Mystique Quotes

Literally, this is what enthios means - it is the root of enthusiastic - enthusiasmos means having the god/s within, thus becoming god-filled, or one with the god and in a state of participation mystique. ~ Erin Sullivan

To be honest, I miss the old Hollywood way of having some mystique about the star. ~ Nicole Scherzinger

and were willing to suffer pain if necessary." A young woman in the spring and summer of 1967 was walking toward a door just as that door was springing open. A stage was set for her adulthood that was so accommodatingly extreme - so whimsical, sensual, and urgent - that behavior that in any other era would carry a penalty for the daring was shielded and encouraged. There was safety in numbers for every gorgeous madness; good girls wanting to be bad hadn't had so much cover since the Jazz Age. San Francisco - glowing with psychedelic mystique, the whole city plastered with Fillmore and Avalon posters of tangle-haired goddess girls - was preparing for a convocation (of hapless runaways from provincial suburbs, it would turn out), the Summer of Love, through which the term "flower children" would be coined, while in harsh, emotion-sparking contrast, helicopters were dropping thousands of U.S. boys into the swamps of Vietnam. ~ Sheila Weller

It was the era that I later analyzed, the "feminine mystique" era, [when] "career woman" was a dirty word. And so I didn't want a career anymore. [But] I had to do something. So I started freelancing for women's magazines. ~ Betty Friedan

Their mystique comes from the fact that, once upon a time, someone cared enough to hide them. ~ Deborah Smith

I had acquired an undeniable mystique - if only to the Bancroft butt-room boys. Don't forget: Miss Frost was an older woman, and that goes a long way with boys - even if the older woman has a penis! ~ John Irving

We broke through the feminine mystique and women who were wives, mothers and housewives began to find themselves as people. That didn't mean they stopped, or had to stop, being mothers, wives or even liking their homes. ~ Betty Friedan

Why should anyone raise an eyebrow because a latter-day Einstein's wife expects her husband to put aside that lifeless theory of relativity and help her with the work that is supposed to be the essence of life itself: diaper the baby and don't forge to rinse the soiled diaper in the toilet paper before putting it in the diaper pail, and then wax the kitchen floor. ~ Betty Friedan

An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that "justify" the institution of slavery. The contemporary economy depends right now on the representation of women within the beauty myth. Economist John Kenneth
Galbraith offers an economic explanation for "the persistence of the view of homemaking as a 'higher calling'": the concept of women as naturally trapped within the Feminine Mystique, he feels, "has been forced on us by popular sociology, by magazines, and by fiction to disguise the fact that woman in her role of consumer has been essential to the development of our industrial society…. Behavior that is essential for economic reasons is transformed into a social virtue. ~ Naomi Wolf

Unfortunately, most actors want to play off their own personal mystique and good looks and whatever, but that will only carry you but so far. ~ Joe Morton

A philosopher is saved from mediocrity only by skepticism or mystique, these two forms of despair in the front of knowledge. Mystique is an escape from knowledge, and skepticism is knowledge without hope. In both kinds world is not a solution. ~ Emil M. Cioran

There's no mystique to acting. It's only common sense - and a bit of courage. ~ Bill Hunter

Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but black and white films still hold an affectionate place in my heart; they have an incomparable mystique and mood. ~ Ginger Rogers

Americans have never quite digested television. The mystique which should fade grows stronger. We make celebrities not only of the men who cause events but of the men who read reports of them aloud. ~ Joe McGinniss

Eroticism is mystique; that is, the aura of emotion and imagination around sex. It cannot be 'fixed' by codes of social or moral convenience, whether from the political left or right. For nature's fascism is greater than that of any society. There is a daemonic instability in sexual relations that we may have to accept. ~ Camille Paglia

Being a producer, I deal with a lot of different directors, and some of them would drive me insane with all the different histrionics, and the mystique that they carry. ~ Matthew Vaughn

I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans. ~ John Steinbeck

There is a progression of understanding vis-a-vis pro football that varies drastically with the factor of distance
physical, emotional, intellectual and every other way. Which is exactly the way it should be, in the eyes of the amazingly small number of people who own and control the game, because it is this finely managed distance factor that accounts for the high-profit mystique that blew the sacred institution of baseball off its 'national pastime' pedestal in less than fifteen years. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

It is perhaps beside the point to remark that bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific laboratories and government offices do not. ~ Betty Friedan

I long for the old days of Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, stars who had real glamour and mystique. We only knew so much about their lives; the rest was a mystery. ~ Pixie Lott

After endless textbook readings and interviewing 'experts,' I still could not grasp the full concept of 'love,' the mystique of it, why people killed for it, or died for it. Even the experts were confused. Biologists said the phenomenom we called love was just a bombardment of chemicals that affected our brain: dopamine, which grabbed us the throat in the guise of lust, and oxytocin, which settled us down to the mundane complacencies of marriage. On the other hand, Behaviorists thought love was really the search for God. No one agreed. The thing most humans thought we knew about love, we didn't know at all. And all that we did not know was astonishing. Even more astonishing was what passed for love. ~ Kiana Davenport

Barbara is on what is called the woman's trip to the exclusion of almost everything else. When she and Tom and Max and Sharon need money, Barbara will take a part-time job, modeling or teaching kindergarten, but she dislikes earning more than ten or twenty dollars a week. Most of the time she keeps house and bakes. "Doing something that shows your love that way," she says, "is just about the most beautiful thing I know." Whenever I hear about the woman's trip, which is often, I think a lot about nothin'-says-lovin'-like-something-from-the-oven and the Feminine Mystique and how it is possible for people to be the unconscious instruments of values they would strenuously reject on a conscious level, but I do not mention this to Barbara. ~ Joan Didion

There is admittedly an incredible mystique to meddling in the reason a city won't sleep. ~ Aesop Rock

I like to think of myself as the people's pop star a little bit. I respect Lady Gaga so much, and I love what she does, but she has this kind of mysterious, out-of-reach thing. I'm just not that - as much as I'd love to have that sort of mystique, I think I'm kind of an open book. ~ Bonnie McKee

I realized that what I was saying was threatening, somehow, to the editors of women's magazines. That it threatened the very world they were trying to paint, what I then called the "feminine mystique." ~ Betty Friedan

Miles got a mystique about him-plus he's at the top of his profession. And he's got way, way, way more money. ~ Dizzy Gillespie

The body, then, is one's animal fate that has to be struggled against in some ways. At the same time, it offers experiences and sensations, concrete pleasure that the inner symbolic world lacks. No wonder man is impaled on the horns of sexual problems, why Freud saw that sex was so prominent in human life-especially in the neurotic conflicts of his patients. Sex is an inevitable component of man's confusion over the meaning of his life, a meaning split hopelessly into two realms-symbols (freedom) and body (fate). No wonder, too, that most of us never abandon entirely the early attempts of the child to use the body and its appendages as a fortress or a machine to magically coerce the world. We try to get metaphysical answers out of the body that the body-as a material thing-cannot possibly give. We try to answer the transcendent mystery of creation by experiences in one, partial, physical product of that creation. This is why the mystique of sex is so widely practiced-say, in traditional France-and at the same time is so disillusioning. It is comfortingly infantile in its indulgence and its pleasure, yet so self-defeating of real awareness and growth, if the person is using it to try to answer metaphysical questions. It then becomes a lie about reality, a screen against full consciousness. If the adult reduces the problem of life to the area of sexuality, he repeats the fetishization of the child who focuses the problem of the mother upon her genitals. Sex then becomes a scree ~ Ernest Becker

I always had to buy a book, even if I wasn't done with the one I was currently reading. I loved to read. I felt like the trun of each page echoed between the covers of the world inside them-and each book had its own rules. There, within the mystique of that connection, was something special, and I was an addict. ~ Aaron M. Patterson

There is an element of mystique to radio, and I often listen to cricket commentary on radio, especially when one is stuck in a traffic jam. ~ Rahul Dravid

There's no great mystique to photography. A lot of photographers like to put their hands up to their forehead and tell you how they've suffered and so forth. Well, I just rent a car and drive to the place and take the pictures. ~ Elliott Erwitt

The only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities fully, to achieve identity in society in a life plan that can encompass marriage and motherhood, is the kind that was forbidden by the feminine mystique, the lifelong commitment to an art or science, to politics or profession. If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based. ~ Betty Friedan

There always has been a mystique and a romance about aviation, but in terms of the principles involved of satisfying your customer there's no difference between selling airlines seats and chocolate bars. ~ Mike Batt

Like the Pied Piper, the street entertainer carries his own mystique which cannot easily be transferred to the stage. He seems to have escaped reality, to perform in a time and space where he doesn't necessarily belong. ~ Edward Claflin

I think we live in a culture where it is really difficult to get privacy because everything is so accessible. It's very difficult to maintain your comfortable life with a sort of mystique. ~ FKA Twigs

It is both an irony and an indictment of the feminine mystique that it often forced the unhappy ones, the ugly ducklings, to find themselves, while girls who fitted the image became adjusted 'happy' housewives and have never found out who they are. ~ Betty Friedan

Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.' ~ Bertrand Russell

But on balance I think you must never take land away from a people. A people's land has a mystique. You can go and possibly order them about for a bit, perhaps introduce some new ideas, build a few good buildings, but then in the end you must go away and die in Cheltenham.' Iris sighed. 'And that, of course, is exactly what we did. ~ William Dalrymple

The key to the trap is, of course, education. The feminine mystique has made higher education for women seem suspect, unnecessary and even dangerous. But I think that education, and only education, has saved, and can continue to save, American women from the greater dangers of the feminine mystique. ~ Betty Friedan

The only way to establish any kind of mystique, is to completely shut up and never talk to anyone. And I'm contractually obligated not to shut up. ~ Robert Pattinson

And I'm hoping that over the next 20, 50 years, whatever, the mystique of television and film and all that will diminish somewhat, and people will leave us alone to get on with our jobs. ~ Erika Slezak

We've all heard that women tolerate sex to get relationships, while men tolerate relationships to get sex. That is simply not true - but there is something truly chilling about the fact that most Americans believe it's true and use this formula as a guide for behavior. ~ Israel Morrow

When one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women's passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell. ~ Betty Friedan

People always expect Hulk Hogan to be standing up straight, or to have the bandanna on, or to not have my arms covered up. If I have an extra large shirt on people go 'oh yeah you look small.' It kind of ruins the mystique. ~ Hulk Hogan

I guess because twins have this mystique, and triplets - I think the normal sibling connection potentially can be very powerful, and there's this idea that it's even more powerful. It really is, not just someone like me, but another version of me. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

As soon as you start talking about mystique, you have none. ~ Neil Young

For me, and most of the other players, too, if you had to pick one of the four Grand Slams, you would pick Wimbledon. It's got tradition, it's got atmosphere, and it's got mystique. ~ Stefan Edberg

It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll. I've listened to 'Ziggy Stardust' as much as any rock n' roll fan - I don't really know what it's about, but it sure is fun to think about David Bowie as this mad creation. ~ Val Kilmer

There are proven ways to win the loyalty of tough, strong, ferocious men: play on the certain knowledge of their superiority, the mystique of secret covenant, the esprit of shared suffering. ~ Frank Herbert

To love completely is to remember a time and place before; the knowledge of losing it only strengthens it.

- from Who Has Known Heights: The Mystique Memoirs of a Melancholic Mind ~ Wheston Chancellor Grove

There is a special mystique to Texas. Texans represent many things to the uninitiated: We are bigger than life in our boots and Stetsons, rugged individualists whose two-steppin' has achieved world-wide acclaim, and we were the first to define hospitality. ~ Ann Richards

When I was young, my parents made me listen to old music and watch Jimmy Durante. I fell in love with the whole mystique of acting and entertainment. ~ James Wolk

The real joke that history played on American women is not the one that makes people snigger, with cheap Freudian sophistication, at the dead feminists. It is the joke that Freudian thought played on living women, twisting the memory of the feminists into the man-eating phantom of the feminine mystique, shriveling the very wish to be more than just a wife and mother. ~ Betty Friedan

Literature before the Renaissance had frequently offered ideal patterns for living which were dominated by the ethos of the church, but after the Reformation the search for individual expression and meaning took over. Institutions were questioned and re-evaluated, often while being praised at the same time. But where there had been conventional modes of expression, reflecting ideal modes of behaviour - religious, heroic, or social - Renaissance writing explored the geography of the human soul, redefining its relationship with authority, history, science, and the future. This involved experimentation with form and genre, and an enormous variety of linguistic and literary innovations in a short period of time.
Reason, rather than religion, was the driving force in this search for rules to govern human behaviour in the Renaissance world. The power and mystique of religion had been overthrown in one bold stroke: where the marvellous no longer holds sway, real life has to provide explanations. Man, and the use he makes of his powers, capabilities, and free will, is thus the subject matter of Renaissance literature, from the early sonnets modelled on Petrarch to the English epic which closes the period, Paradise Lost, published after the Restoration, when the Renaissance had long finished.

The Reformation gave cultural, philosophical, and ideological impetus to English Renaissance writing. The writers in the century following the Reformation had to explore and redef ~ Ronald Carter

My English is perfect. I just like to say garbled nonsense to throw people off and keep them from bothering me. Cryptic is cool and it just adds to my mystique. I mean, Cancellara says some wacky stuff in English and nobody makes fun of him. ~ Peter Sagan

Each woman is made to feel it is her own cross to bear if she can't be the perfect clone of the male superman and the perfect clone of the feminine mystique. ~ Betty Friedan

Japan is a wonderful country, a strange mixture of ancient mystique and cyberpunk saturation. It's a monolith of society's achievements, yet maintains a foothold in the past, creating an amazing backdrop for tourings and natives alive. Japan captures the imagination like no other. You never feel quite so far from home as you do in Japan, yet there are no other people on the planet that make you feel as comfortable. ~ Corey Taylor

The mystique of rock climbing is climbing; you get to the top of a rock glad it's over but really wish it would go on forever. The justification of climbing is climbing, like the justification of poetry is writing; you don't conquer anything except things in yourself ... . The act of writing justifies poetry. Climbing is the same: recognizing that you are a flow. The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow. It is not a moving up but a continuous flowing; you move up to keep the flow going. There is no possible reason for climbing except the climbing itself; it is a self-communication. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The secret of artistic creation and the effectiveness of art is to be found in a return to the state of 'participation mystique' - to that level of experience at which it is man who lives, and not the individual ... ~ Carl Jung

Businesses are, in reality, quasi-religious sects. When you go to work in one you embrace a new faith. And if they are really big businesses, you progress from faith to a kind of mystique. Belief in the product, preaching the product, in the end the product becomes the focus of a transcendental experience. Through "the product" one communes with the vast forces of life, nature, and history that are expressed in business. Why not face it? Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments. ~ Thomas Merton

When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman. ~ Betty Friedan

It became quite clear to me that the Natural Law mystique, in Catholic, libertarian or neo-pagan forms, remains basically a set of rhetorical strategies to hypnotize others into the state which Bernard Shaw called "barbarism" and defined as 'the belief that the laws of one's own tribe are the laws of the universe'. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

The extraordinary mystique of hers made you think she lived on rose petals and listened to nothing but Mozart, but it wasn't true. She was quite funny and ribald. She could tell a dirty joke. She played charades with a great sense of fun and vulgarity, and she could be quite bitchy. ~ Andre Previn

What we men share is the experience of having been raised by women in a culture that stopped our fathers from being close enough to teach us how to be men, in a world in which men were discouraged from talking about our masculinity and questioning its roots and its mystique, in a world that glorified masculinity and gave us impossibly unachievable myths of masculine heroics, but no domestic models to teach us how to do it. ~ Frank Pittman

One could understand feminism generally as an attack on woman as she was under "patriarchy" (that concept is a social construction of feminism). The feminine mystique was her ideal; in regard to sex, it consisted of women's modesty and in the double standard of sexual conduct that comes with it, which treated women's misbehavior as more serious than men's. Instead of trying to establish a single standard by bringing men up to the higher standard of women, as with earlier feminism, today's feminism decided to demand that women be entitled to sink to the level of men. It bought into the sexual revolution of the late sixties and required that women be rewarded with the privileges of male conquest rather than, say, continue serving as camp followers of rock bands. The result has been the turn for the worse. ... What was there in feminine modesty that the feminists left behind?

In return for women's holding to a higher standard of sexual behavior, feminine modesty gave them protection while they considered whether they wanted to consent. It gave them time: Not so fast! Not the first date! I'm not ready for that! It gave them the pleasure of being courted along with the advantage of looking before you leap. To win over a woman, men had to strive to express their finer feelings, if they had any. Women could judge their character and choose accordingly. In sum, women had the right of choice, if I may borrow that slogan. All this and more was social construction, to be sure ~ Harvey Mansfield

Kaien Cross: You both entered the room in the same pose! Ooh! If Yuki had seen it, she'd have been so happy! The mystique!
Ichiru: Zero, is he always like this?
Zero: Yeah ... he doesn't act anything like his "former self" now ... why're you sticking to me?
Ichiru: Because you hate it when I do it (I'm being a pest).
Zero(to Cross): Hey. Don't take a photo.
Kaien Cross (thinking): The Kiryus really are twins. ~ Matsuri Hino

What Friedan gave to the world was, "the problem that has no name." She not only named it but dissected it. The advances of science, the development of labor-saving appliances, the development of the suburbs: all had come together to offer women in the 1950s a life their mothers had scarcely dreamed of, free from rampant disease, onerous drudgery, noxious city streets. But the green lawns and big corner lots were isolating, the housework seemed to expand to fill the time available, and polio and smallpox were replaced by depression and alcoholism. All that was covered up in a kitchen conspiracy of denial ...
[i]nstead the problem was with the mystique of waxed floors and perfectly applied lipstick. ~ Betty Friedan

I don't want to know everything about bands, I want to have some mystique remain because sometimes when you get all of this information you realize that they are just people and that actually takes away a little bit from the aura of somebody. ~ John Bush

Actors used to carry films because people would have to actually go to the movies to see them. It was the only place. But now there's none of that mystique, and so there's less of a reason to buy a ticket. ~ Eva Mendes

There is a mystique about psychiatry that people think that you have some kind of a magical lens, you know, Superman's X-ray vision into the soul. One of the reasons I left psychiatry is that I didn't believe that. ~ Charles Krauthammer

I think we Southerners have talked a fair amount of malarkey about the mystique of being Southern. ~ Reynolds Price

Mystique is rare now, isn't it? There aren't that many enigmas in this modern world. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch

What's going on, Mystique?" I whispered. "What are we doing in this very dark bedroom, exchanging flirty eyes?" She held up her hands, her words coming out in a breathless tumble. "This room is Vegas. Okay? What happens here stays here. Or, rather, what's said here stays here. ~ Christina Lauren

The mystique of the femme fatale cannot be perfectly translated into male terms. ~ Camille Paglia

When I was a kid, I did want to be a boy. I didn't like to play with dolls, and most of my friends were kind of sensitive, sissy boys. But as I got older, the mystique of being a girl began to interest me. It was confusing what sexuality was, and the responses of other people, but it didn't make me feel terrified or vulnerable. ~ Mary Gaitskill

There will always be something about two men in the ring - a mystique because it's pure man-to-man competition. Because of the history boxing has and the tradition it holds, boxing will always have a that mystique. ~ Sugar Ray Leonard

I'm from New Orleans. There's a lot of vampire mystique and mythology that resonates there, and I was fascinated by it. I always wanted to play one. ~ Ian Somerhalder

It is my thesis that the core of the problem for women today is not sexual but a problem of identity -- a stunting or evasion of growth that is perpetuated by the feminine mystique. It is my thesis that as the Victorian culture did not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfil their potentialities as human beings, a need which is not solely defined by their sexual need. ~ Betty Friedan

It has been said that the man who loves God needs seven incarnations in order to enter Nirvana and liberate himself, and that the man who hates him needs only three. It is without God but his own 'fury' that Parsifal achieved the Grail and his individuation, his Self, his totality. This is the difference between the Liquid Road and the Dry Road. We do not know whether, as well as his 'fury', his Phobos, his fear of the Mother, Parsifal carried with him a 'memory of a beloved', as he was supposed to have advised his friend Gawaine to do. Parsifal, with his 'fury', or his hatred, was resisting a participation mystique. Samadhi, fusion with Adhi, the Primordial Being, doesn't await him at the end of his road. Because this would be the way of sainthood. What awaits him is Kaivalya, total separation, supreme Individuation, Absolute Personality, the ultimate solitude of the Superman. This is the way of the magician, the Siddha, the tantric hero of the Grail. The cosmic isolation of the risen Purusha. ~ Miguel Serrano

As women, we can embody all aspects of the Triple Goddess simultaneously (Mother, Maiden, Crone) at every stage of our lives. The elements of feminine mystique, giftedness, and strength are available to us through the spirit as much as the body. ~ Elizabeth S. Eiler

My indiscretion was a part of my author mystique, just like Charles Dickens and Richard Madeley. ~ Rosen Trevithick

Can I blame them? they're sick with fear. We've grown too entrenched here, too entwined. Too immersed in the beating heart of this city, this country, this region, We've grown heavy and fat on our our wealth, collective power. We've become addicted to our influence, our mystique. And it's all a myth. An illusion. A crystal tower, standing on sand. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery. ~ Betty Friedan

I was in a book group in 1973," she recounted. "We read The Feminine Mystique one week, and the next week everyone went out and got a job. The book group never met again. ~ Debora L. Spar

Walk around. If you are invisible, the mystique of the President's office may perpetuate inaccurate impressions about you or the President, to his detriment. After all, you may not be as bad as they're saying. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

Wrath: look at how their folklore portrays our species. There's Dracula for Christ's sake, an evil bloodsucker who preys on the defenseless. There's piss-poor B movies and porn. And don't get me started on the whole Halloween thing. Plastic fangs. Black capes. The only thing the idiots got right are that we drink blood and that we can't go out in daylight. The rest is bullshit, fabricated to alienate us and stimulate fear in the masses. Or just as offensive, the fiction used to create some kind of mystique for bored humans who think the dark side is a fun place to visit. ~ J.R. Ward

Nikki : I think he makes women question their position in life through their association with the dichotomy of his physical power and his whole feminine mystique. That's the part of Travis I'm always trying to capture. The tension. You must have felt it in the studio.
She was serious. He could tell by the tone of her voice. And again, unbelievably, she was waiting for an answer.
Kid : Uh ... no.
Nikki : You didn't feel the tension ?
Kid : Yeah, there was tension. I just didn't realize it was the dichotomy of Travis' physical powers and his,uh,feminine mystique creating it. I thought it was the paint and the hellish death motif, not to mention the,uh,sheer demonic luridness of the eternity-sucking vortex. ~ Tara Janzen

In retrospect, we could see that the 1950s had been a reactionary period in America of Eisenhower blandness, of virulent anticommunism, of the 'Feminine Mystique.' ~ Edmund White

The time has come for writers to become inaccessible again. The reason is not some kind of 'mystique' that makes people curious (though it helps), but the fact that no real writers ever lay down anything real in public-they work in solitude, they think hard, and their thoughts are rarely nice or 'friendly.' ~ Andrei Codrescu

Wilderness, or wildness is a mystique. A religion, an intense philosophy, a dream of ideal society - these are also mystique. We are not engaged in preserving so many acre-feet of water, so many board-feet of timber, so many billion tons of granite, so many profit possibilities in so many ways for those concerned with the material aspects of the world. Yet, we must accept the fact that human life (at least in the metabolic sense) depends upon the resources of the Earth. As the fisherman depends upon the rivers, lakes and seas, and the farmer upon the land for his existence, so does mankind in general depend upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence.

From a speech to The Wilderness Society, May 9 1980 ~ Ansel Adams

I am travelling with this mystique myself, I know. It has grown out of childhood, and adolescent reading. This looking-glass Tibet is a realm of ancient learning lost to the rest of the world, ruled by a lineage of monks who are reincarnations of divinity. Recessed beyond the greatest mountain barrier on earth, in plateaux of cold purity, it floats in its own time. It is a land forbidden to intruders not by human agency but by some mystical interdiction. So it resonates like the memory of something lost, a survival from a purer time, less a country than a region in the mind. Perhaps it holds the keys to the afterlife ~ Colin Thubron

I am not a novelist, I'm a storyteller. There is no art in what I do. No mystique. ~ Alistair MacLean

All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the party and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived. Physical rebellion, or any preliminary move toward rebellion, is at present not possible. From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is. They could only become dangerous if the advance of industrial technique made it necessary to educate them more highly; but since military and commercial rivalry are no longer important, the level of popular education is actually declining. What opinions the masses hold,or do not hold, is looked on as matter of indifference. They can me granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect. ~ George Orwell

The mystique associated with the bomb, the role that scientists played in it, and its general importance could not fail to impress even a six-year old. ~ Sidney Altman

Life in Australia is more equal and less competitive than in America; but there are dozens of similarities...migrations to a new land, the mystique of pioneering (actually somewhat different in the two countries), the turbulence of gold rushes, the brutality of relaxed restraint, the boredoms of the backblocks, the feeling of making life anew. There may be more similarities between the history of Australia and America than for the moment Australians can understand. ~ Donald Horne

From across her husband's open grave I had thought she exuded a certain foxy mystique, but now, to my disappointment, she looked just like every other mother I knew. ~ Alex George

Mystique saturates, gluts the air,
Adventure's even more than rare,
Excitement's everywhere to share,
And Novelty's beyond compare. ~ Mariecor Ruediger

I tend to keep my private life private. I think it's important to have mystique. It's important to keep people thinking and guessing, and you want everyone to think you're singing to them. ~ Joan Jett

I grew up in a family of filmmakers, so I always wanted to make films about animals, especially comical films. Something about animals amuses me. And they have a great mystery. It's the same mystique some people might feel looking at the stars or the ocean. ~ Isabella Rossellini

Luke James has this mystique about him that's not something you can explain; you can only experience it. He's got a whole D'Angelo feel to him as well. ~ Estelle

Writing is one means to investigate the mystique of life. Each fresh page is an unsullied canvas that an inquisitive writer employs to explore the poetic transience behind their existence. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster