Perplexity Quotes

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Quotes About Perplexity

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We tend to resolve our perplexity arising out of the experience that other people see the world differently than we see it ourselves by declaring that these others, in consequence of some basic intellectual and moral defect, are unable to see things "as they really are" and to react to them "in a normal way." We thus imply, of course, that things are in fact as we see them, and that our ways are the normal ways. (Ichheiser, 1949, p. 39) ~ Thomas Gilovich
Perplexity quotes by Thomas Gilovich
I'm strangely comforted when I hear from scientists that human beings are the most complex creatures we know of in the universe, still, by far. Black holes are in their way explicable; the simplest living being is not. I lean a bit more confidently into the experience that life is so endlessly perplexing. I love that word. Spiritual life is a way of dwelling with perplexity - taking it seriously, searching for its purpose as well as its perils, its beauty as well as its ravages. ~ Krista Tippett
Perplexity quotes by Krista Tippett
The answers to the world's perplexities are, in fact, found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ ... The more we can bring others to see the gospel in action, the more they will be willing to at least tolerate us, then to encourage us, and eventually to cooperate with us. ~ Truman G. Madsen
Perplexity quotes by Truman G. Madsen
Then Prometheus, in his perplexity as to what preservation he could devise, stole from Hephaestus and Athena wisdom in the arts together with fire
since by no means without fire could it be acquired or helpfully used by any
and he handed it there and then as a gift to man. ~ Plato
Perplexity quotes by Plato
You tell me that you fear love; why, my little one? Do you fear the light of the sun? Do you fear the ebb and flow of the sea? Do you fear the dawning of the day? Do you fear the advent of spring? I wonder why you fear love? ... do not fear love; do not fear love, friend of my heart. We must surrender to it in spite of what it may bring in the way of pain, of desolation, of longing and in spite of all perplexity and bewilderment. ~ Kahlil Gibran
Perplexity quotes by Kahlil Gibran
Trouble and perplexity drive me to prayer, and prayer drives away perplexity and trouble. ~ Elizabeth George
Perplexity quotes by Elizabeth George
When I have a difficult subject before me - when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools - I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude; I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace. ~ Maimonides
Perplexity quotes by Maimonides
When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table, everyone came to take leave of him and they all wept.

Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful perplexity. The countess and Sonya cried from pity for Natasha and because he was no more. The old count cried because he felt that before long, he, too, must take the same terrible step.

Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their own personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion which had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of the simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in their presence. ~ Leo Tolstoy
Perplexity quotes by Leo Tolstoy
Schopenhauer's Will-to-live, commendable as it may seem as a hypothesis, is too overwrought in the proving to be anything more than another intellectual labyrinth for specialists in perplexity. Comparatively, Zapffe's principles are non-technical and could never arouse the passion of professors ~ Thomas Ligotti
Perplexity quotes by Thomas Ligotti
This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness; hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish, but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good
these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages. ~ James Martineau
Perplexity quotes by James Martineau
Life, with all it's sorrows, cares, perplexities and heart-breaks, is more interesting than bovine placidity, hence more desirable. The more interesting it is, the happier it is. ~ William Lyon Phelps
Perplexity quotes by William Lyon Phelps
On re-entering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia. ~ Evariste Regis Huc
Perplexity quotes by Evariste Regis Huc
Round and round the questions flew, until finally I found myself standing at the open door of a bookshop. It's natural in times of great perplexity, I think, to seek out the familiar, and the high shelves and long rows of neatly lined-up spines were immensely reassuring. Amid the smell of ink and binding, the dusty motes in beams of strained sunlight, the embrace of warm, tranquil air, I felt that I could breathe more easily. ~ Kate Morton
Perplexity quotes by Kate Morton
There are greater depths and obscurities, greater intricacies and perplexities, in an elaborate and well-written piece of nonsense, than in the most abstruse and profound tract of school divinity. ~ Joseph Addison
Perplexity quotes by Joseph Addison
Yes, Kālāmas, it is proper that your have doubt, that you have perplexity, for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now, look you Kālāmas, do not be led by reports, or traditions, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, not by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, not by the idea: 'this is our teacher'. But, O Kālāmas, when you know for yourself that certain things are unwholesome, and wrong, and bad, then give them up... And when you know for yourself that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them. ~ Gautama Buddha
Perplexity quotes by Gautama Buddha
As I repeatedly went forth with him and began to understand the ignorance and contradictions and language difficulties with which he contended, and the doubtful sources of his information and the seemingly bottomless history and darkness out of which the dishes of New York emerge, the deeper grew my suspicion that his work finally consisted of minting or perpetuating and in any event circulating misconceptions about his subject and in this way adding to the endless perplexity of the world. ~ Joseph O'Neill
Perplexity quotes by Joseph O'Neill
What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question - How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a living, walking sepulcher, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt, notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful. Upon this I pondered with undiminished perplexity ... ~ George MacDonald
Perplexity quotes by George MacDonald
Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. They've been a laboratory for everybody. ~ Donald Barthelme
Perplexity quotes by Donald Barthelme
My father is wisdom and my mother is voidness.

My country is the country of Dharma.

I am of no caste and no creed.

I am sustained by perplexity; and I am here to destroy lust, anger and sloth. ~ Padmasambhava
Perplexity quotes by Padmasambhava
...What is it that he was? Was the idea he had for himself of lesser validity or of greater validity than someone else's idea of what he was supposed to be? Can such things even be known? But the concept of life as something whose purpose is concealed, of custom as something that may not allow for thought, of society as dedicated to a picture of itself that may be badly flawed, of an individual as real apart and beyond the social determinants defining him, which may indeed be what to him seem most unreal--in short, every perplexity pumping the human imagination seemed to lie somewhat outside her own unswerving allegiance to a canon of time-honored rules. ~ Philip Roth
Perplexity quotes by Philip Roth
The two friends stood for a few moments on the windy street corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers, who have lost their way, sometimes stand and admit their perplexity in silence. (O Pioneers!) ~ Willa Cather
Perplexity quotes by Willa Cather
Something broke in me and left me with a nerve split in two. In the beginning the extremities linked to the cut hurt me so badly that I paled in pain and perplexity. However the split places gradually scarred over. Until coldly, I no longer hurt. I changed, without planning to. I used to look at you from my inside outward and from the inside of you, which because of love, I could guess. After the scarring I started to look at you from the outside in. And also to see myself from the outside in: I had transformed myself into a heap of facts and actions whose only root was in the domain of logic. At first I couldn't associate me with myself. Where am I? I wondered. And the one who answered was a stranger who told me coldly and categorically: you are yourself. ~ Clarice Lispector
Perplexity quotes by Clarice Lispector
Perhaps, on the whole, embarrassment and perplexity are a kind of natural accompaniment to life and movement; and it is better to be driven out of your senses with thinking which of two things you ought to do than to do nothing whatever, and be utterly uninteresting to all the world. ~ Margaret Oliphant
Perplexity quotes by Margaret Oliphant
The necessity of saying something, the perplexity of having nothing to say, and a desire of being witty, are three circumstances which alone are capable of making even the greatest writer ridiculous. ~ Voltaire
Perplexity quotes by Voltaire
Those who obtain riches by labor, care, and watching, know their value. Those who impart them to sustain and extend knowledge, virtue, and religion, know their use. Those who lose them by accident or fraud know their vanity. And those who experience the difficulties and dangers of preserving them know their perplexities. ~ Charles Simmons
Perplexity quotes by Charles Simmons
But a lonely man is an unnatural man, and soon comes to perplexity. From perplexity to fantasy. From fantasy to madness. ~ Daphne Du Maurier
Perplexity quotes by Daphne Du Maurier
It is a common error, and the greater and more mischievous for being so common, to believe that repentance best becomes and most concerns dying men. Indeed, what is necessary every hour of our life is necessary in the hour of death too, and as long as one lives he will have need of repentance, and therefore it is necessary in the hour of death too; but he who hath constantly exercised himself in it in his health and vigor, will do it with less pain in his sickness and weakness; and he who hath practiced it all his life, will do it with more ease and less perplexity in the hour of his death. ~ Samuel Johnson
Perplexity quotes by Samuel Johnson
But the recurrent ambiguity of the American tale of the supernatural reveals both a fascination
with the possibility of numinous experience and a perplexity about whether there was, in fact, anything numinous to be experienced. Writers often delighted in leading readers into, but not out of, the haunted dusk of the borderland. ~ Howard Kerr
Perplexity quotes by Howard Kerr
The first words that are read by seekers of enlightenment in the secret, gong-banging, yeti-haunted valleys near the hub of the world, are when they look into The Life of Wen the Eternally Surprised.
The first question they ask is: 'Why was he eternally surprised?'
And they are told: 'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.'
The first words read by the young Lu-Tze when he sought perplexity in the dark, teeming, rain-soaked city of Ankh-Morpork were: 'Rooms For Rent, Very Reasonable.' And he was glad of it. ~ Terry Pratchett
Perplexity quotes by Terry Pratchett
Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping. All the kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting. Why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father. No, this left shoe is my father. No, no, this left shoe is my mother. Nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so -- it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A vengeance on't! There 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog -- O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so. Now come I to my father: 'Father, your blessing.' Now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping. Now should I kiss my father -- well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O, that she could speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her -- why, there 'tis: here's my mother's breath up and d ~ William Shakespeare
Perplexity quotes by William Shakespeare
I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there. Without the distraction of constant conversation, the words on the page began to speak directly to my inner self. They were no long expressing ideas that were simply interesting intellectually, but were talking directly to my own yearning and perplexity. ~ Karen Armstrong
Perplexity quotes by Karen Armstrong
The perplexity of life arises from their being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them; what we call it's triviality is really the tag-ends of numberless tales; ordinary and unmeaning existence is like ten thousand thrilling detective stories mixed up with a spoon. ~ G.K. Chesterton
Perplexity quotes by G.K. Chesterton
It was with increasing perplexity that he realized his mind - and his heart - went with Miracle. ~ M. Leighton
Perplexity quotes by M. Leighton
I think I repeated the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in my head at least one thousand times: the mathematical product of the combined uncertainties of concurrent measurements of position and momentum in a specified direction could never be less than Planck's constant, h, divided by 4π. This meant, rather encouragingly, that my uncertain position and zero momentum and the Beast Responsible for the Sound's uncertain position and uncertain momentum had to sort of null each other out, leaving me with what is commonly known in the scientific world as "wide-ranging perplexity. ~ Marisha Pessl
Perplexity quotes by Marisha Pessl
..though Miss Rebecca Sharp has twice had occasion to thank Heaven, it has been, in the first place, for ridding her of some person whom she hated, and secondly, for enabling her to bring her enemies to some sort of perplexity or confusion; neither of which are very amiable motives for religious gratitude, ~ William Makepeace Thackeray
Perplexity quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray
By emphasizing doubt rather than belief, perplexity rather than certainty, and questions rather than answers, Zen practice granted me the freedom to imagine. ~ Stephen Batchelor
Perplexity quotes by Stephen Batchelor
The triviality of American popular culture, its emptiness and gossip, accelerates this destruction of critical thought. It expands the void, the mindlessness that makes the magic, mythology, and irrationality of the Christian Right palatable. Television, the movement's primary medium, allows viewers to preoccupy themselves with context-free information. The homogenized empty chatter on the airwaves, the banal amusement and clichés, the bizarre doublespeak endlessly repeated on cable news channels and the huge spectacles in sports stadiums have replaced America's political, social and moral life, indeed replaced community itself. Television lends itself perfectly to this world of signs and wonders, to the narcissism of national and religious self-exaltation. Television discourages real communication. Its rapid frames and movements, its constant use of emotional images, its sudden shifts from one theme to an unrelated theme, banish logic and reason with dizzying perplexity. It, too, makes us feel good. It, too, promises to protect and serve us. It, too, promises to life us up and thrill us. The televangelists have built their movement on these commercial precepts. The totalitarian creed of the Religious Right has found in television the perfect medium. Its leaders know how television can be used to seduce and encourage us to walk away from dwindling, less exciting collectives that protect and nurture us. They have mastered television's imperceptible, slowly induced hypnosis. An ~ Chris Hedges
Perplexity quotes by Chris Hedges
As soon as we try to write the simplest sentence about God, we find ourselves in anxious perplexities, but when we stop trying to write about God and talk with God, God is there and we can talk with God. ~ Kevin Hart
Perplexity quotes by Kevin Hart
We gaze with perplexity at the highest part of the spiral of force that governs the Universe. And we call it God. We could give it any other name: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Total Light, Matter, Spirit, Supreme Hope, Supreme Despair, Silence.

"But we call it God, because only this name – for some mysterious reason – is capable of making our heart tremble with vigor.

"And let there be no doubt that this trembling is absolutely indispensable for us to be in contact with the basic emotions of the human being, emotions that are always beyond any explanation or logic. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
Perplexity quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis
I have long ago lost my belief in immortality also my interest in it.... I have sampled this life and it is sufficient.... Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born.... There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.? ~ S.T. Joshi
Perplexity quotes by S.T. Joshi
It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too. ~ Aristotle.
Perplexity quotes by Aristotle.
Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born
a hundred million years
and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. ~ Mark Twain
Perplexity quotes by Mark Twain
I am not here to merely argue about the perplexities regarding theism or philosophy, but to be a light to the world and to reach out to those who long to be a part of that light. ~ Criss Jami
Perplexity quotes by Criss Jami
When my grandmother - may she attain the Kingdom of Heaven - was dying, my mother, as was then the custom, took me to her bedside and, as I kissed her right hand, my dear grandmother placed her dying left hand on my head and said in a whisper, yet very distinctly: "Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do." Having said this, she gazed at the bridge of my nose and, evidently noticing my perplexity and my obscure understanding of what she had said, added somewhat angrily and imperiously: "Either do nothing - just go to school - or do something nobody else does Whereupon she immediately, without hesitation and with a perceptible impulse of disdain for all around her, and with commendable self-cognizance, gave up her soul directly into the hands of His Faithfulness, the Archangel Gabriel. ~ G.I. Gurdjieff
Perplexity quotes by G.I. Gurdjieff
The strangeness that made everything sparkle came from me. Worlds rose out of my bottomless perplexity ~ Cesar Aira
Perplexity quotes by Cesar Aira
Architecture begins to matter when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads. ~ Paul Goldberger
Perplexity quotes by Paul Goldberger
When there is great doubt," says a Zen aphorism that Kusan Sunim kept repeating, "then there is great awakening." This is the key. The depth of any understanding is intimately correlated with the depth of one's confusion. Great awakening resonates at the same "pitch" as great doubt. So rather than negate such doubt by replacing it with belief, which is the standard religious procedure, Zen encourages you to cultivate that doubt until it "coagulates" into a vivid mass of perplexity. ~ Stephen Batchelor
Perplexity quotes by Stephen Batchelor
At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Perplexity quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke
The perplexity, the potential - God's own crucible was not for angels. ~ Johnny Worthen
Perplexity quotes by Johnny Worthen
The mind that puts everything in question reaches, after a thousand interrogations, an almost total inertia, a situation which the inert, in fact, knows from the start, by instinct. For what is inertia but a congenital perplexity? ~ Emil M. Cioran
Perplexity quotes by Emil M. Cioran
Then these moments of perplexity began to recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They were always expressed by the questions: What is it for? What does it lead to? At first it seemed to me that these were aimless and irrelevant questions. I thought that it was all well known, and that if I should ever wish to deal with the solution it would not cost me much effort; just at present I had no time for it, but when I wanted to I should be able to find the answer. The questions however began to repeat themselves frequently, and to demand replies more and more insistently; and like drops of ink always falling on one place they ran together into one black blot. Then occurred what happens to everyone sickening with a mortal internal disease. At first trivial signs of indisposition appear to which the sick man pays no attention; then these signs reappear more and more often and merge into one uninterrupted period of suffering. The suffering increases, and before the sick man can look round, what he took for a mere indisposition has already become more important to him than anything else in the world -- it is death! That is what happened to me. ~ Leo Tolstoy
Perplexity quotes by Leo Tolstoy
There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none? ~ W. Somerset Maugham
Perplexity quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of ~ Thomas B. Macaulay
Perplexity quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay
If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Perplexity quotes by Benjamin Franklin
In lieu of fixating upon details of our life which can lead to sadness or madness, we achieve an enhanced perspective regarding the perplexity haunting our being by thinking abstractedly, a process that allows us to discern the essential principles of life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster
Perplexity quotes by Kilroy J. Oldster
The phrase "after-life" was also vaguely confused with going to church and not wanting to be dead - a perplexity which can be omitted from a narrative in which I am doing my best to confine myself to actual happenings. At the age of twenty-two I believed myself to be unextinguishable. ~ Siegfried Sassoon
Perplexity quotes by Siegfried Sassoon
The Church is a system, - but whether it is as much founded on the teaching of our Lord, who was divine, as on the teaching of St. Paul, who was not divine, is a question to me of much perplexity. ~ Marie Corelli
Perplexity quotes by Marie Corelli
This morning I was listening to Portishead, flawless math transformed by machines into looping, scratchy melodies, and I started thinking about how when machines have souls and can love they will do it so very precisely. Their affection will be accurate to the nanometer, rendering broken hearts a thing of the past, a relic, a curiosity from an unthinkably primitive time. The machines will regard heartbreak with the same mixture of perplexity and disbelief with which we regard the iron maiden. If they need couples counselors, which they will not, those counselors will be as perfect as Adam before the Fall, and every robot couple will walk out after the first session cured forevermore, and will smile again at every word their robot partner says, and find each of their robot partner's idiosyncrasies endearing rather than maddening, and they will be as entranced by one another's robot bodies as when they first met, as though together they've just invented sex. Which, in a way, they will have. I hope I live long enough to see it. ~ Ron Currie Jr.
Perplexity quotes by Ron Currie Jr.
I am in the utmost perplexity, yand have wished a hundred times, that if there is a A God, nature would manifest him without ambiguity, and that if there is not, every imaginary sign of his existence might vanish : in short, let nature speak distinctly, or be totally silent, and I shall know what course to take. ~ Blaise Pascal
Perplexity quotes by Blaise Pascal
If time be of all things most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough. Let us then be up and doing, and doing to a purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity ~ Benjamin Franklin
Perplexity quotes by Benjamin Franklin
Most persons after a step of faith are looking for sunny skies and unruffled seas, and when they meet a storm and tempest they are filled with astonishment and perplexity. ~ A.B. Simpson
Perplexity quotes by A.B. Simpson
From My Life's Work by Cardinal Newman
God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next ... I shall do good. I shall do His work if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.
Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am. I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain. ~ John Henry Newman
Perplexity quotes by John Henry Newman
As an anti-hunger advocate, I found the perplexity of the obesity problem and the hunger problem existing side-by-side in our increasingly global food system begged further investigation. ~ Ellen Gustafson
Perplexity quotes by Ellen Gustafson
Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to them, 'What do you people want of one another?' they would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said: 'Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one another's company? For if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of two - I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are satisfied to attain this?' - there is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need. ~ Plato
Perplexity quotes by Plato
She looked from her son to Bill and back to her son again, touched by wonder that was mostly simple perplexity but partly a fear so thin and sharp that it found its way deep into her inner heart and vibrated there like a tuning-fork made of clear ice. ~ Stephen King
Perplexity quotes by Stephen King
Discomfort: the valley between the body and the soul. Comfort: the bridge between the body and the soul ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Perplexity quotes by Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Either still I find Some imperfection in the chosen theme, Or see of absolute accomplishment Much wanting, so much wanting, in myself, That I recoil and droop, and seek repose In listlessness from vain perplexity, Unprofitably travelling towards the grave. ~ William Wordsworth
Perplexity quotes by William Wordsworth
Get the most out of everything in your life; the happiness and the sadness, the success and the failure ... get a good perspective of what life is all about. Let the orchestra of your life play all the notes, the high notes, the low rumblings of the difficulties and perplexities that all we all face. ~ Jim Rohn
Perplexity quotes by Jim Rohn
The small perplexities of small minds eddy and boil about you. Confident from the experience that has led you out of these same dangers, you attack each problem as it appears, unafraid. ~ Alice Foote MacDougall
Perplexity quotes by Alice Foote MacDougall
He could not deny that the beauty, the youth, the gracefulness, of the countess had made some impression on him: but his nature was entirely averse to all empty gallantry, and his principles forbade any thought of more serious enterprises; so that his perplexity at this moment was in truth extreme. The fear of displeasing the countess, and that of pleasing her too well, were equally busy in his mind. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Perplexity quotes by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Death is not the end! The exit for the world of mortals is the entrance to the world of immortals! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Perplexity quotes by Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Pierre, who knew she was very stupid, sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy were discussed. At ~ Leo Tolstoy
Perplexity quotes by Leo Tolstoy
The wonderful thing is that the soul already knows to some extent that there is something behind the veil, the veil of perplexity, that there is something to be sought for in the highest spheres of life, that there is some beauty to be seen, that there is Someone to be known who is knowable. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan
Perplexity quotes by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divinings, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Perplexity quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke
Amy turned to Nellie. "Can you create a diversion to draw the clerk outside?"
The au pair was wary. "What kind of diversion?"
"You could pretend to be lost," Dan proposed. "The guy comes out to give you directions, and we slip inside."
"That's the most sexist idea I've ever heard," Nellie said harshly. "I'm female, so I have to be clueless. He's male, so he's got a great sense of direction."
"Maybe you're from out of town," Dan suggested. "Wait–you are from out of town."
Nellie stashed their bags under a bench and set Saladin on the seat with a stern "You're the watchcat. Anybody touches those bags, unleash your inner tiger."
The Egyptian Mau surveyed the street uncertainly. "Mrrp."
Nellie sighed. "Lucky for us there's no one around. Okay, I'm going in there. Be ready."
The clerk said something to her–probably May I help you? She smiled apologetically. "I don't speak Italian."
"Ah–you are American." His accent was heavy, but he seemed eager to please. "I will assist you." He took in her black nail polish and nose ring. "Punk, perhaps, is your enjoyment?"
"More like a punk/reggae fusion," Nellie replied thoughtfully. "With a country feel. And operatic vocals."
The clerk stared in perplexity.
Nellie began to tour the aisles, pulling out CDs left and right. "Ah–Artic Monkeys–that's what I'm talking about. And some Bad Brains–from the eighties. Foo Fighters–I'll need a couple from those guys. And don't forget Linkin Par ~ Gordon Korman
Perplexity quotes by Gordon Korman
A young girl's mother is her natural refuge in every perplexity. ~ Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
Perplexity quotes by Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
What is true for the emotions may also be true for the intellect. Some of our perplexities may come from a mismatch between the purposes for which our cognitive faculties evolved and the purposes to which we put them today. ~ Steven Pinker
Perplexity quotes by Steven Pinker
So if God should place me in serious perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in places of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that HIs resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me. ~ Hudson Taylor
Perplexity quotes by Hudson Taylor
Being is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence. We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
Perplexity quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel
The ashes of my fathers, wrote me a destiny, but my existence in pothers, that destiny questions my identity, lost in an ocean of significant others, my mind's plagued with perplexity, and though life has my soul caught up in smothers, judgment of this age must be left to posterity. ~ Harpreet Singh Nanda
Perplexity quotes by Harpreet Singh Nanda
The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution. ~ Brian Greene
Perplexity quotes by Brian Greene
To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
When there is distress of nations and perplexity
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension ... ~ T. S. Eliot
Perplexity quotes by T. S. Eliot
They lived in fearful perplexity and passed it off as imagination ~ Stephen King
Perplexity quotes by Stephen King
All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper, and the next
who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead. ~ Sophocles
Perplexity quotes by Sophocles
Sometimes you dream strange dreams, impossible and unnatural; you wake up and remember them clearly, and are surprised at a strange fact: you remember first of all that reason did not abandon you during the whole course of your dream; you even remember that you acted extremely cleverly and logically for that whole long, long time when you were surrounded by murderers, when they were being clever with you, concealed their intentions, treated you in a friendly way, though they already had their weapons ready and were only waiting for some sort of sign; you remember how cleverly you finally deceived them, hid from them; then you realize that they know your whole deception by heart and merely do not show you that they know where you are hiding; but you are clever and deceive them again - all that you remember clearly. But why at the same time could your reason be reconciled with such obvious absurdities and impossibilities, with which, among other things, your dream was filled? Before your eyes, one of your murderers turned into a woman, and from a woman into a clever, nasty little dwarf - and all that you allowed at once, as an accomplished fact, almost without the least perplexity, and precisely at the moment when, on the other hand, your reason was strained to the utmost, displaying extraordinary force, cleverness, keenness, logic? Why, also, on awakening from your dream and entering fully into reality, do you feel almost every time, and occasionally with an extraordinary forc ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Perplexity quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core. ~ Hannah Arendt
Perplexity quotes by Hannah Arendt
Why ponder thus the future to foresee, and jade thy brain to vain perplexity? Cast off thy care, leave Allah's plans to him – He formed them all without consulting thee." Three Cups of Tea ~ Omar Khayyam
Perplexity quotes by Omar Khayyam
I have traversed at least one part of this sphere where we are; I have studied the fecundation of plants and the point at which metals fuse; I have observed the stars and have examined the inside of bodies. From this brand that I lift here I can deduce a concept of weight, and from these flames the concept of warmth. What I do not know, I know full well that I do not know, and I envy those who will eventually know more; but I know also that, exactly like me, they will be obliged to measure, deduce, and then mistrust the deductions so produced; they will have to make allowance for the part which is true in any falsehood, and likewise reckon the eternal admixture of falsity in truth.

I have never clung blindly to some idea for fear of the perplexity into which I should fall if I let it go. I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily. I have never misrepresented the views of my adversary to get the better of him more readily, not even the views of Bombastus during our debate on antimony (though he showed no gratitude for my restraint). Or perhaps, yes: I have caught myself in the act of such misrepresentation, and each time reprimanded myself as if I were scolding a dishonest valet; I could trust myself again only after promising myself to do better. I have dreamed my dreams, but I do not take them for anything more than dreams. I have refrained from making an idol of truth, preferring to leave to it its more modest name of ~ Marguerite Yourcenar
Perplexity quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar
The Master said, At fifteen I set my heart upon learning.
At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground.
At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.
At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven.
At sixty, I heard them with docile ear.
At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of righ. ~ Confucius
Perplexity quotes by Confucius
Wherever we go, we come up against the human, a repulsive ubiquity before which we fall into stupor and revolt, a perplexity on fire. ~ Emile M. Cioran
Perplexity quotes by Emile M. Cioran
We all got into it, cracking walnut shells with our shoes, pulling the sweet white meat from inside while a crowd of our Chinese hosts eyed us with bemused perplexity. "Americans," I imagined them saying, afterward. "The poor sons of bitches have everything in the world, but they've never tasted fresh walnuts. ~ Jennifer Egan
Perplexity quotes by Jennifer Egan
Since love came over and knocked me down,
Then kicked me in the side and fled,
I have suffered from a prolonged perplexity.
God is the object of my wonder and the closest to me.
Especially near sleep. My sheets are like the wings of a guardian angel.
There is no other fabric so near to my feelings. ~ Fanny Howe
Perplexity quotes by Fanny Howe
These are days of special perplexity and depression, and the path of public duty is unusually rugged. ~ Grover Cleveland
Perplexity quotes by Grover Cleveland
The book the man is reading is the Word of God, the Bible. It has become both the focus of and the reason for his current state of perplexity and distress. The heavy burden on his back is his awakened knowledge and sense of his own sin. The man discovers the frightful condition of his heart, which provokes genuine and constant fears of damnation. These fears are an ever-present weight upon his entire person.
4. ~ John Bunyan
Perplexity quotes by John Bunyan
Melancholy is an intimate aspect of human nature, while depression, like any other illness, creates fear and perplexity. Melancholy can displayed, depression is usually hidden. When transformed into a depression, melancholy becomes a defeat. ~ Karin Johannisson
Perplexity quotes by Karin Johannisson
At best she's a scrawny, hollow-eyed croneling." "Croneling?" John tilted his head in perplexity. "Croneling. Noun. One who has yet to achieve cronehood. The adolescent phase of the British crone," Avery lectured. ~ Connie Brockway
Perplexity quotes by Connie Brockway
Have I really been in a battle?" wondered Stendhal's hero after many hours blundering around the field of Waterloo, and many people today share a similar perplexity. Like Stendhal's hero, they eat and drink and sustain the business of life, but the meaning of it all depends upon their conviction of contributing to the liberation of workers, women, the colonized, or other varieties of the oppressed. Like Fabrizio del Dongo, they find a regiment and tag along - the Hussars against Patriarchy, the Dragoon Guards of the Proletariat, and so on. Quite where the real battle lies is hotly disputed, but its significance is agreed to be a final end to oppression. (…) My argument, then, is an exploration of the hypothesis that there is a pure theory of ideology, and while from one point of view it is a critique, from another it is a do-it-yourself ideology kit. It begins with some suggestions about how ideology was generated from eighteenth-century social theory. The long central section is an attempt to characterize ideologies as forms of understanding. The last section develops the view that, although ideology must take on political trappings in order to transform the world, its real character is entirely antithetical to the practice of politics. Ideology is to reality, I suggest, as (in Tolstoy's opinion) the reports of battles are to the concrete experience of individuals in the field. In ideological moods, we think we see in social and political life those clear lines from the hist ~ Kenneth Minogue
Perplexity quotes by Kenneth Minogue
From his earliest years Cincinnatus, by some strange and happy chance comprehending his danger, carefully managed to conceal a certain peculiarity. He was impervious to the rays of others, and therefore produced when off his guard a bizarre impression, as of a lone dark obstacle in the world of souls transparent to one other; he learned however to feign translucence, employing a complex system of optical illusions, as it were--but he had only to forget himself, to allow a momentary lapse in self control, in the manipulation of cunningly illuminated facets and angles at which he turned his soul, and immediately there was alarm. In the midst of the excitement of a game his coevals would suddenly forsake him, as if they had sensed that his lucid gaze and the azure of his temples were but a crafty deception and that actually Cincinnatus was opaque. Sometimes, in the midst of sudden silence, the teacher, in a chagrined perplexity, would gather up all the reserves of skin around his eyes, gaze at him for a long while and finally say: "What is wrong with you, Cincinnatus?" Then Cincinnatus would take hold of himself, and, clutching his own self to his breast, would remove that self to a safe place. ~ Vladimir Nabokov
Perplexity quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
The Rabbi thought he saw an expression of perplexity in the golem's eyes. It seemed to the Rabbi that his eyes were asking, 'Who am I? Why am I here? What is the secret of my being? Rabbi Leib often saw the same bewilderment in the eyes of newborn children and even in the eyes of animals. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
Perplexity quotes by Isaac Bashevis Singer
And what does this question Why imply? It implies ( ... ) dissatisfaction, disquiet, a sense that all is not well. In a state of perfect contentment there would be no need or room for this irritant little word. History begins only at the point where things go wrong; history is born only with trouble, with perplexity, with regret. So that hard on the heels of the word Why comes the sly and wistful word If. If it had not been for ... If only ... Were it not ... Those useless Ifs of history. ~ Graham Swift
Perplexity quotes by Graham Swift
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