The Mysterious Stranger Quotes

I told him that if we doubted that we are demons in Hell, he should read The Mysterious Stranger, which Mark Twain wrote in 1898, long before the First World War (1914-1918). In the title story he proves to his own grim satisfaction, and to mine as well, that Satan and not God created the planet earth and "the damned human race." If you doubt that, read your morning paper. Never mind what paper. Never mind the date. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

In [The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain] proves to his own grim satisfaction, and to mine as well, that Satan and not God created the planet earth and "the damned human race." If you doubt that, read your morning paper. Never mind what paper. Never mind what date. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream
a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought
a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities! ~ Mark Twain

Once [the Senator's] brain has come into play with the mysterious stranger, that stranger exists, really does exist: he will not disappear from the Petersburg prospects while a senator with such thoughts exists, because thought, too, exists.

And so let our stranger be a real live stranger! And let my stranger's two shadows be real live shadows!

Those dark shadows will follow, they will follow on the stranger's heels, in the same way as the stranger himself will directly follow the senator; the aged senator will pursue you, he will pursue you, too, reader, in his black carriage: and from this day forth you will never forget him! ~ Andrei Bely

There were no houses, no palace, no constructions of any sort; it was rather an immense sea, though the waters were invisible and the shore had disappeared. In this city, seated far from all things, sad last dream lost among the shadows, while the day faded and sobbing rose gently in the perspective of a strange horizon, Anne, like something which could not be represented, no longer a human being but simply a being, marvelously a being, among the mayflies and the falling suns, with the agonizing atoms, doomed species, wounded illnesses, ascended the course of waters where obscure origins floundered. She alas had no means of knowing where she arrived, but when the prolonged echoes of this enormous night were melting together into a dreary and vague unconsciousness, searching and wailing a wail which was like the tragic destruction of something nonliving, empty entities awoke and, like monsters constantly exchanging their absence of shape for other absences of shape and taming silence by terrible reminiscences of silence, they went out in a mysterious agony. ~ Maurice Blanchot

I am adding another language to the spoken language, and I am trying to restore to the language of speech its old magic, its essential spellbinding power, for its mysterious possibilities have been forgotten. ~ Antonin Artaud

Adventures come to the adventurous, and mysterious things fall in the way of those who, with wonder and imagination, are on the watch for them; but the majority of people go past the doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind. ~ Algernon Blackwood

Mysterious in the light of day, nature retains her veil, despite our clamours: That which she does not willingly display cannot be wrenched from her with levers, screws and hammers. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The library, with its Daedalian labyrinth, mysterious hush, and faintly ominous aroma of knowledge, has been replaced by the computer's cheap glow, pesky chirp, and data spillage. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. ~ Jules Verne

The father's life is surrounded by mysterious prestige: the hours he spends in the home, the room where he works, the objects around him, his occupations, his habits, have a sacred character. It is he who feeds the family, is the one in charge and the head. Usually he works outside the home, and it is through him that the household communicates with the rest of the world: he is the embodiment of this adventurous, immense, difficult, and marvelous world; he is transcendence, he is God. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

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

You're suggesting the mysterious X. Where do we look for him?'

Poirot said:

'Obviously in a close circle. There were five people, were there not, whocould have been concerned?'

'Five? Let me see. There was the old duffer who messed about with his herb brewing. A dangerous hobby-but an amiable creature. Vague sort of person. Don't see him as X. There was the girl-she might have polished off Caroline, but certainly not Amyas. Then there was the stockbroker-Crale's best friend. That's popular in detective stories, but I don't believe in it in real life. There's no one else-oh yes, the kid sister, but one doesn't seriously consider her. That's four.'

Hercule Poirot said:

'You forget the governess.'

'Yes, that's true. Wretched people, governesses, one never does remember them. I do recall her dimly though. Middle-aged, plain, competent. I suppose a psychologist would say that she had a guilty passion for Crale and therefore killed him. The repressed spinster! It's no good-I just don't believe it. As far as my dim remembrance goes she wasn't the neurotic type.'

'It is a long time ago.'

'Fifteen or sixteen years, I suppose. Yes, quite that. You can't expect my memories of the case to be very acute. ~ Agatha Christie

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described - and will be, after our deaths - by each of the family members who believe they know us. ~ Gloria Steinem

For it must be remembered that at the time I knew quite nothing, naturally, concerning Milo Payne, the mysterious Cockney-talking Englishman with the checkered long-beaked Sherlockholmsian cap; nor of the latter's 'Barr-Bag,' which was as like my own bag as one Milwaukee wienerwurst is like another; nor of Legga, the Human Spider, with her four legs and her six arms; nor of Ichabod Chang, ex-convict, and son of Dong Chang; nor of the elusive poetess, Abigail Sprigge; nor of the Great Simon, with his 2,163 pearl buttons; nor of - in short, I then knew quite nothing about anything or anybody involved in the affair of which I had now become a part, unless perchance it were my Nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwümpel - or Suing Sophie! ~ Harry Stephen Keeler

Most of the time he was simply Wolf: clever, inquisitive, and fiercely loyal. Sometimes he was the guide, with mysterious certainty in his amber eyes. Always he was a pack-brother. ~ Michelle Paver

Now, brooder is an interesting word. People who worry a lot in silence are known as brooders. But then again so is a hen sitting on her eggs. The more I get to know chickens, the more I realize half our language comes from chickens. Well, not half. But an awful lot considering this isn't Latin or anything. Cooped up. Egghead. Hatch a plan. Henpecked. Pecker. Cock. Chickenshit. Chicken-scratch. A lot of chicken words are meant to deliver attitude, which isn't surprising to me now that I have chickens. Chickens aren't background animals like fish or sheep or horses. Chickens are in-your-face animals. Chickens if you have them, come to bracket your days. The rooster hollers all morning, and then in the evening the hens have left you their mysterious gift of eggs.
Silkies are said to be excellent brooders, to have a tendency toward "broodiness." This, too, is usually meant as a compliment. ~ Jeanne Marie Laskas

Forests to the [early] Northern European peoples were dangerous and generous, domestic and wild, beautiful and terrible. And the forests were the terrain out of which fairy stories, one of our earliest and most vital cultural forms, evolved. The mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and perils of the forest are both the background to and source of these tales ...
Forests are places where a person can get lost and also hide
and losing and hiding, of things and people, are central to European fairy stories in ways that are not true of similar stories in different geographies. Landscape informs the collective imagination as much as or more than it forms the individual psyche and its imagination, but this dimension is not something to which we always pay enough attention. ~ Sara Maitland

Know this ... she does not want to become the shadow of her husband, but the moon of his life, for when she appears, her presence is powerful in all her mysterious ways ... she comes and goes so discreetly, waning and waxing whilst forever leaving her presence behind, reminding you that you cannot survive life without her ... ~ Jemina Akhtar

Books that recount ordeals are precious because an ordeal is what we most fear, and the stories that tell us how to survive them reassure us about what a human being is capable of, as we survive our own lives every day, our own mysterious journeys. ~ Ramona Koval

Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both. - Rev. Montague Summers ~ Stephenie Meyer

My plan was to walk by on my side of the street and not look over her way. This, I felt, was a very clever masculine move: to meet and ultimately seduce through no contact at all. She would be made aware of me as a mysterious figure, someone with no need of her whatsoever. This is compelling to a woman. ~ Steve Martin

There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. ~ Noam Chomsky

The mysterious Russian soul... Everyone wants to understand it. They read Dostoevsky: what's behind that soul of theirs? Well, behind our soul there's just more soul. ~ Svetlana Alexievich

The only real rival of love is Art, for that in itself is a deep personal passion, its function an act of creation, fed by some mysterious perversion of sex, and demanding all the imagination's activities. ~ Gertrude Atherton

So, what's the big emergency, princess? You and ice-boy look fine to me, and the Nevernever isn't crumbling around us. What's going on?"
"I'm pregnant, Puck," I said quietly, and watched his eyebrows shoot into his hair. Briefly,I explained what had happened at Elysium, the oracle's mysterious appearance and invitation, and Grimalkin's instruction to meet him at the Wishing Tree. By the time I was done, Puck was still staring at me openmouthed, struck mute for maybe the second time in his life, and I would've laughed if the situation wasn't so serious.
"Oh," he finally managed. "That's, uh ... Wow. That's not something you hear every day. Not exactly what I was expecting, though the entire prophecy thing does get old after a while." He shook himself, seeming to regain his composure, and glanced at Ash. "So, it's the ever so popular Firstborn Child of Doom prophecy, huh, ice-boy? How very cliche. Why can't it be the third nephew twice removed who's fated to destroy the world? ~ Julie Kagawa

To say that the Force works in mysterious ways is to admit one's ignorance, for any mystery can be solved through the application of knowledge and unrelenting effort. ~ James Luceno

It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Whales have become newly symbolic of real values in a world environment of which man is newly aware. Whales live in families, they play in the moonlight, they talk to one another, and they care for one another in distress. They are awesome and mysterious. In their cold, wet, and forbidding world they are complete and successful. They deserve to be saved, not as potential meatballs, but as a source of encouragement to mankind. ~ Victor Blanchard Scheffer

Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner. We can but solve the mystery by deducing the unknown result from the known results of similar events. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

In the afternoon dark clouds suddenly color the sky a mysterious shade and it starts raining hard, pounding the roof and windows of the cabin. I strip naked and run outside, washing my face with soap and scrubbing myself all over. It feels wonderful. In my joy I shut my eyes and shout out meaningless words as the large raindrops strike me on the cheeks, the eyelids, chest, side, penis, legs, and butt - the stinging pain like a religious initiation or something. Along with the pain there's a feeling of closeness, like for once in my life the world's treating me fairly. I feel elated, as if all of a sudden I've been set free. I face the sky, hands held wide apart, open my mouth wide, and gulp down the falling rain. ~ Haruki Murakami

Early in the novel that Tereza clutched under her arm when she went to visit Tomas, Anna meets Vronsky in curious circumstances: they are at the railway station when someone is run over by a train. At the end of the novel, Anna throws herself under a train. This symmetrical composition - the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end - may seem quite "novelistic" to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as "fictive," "fabricated," and "untrue to life" into the word "novelistic." Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion.

They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven's music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life. Anna could have chosen another way to take her life. But the motif of death and the railway station, unforgettably bound to the birth of love, enticed her in her hour of despair with its dark beauty. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences (like the meeting of Anna, Vronsky, the railway station, and death or the meeting of Beethoven, Tomas, Tereza, and the cognac), but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily li ~ Milan Kundera

I swear there must be like some secret code. All mysterious ancient temples must have a minimum of at least seven thousand steps to the front door. ~ Julie Kagawa

Hours may have passed before I heard a throat clear behind us, saw Dad appear. His frame blocked out the sun, casting a cool shadow over where we lay.

I registered only once he was there that I had slowly shifted so I was lying with my head on Elliot's stomach, in our secluded stretch of sand. I pushed to sit up, awkwardly.

"What are you guys doing?"

"Nothing," we said in unison.

I could hear immediately how guilty our joined answer made us sound.

"Really?" Dad asked.

"Really," I answered, but he wasn't looking at me anymore. He and Elliot were having some kind of male Windtalker exchange that included prolonged eye contact, throat clearing, and probably some mysterious form of direct communication between their Y chromosomes.

"We were just reading," Elliot said finally, his voice shifting deeper midway through the sentence. I'm not sure if this sign of his impending manliness was reassuring or damning as far as my dad was concerned.

"Seriously, Dad," I said.

His eyes flickered to mine.

"Okay." Finally he seemed to relax and squatted down next to me. "What are you reading?"

"A Wrinkle in Time."

"Again?"

"It's so good. ~ Christina Lauren

Whether religious or racial, anti-Semitism is always repugnant, one of the most destructive manifestations of human stupidity and evil. What is profoundly expressed in it is man's traditional mistrust of the man who is not part of his tribe, that 'other' who speaks a different language, whose skin is a different color, and who participates in mysterious rites and rituals. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

We have come to see how great is the unexplored. ~ Ayn Rand

And it is, after all, as good a way as any of solving the problem of existence to get near enough to the things and people that have appeared to us beautiful and mysterious from a distance to be able to satisfy ourselves that they have neither mystery nor beauty. ~ Marcel Proust

There's something about her, I remember thinking, a little mysterious.
I tried to absorb the feeling for as long as I could before I went back to work.
I tried not to think about it. Feelings throw everything off. ~ Danila Botha

If memory within nature sounds mysterious, we should bear in mind that mathematical laws transcending nature are more rather than less so; they are metaphysical rather than physical. The way mathematical laws can exist independently of the evolving universe and at the same time act upon it remains a profound mystery. For those who accept God, this mystery is an aspect of God's relation to the realm of nature; for those who deny God, the mystery is even more obscure: A quasi-mental realm of mathematical laws somehow exists independently of nature, yet not in God, and governs the evolving physical world without itself being physical. ~ Rupert Sheldrake