence. Women of all types, from brilliant women to women with the IQ equivalent of plant life, pull it off every day. It's about mystery and learning how to create intrigue. ~ Sherry Argov

The mystery is what prompted men to leave caves, to come out of the womb of nature. ~ Stephen Gardiner

There was mystery at the heart of any of marriage, secrets even people close to it would never know. ~ Stewart O'Nan

That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth I'm kind of glad he hit you. ~ Lev Grossman

On the porch, the sarge is having a heated debate with her second-in-command. The topic's no mystery; you can hear them clearly through the open door. They've completed the mission, the 2IC argues, time to off these bastards and return to base. "Capture and contain," the sarge shoots back. "My orders don't say nothing about offing anybody." She's wavering, though; you can hear it in her voice. her 2IC comes back with my point about the bomb-shitting beast in high orbit: Whatever she decides about the Dorothys, they have to return to base before dawn or enjoy a front-row seat to Armageddon. ~ Rick Yancey

The spell started to brush across my skin, tasting me, telling me what it wanted....
Nothing compared to power flowing through you, over you, around you. It was a alluring, sensual as it wound through my hair, cuddled with my skin. It wanted me to swirl the power, to tickle it with light and sound, and it sang to me of spells long lost. ~ N.E. Conneely

Never you fight a man that knows and understand the mysteries about God. ~ Ikechukwu Izuakor

Carrying my babies was a marvelous mystery, lives growing unseen except by the slow swelling of my belly. Death is an even greater mystery ... The God I cry out to in anguish or joy can neither be proved nor disapproved. The hope I have that death is not the end of all our questions can neither be proved nor disproved. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese. ~ Tom Robbins

Love is that flame that once kindled burns everything, and only the mystery and the journey remain. ~ Rumi

We don't have an explanation for everything that happens. We don't control almost anything. And if we are not open to that mystery, life becomes so small. ~ Isabel Allende

If a group of atoms in the presence of energy falls into a stable pattern it will tend to stay that way. The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones. There is no mystery about this. It had to happen by definition. From this, of course, it does not follow that you can explain the existence of entities as complex as man by exactly the same principles on their own. It is no good taking the right number of atoms and shaking them together with some external energy till they happen to fall into the right pattern, and out drops Adam! ~ Richard Dawkins

Our lives are part of a unique adventure ... Nevertheless, most of us think the world is 'normal' and are constantly hunting for something abnormal
like angels or Martians. But that is just because we don't realize the world is a mystery. As for myself, I felt completely different. I saw the world as an amazing dream. I was hunting for some kind of explanation of how everything fit together. ~ Jostein Gaarder

What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it life ... and promise. ~ Maud Hart Lovelace

This summer, I'll be bringing out a mystery that involves a young lawyer and a court scene the likes of which I don't think you've ever seen. Hollywood said this is James Patterson meets John Grisham. ~ James Patterson

I have always loved contemporary dance, but it has always been a bit of a mystery to me. But choreography is very much like what I do when you are putting characters in frame on the page. It's so impressive what they do with their bodies. It's like painting: an abstraction. ~ Michael Leunig

In my opinion, kissing a lady's hand is a fine tradition. After all, a man must start somewhere. ~ Lois Greiman

Jazz is the music of the body. The breath comes through brass. It is the body's breath, and the strings' wails and moans are echoes of the body's music. It is the body's vibrations which ripple from the fingers. And the mystery of the withheld theme, known to jazz musicians alone, is like the mystery of our secret life. We give to others only peripheral improvisations. ~ Anais Nin

The same God who loves us as we are also loves us to much to leave us as we are. Perhpas because we tend to hold to ideas about God that reflect our own suppositions and fears, more than God's self-revelation. We reduce God to our own dimensions, ascribing to him our own reactions and responses, especially our own petty and conditional kind of love, and so end up believing in a God cast in our own image and likeness.

But the true God, the living God, is entirely "other":. Precisely from this radical otherness derives the inscrutable and transcendent nature of divine love-- for which our limited human love is but a distant metaphor. God's love is much more than our human love simply multiplied and expanded. God's love for us will ever be mystery; unfathomable, awesome, entirely beyond human expectation.

Precisely because God's love is something "no eyes has seen, nor ear heard nor the heart of man conceived" (1 Cor 2:9), Mother Teresa meditated on it continuously, and encouraged us to do the same, to continue plumbing this mystery more deeply. To this end she invites us: "Try to deepen your understanding of these two words, 'Thirst of God.; ~ Joseph Langford

But that which remains for ever incomprehensible is the initial horror, the horror imposed on each of us, of having to live, and that is a mystery no philosophy can explain. ~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

She was a great and insatiable reader, surprisingly well acquainted with the classics of literature, and unexpectedly lavish in the purchase of books. Her neighbours never forgot to mention, in describing her, the awe-inspiring fact that she 'took in the English Times and the Saturday Review, and read every word of them,' but it was hinted that the bookshelves that her own capable hands had put up in her bedroom held a large proportion of works of fiction of a startlingly advanced kind, 'and,' it was generally added in tones of mystery, 'many of them French. ~ Edith Somerville

if you really want to live, it's imperative that you go back down the path and claim it. You've got to be there then before you can be here now. The mystery begins with our history. ~ Jeff Brown

The cause of these great extinctions, the most extensive in the seventy-million-year record for mammals, is a mystery. The two prevailing guesses, climatic environmental pressure or the destruction caused by human immigration in these regions, are at a stalemate. Nearly all regions of extinction were briefly inhabited by early humans, which is why some feel they played roles. I was not there at the time, so I can only speculate, but surely a global catastrophe of some sort triggered the cataclysm. ~ Stephen J. O'Brien

We don't like mystery. You like mystery, 'cause it's not a mystery to you; you know when you're gonna get laid. ~ Bill Maher

I closed my eyelids, and imagination, taking up the thread of thought, shot its swift shuttle back across the ages, weaving a picture on their blackness so real and vivid in its details that I could almost for a moment think that I had triumphed o'er the Past, and that my spirit's eyes had pierced the mystery of Time. ~ H. Rider Haggard

Digital media has destroyed much of the magic and mystery of the medium. ~ John Dyer

Well, it's an anomaly! He must have received the wrong dosage. That's what happens when you put these matters in the hands of morons. ~ Wodke Hawkinson

When I discover something about the human genome, I experience a sense of awe at the mystery of life, and say to myself, 'Wow, only God knew before.' It is a profoundly beautiful and moving sensation, which helps me appreciate God and makes science even more rewarding for me. ~ Francis Collins

I always wanted to eat with a Negro," Grandma said.
Yeah, well I always wanted to eat with a boney-assed old white woman," Lula said. "So I guess this works out good. ~ Janet Evanovich

The sensation that had plagued me after graduating, of being on the outside of some mystery, peeking in, returned. ~ Olivia Sudjic

We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us. ~ Os Guinness

When I was young, I believed that life might unfold in an orderly way, according to my hopes and expectations. But now I understand that the Way winds like a river, always changing, ever onward.. My journeys revealed that the Way itself creates the warrior; that every path leads to peace, every choice to wisdom. And that life has always been, and will always be, arising in Mystery. ~ Socrates

You said that facts are meaningless, unless meanings are put into them. Well, Christianity, the mystery of the individual, is precisely what must be put into the facts to make them meaningful. ~ Boris Pasternak

Color is not a trivial subject but one that has compelled, for hundreds of years, a passionate curiosity in the greatest artists, philosophers, and natural scientists. The young Spinoza wrote his first treatise on the rainbow; the young Newton's most joyous discovery was the composition of white light; Goethe's great color work, like Newton's, started with a prism; Schopenhauer, Young, Helmholtz, and Maxwell, in the last century, were all tantalized by the problem of color; and Wittgenstein's last work was his Remarks on Colour. And yet most of us, most of the time, overlook its great mystery. ~ Oliver Sacks

I think of myself as a complete mystery. To myself. ~ Sun Ra

You cannot follow another's footsteps to the truth," Silette wrote. "A hand can point the way. But the hand is not the teaching. The finger that points the way is not the way. The mystery is a payless land, and each detective must cut her own trail through a cruel territory.
"Believe nothing. Question everything. Follow only the clues. ~ Sara Gran

She's a mystery, a cipher, something nearly extinct these days: a person not controlled by ambition or greed or a crass need for attention, but by a desire to experience life completely and to make life a little easier for the people around her ~ Rebecca Miller

There are many good reasons for drinking, and one's just entered my head: If you don't drink when you're living, how the fuck can you drink when you're dead? ~ Warren Ellis

Love's over brimming mystery joins death and life. It has filled my cup of pain with joy. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I seldom try to probe the mystery of my sloth. I have squandered a gigantic fortune of work hours ... seems likely that I'll go on squandering till the very end. ~ Christopher Isherwood

This fusion of wood and water is an entrancing thing. Without the wood the stream would be nothing: a mere thin watercourse winding through its flat meadows. Without the water the wood, on its slope and with its air of quietness and mystery and of being a world within itself, could not help being a constantly delightful thing. But water and wood, together, shading and watering and bounding each other, each give to the other something which the other does not possess, the wood giving to the stream something solid and shadowy and immemorial, the stream giving to the wood all the incomparable movement and twinkling transcience of moving water, the tree shadows standing deep in the stream, the reflection of sunlight flickering a kind of waterlight up into the shadowy branches of pine and alder. The wood and the water are here, in fact, one, for each other and with each other. It is a fusion that is almost perfect. ~ H.E. Bates

Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the mother's womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and 'understands' with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the 'beginning', the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings - not only towards her own child, but every human being - which profoundly marks the woman's personality. ~ Pope John Paul II

There had always been the rumour that one of the old heptarchs had squirreled away a collection of heretical calendrical erotica. Just how you made abstract algebra erotic was going to have to remain a mystery. ~ Yoon Ha Lee

One last mystery: on one of the little ponds, this morning, I saw wind riffling the first of the waterlily leaves. They haven't all emerged yet, but new circles tattoo the water, here and there, a coppery red. When the wind lifted their edges, each would reveal a little shadowy spot, a dot of black which seemed to flash on the water, and so across the whole surface of the pond there was what could only be described as the inverse of sparkling; a scintillant blackness. Shining blackly, black but rippling, lyrical: the sheen and radiance of death-in-life.
Is that my work, to point to the world and say, See how darkly it sparkles? ~ Mark Doty

Religion, in refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt the crime imputed to you; the government, in surrounding your case with mystery and shadow, gives reason for belief in some error, committed in fatal moments; and all the Philippines, in venerating your memory and calling you martyrs, in no way acknowledges your guilt. ~ Jose Rizal

There is a doctrine whispered in secret that a man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not quite understand. ~ Socrates

There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles. ~ Anne Rice

The reproduction of mankind is a great marvel and mystery. Had God consulted me in the matter, I should have advised him to continue the generation of the species by fashioning them out of clay. ~ Martin Luther

Marriage is a mystery and part of it is just being kind to each other, not being selfish. ~ Aisha Tyler

Here you've been, a spider in the corner, observing, weaving Charlotte's web of mystery. ~ Shannon Hale

My painting is visible images that conceal nothing ... they evoke mystery. Mystery means nothing. It is unknowable. ~ Rene Magritte

Why did not somebody teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don't half know to this day? ~ Thomas Carlyle

Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself. ~ Peter Rollins

I thought you were makin' small talk about the weather."
"When have I ever made small talk with you?"
"When we first met."
"No, I made small talk with Bessie, your shotgun, until you removed her double barrels from my kisser."
Violet and a typical conversation with Harvey ~ Ann Charles

Perhaps I've grown less likable over the years, or maybe I've just forgotten how to meet people. The initial introduction - the shaking-hands part - I can still manage. It's the follow-up that throws me. Who calls whom, and how often? What if you decide after the second or third meeting that you don't really like this person? Up to what point are you allowed to back out? I used to know these things, but now they're a mystery. ~ David Sedaris

And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

... ongoing care for the soul rather than seek for a cure appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life.
I sees every fall into ignorance and confusion as an opportunity to discover that the beast residing at the center of the labyrinth is also an angel.
To approach this paradoxial point of tension where adjustment and abnormality meet is to move closer to the realization of our mystery-filled, star-born nature.
It is a beast this thing that stirs in the core of our being, but it is also the star of our innermost nature.
We have to care for this suffering with extreme reverence so that in our fear and anger at the beast, we do not overlock the star.
~Thomas Moore *Care of the Soul* ~ Thomas Moore

He locked gazes with her. "I have to wonder why you aren't being straight with me. I hate getting myself killed without knowing why. ~ B. J. Daniels

Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.
Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it.
Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. ~ Michael Ende

If he looks at me like that again Dottie will need a bucket and mop to get me back to my room. ~ Gwenn Wright

Grimalkin yawned and licked his whiskers. 'Not dead,' he replied. 'Hardly dead. But she changed her name and appearance so many times, even the oldest fey would hardly remember her. She likes to keep a low profile, you know.' Puck frowned, knitting his bows together. 'Then how is it you remember her?' he demanded, sounding indignant. 'I am a cat,' purred Grimalkin. ~ Julie Kagawa

That he loved her was his life's greatest grace - that she loved him was a burden and mystery beyond compare. ~ Rosalind Miles

IT is not impossible that among the English readers of this book there may be one who in 1915 and 1916 was in one of those trenches that were woven like a web among the ruins of Monchy-au-Bois. In that case he had opposite him at that time the 73rd Hanoverian Fusiliers, who wear as their distinctive badge a brassard with ' Gibraltar ' inscribed on it in gold, in memory of the defence of that fortress under General Elliot; for this, besides Waterloo, has its place in the regiment's history.

At the time I refer to I was a nineteen-year-old lieutenant in command of a platoon, and my part of the line was easily recognizable from the English side by a row of tall shell-stripped trees that rose from the ruins of Monchy. My left flank was bounded by the sunken road leading to Berles-au-Bois, which was in the hands of the English ; my right was marked by a sap running out from our lines, one that helped us many a time to make our presence felt by means of bombs and rifle-grenades.

I daresay this reader remembers, too, the white tom-cat, lamed in one foot by a stray bullet, who had his headquarters in No-man's-land. He used often to pay me a visit at night in my dugout. This creature, the sole living being that was on visiting terms with both sides, always made on me an impression of extreme mystery. This charm of mystery which lay over all that belonged to the other side, to that danger zone full of unseen figures, is one of the strongest impressions that the wa ~ Ernst Junger

I think the labyrinth is an interesting metaphor for our lives as musicians. We're always being drawn toward the center of it because that's where the mystery is. What is music? It's a journey. ~ Sting

I like dresses for night; I like after-party more than party. I like the mystery; I like the dream, like fantasy dresses. I think, also, that you make women dream. ~ Alber Elbaz

Eusebius strongly challenges believers of all times on their approach to the events of history and of the Church in particular. He also challenges us: what is our attitude with regard to the Church's experiences? Is it the attitude of those who are interested in it merely out of curiosity, or even in search of something sensational or shocking at all costs? Or is it an attitude full of love and open to the mystery of those who know - through faith - that they can trace in the history of the Church those signs of God's love and the great works of salvation wrought by him? ~ Pope Benedict XVI

I am drawn to the ocean; I find solace in its mystery. ~ Joe Dunthorne

When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious. ~ Abraham Verghese

As I wandered around the room, with Sachiko by my side, I began to think how much we need space in those we love, space enough to accommodate growth and possibility. Knowledge must leave room for mystery; intimacy, taken too far, was the death of imagination. Keeping some little distance from her was, I thought, a way of keeping an open space, a silence for the imagination to fill.
"At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things," Thoreau had written, "we require that all things be mysterious and unexplainable. ~ Pico Iyer

We are battered and torn from the day we are born, in a world that has blinded and bound us.
Is it any surprise we don't open our eyes to the truth that's disguised all around us?
Like the secrets we keep, and don't know we're keeping, from before there was time, before there were lies.
Can we find You again, this far from the garden? Do we dare even try?
Do we dare pay attention - dare even mention - the mystery we find ourselves caught in?
And do we dare to remember all that we have forgotten?
--"Do We Dare" from Feel Free (1997) ~ Carolyn Arends

Wonder, as a point of concern, denies its own consideration. It has the remarkable capacity to hide in the midst of its revelation. Wonder, to preserve itself, withdraws. It withdraws from the mind, from the willing mind, which would make of mystery a category. ~ Dan Beachy-Quick

How does my music connect to an audience? That is just a complete mystery to me. ~ Carter Burwell

The moment feels laden with mystery and tension, as if for one second the world has agreed to pay attention to time itself. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside,
He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is. ~ Albert Schweitzer

The easiest way to solve a mystery is to decide that there is no mystery to solve. ~ John Green

In a world growing increasingly banal and familiar, what seems enigmatic instantly draws attention. Never make it too clear what you are doing or about to do. Do not show all your cards. An air of mystery heightens your presence; it also creates anticipation - everyone ~ Robert Greene

When the plague struck Chicago, the townspeople here erected the gargoyles, and nary a soul was lost to the Black Death."
"The bubonic plague predates Chicago by about five hundred years."
He lowered himself to the bench. "I know. I was very disappointed when I found out. Almost as bad as when I learned there were no fairies. The world is much more interesting with goblins and plagues."
"Unless you catch the plague. ~ Kelley Armstrong

The terror is trapped inside of him and paralyzes him. He closes his eyes again and tries to drown out the scream - but it keeps ringing and ringing and ringing in his ears. ~ Suneeta Misra

The wheel turns for all, caro Chase. It's the karma effect, Giulia cried, aping Ilenia. She could have never imagined that her words would become prophetic so soon. ~ Stefania Mattana

I should have known that at the root of any mystery that's all you find: people doing unspeakable harm to other people. What else on this earth is there to hide? ~ Nick Dybek

What most people really desire is something quite different from industrial gimmickry- liberty, spontaneity, nakedness, mystery, wildness, wilderness. ~ Edward Abbey

I want to see the world without explaining away its mystery by calling things wicked, righteous, sinful, and good. I want to erase in myself the easy explanations, the always mendacious explanations about why things happen the way they do, and in this way, come to know the mystery of being–-not by any approximation in thought, but by being. I want to be and not be ashamed of being. ~ Therese Doucet

There is a notion that existence is an illusion. Existence is not an illusion. Existence is a projection from the inner through the brain producing the outer sensory world of what is - an amazing complete mystery. ~ Barry Long

But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh! sweet friends, hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits and salted pork cut up into little flakes! the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt ... we dispatched it with great expedition. ~ Herman Melville