Trickiest Riddles Quotes

Answers? Ha, he would say that. More like riddles, mazes, labyrinths. If there's some power trying to show me the way, it should give better directions. ~ Megan Chance

In all my years in the wild, I've never met Mother Nature or Mr. Photosynthesis. Humans tend to try to make sense of things and are always searching for scientific reasons to explain the world's riddles. But if you do not believe in a Creator, your options are limited in trying to explain the functions of Earth, let alone the universe. Who built this place? Where did I come from? Where did you come from? As Hebrews 3:4 says, "For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything." The Hebrews writer was actually comparing Moses and Jesus, but he delivered principles that I have come to believe are fundamental to life's questions. To me it would be silly to claim someone's physical home might not have been built just because you didn't see it being built. We know someone built our homes, neighborhoods, and skyscrapers because of their design, even though they may have been constructed before we were even born. ~ Jase Robertson

It's just a bunch of dumb, random facts," Annabeth insisted. "Riddles are supposed to make you think." "Think?" The Sphinx frowned. "How am I supposed to test whether you can think? That's ridiculous! Now, how much force is required - ~ Rick Riordan

I stood facing the horizon over the East Sea.
What had become of the seventeen hundred
koan-riddles?
The sound of waves
the sound of waves.
Playing with you I threw them away. ~ Ko Un

Dechymic pwy yw.
Creadt kyn dilyw.
Creadur kadarn
Heb gic heb ascwrn.
Heb wytheu heb waet.
Heb pen aheb traet.
Ny bed hyn ny byd ieu.
No get y dechreu.
Ny daw oe odeu
Yr ofyn nac agheu.
Ny dioes eisseu
Gan greaduryeu.

Guess who it is.
Created before the deluge.
A creature strong,
Without flesh, without bone,
Without veins, without blood,
Without head, and without feet.
It will not be older, it will not be younger,
Than it was in the beginning.
There will not come from his design
Fear or death.
He has no wants
From creatures. ~ Taliesin

'The Hobbit' was one of the first biggish books I ever read. I remember vividly the 'riddles in the dark' passage, and it meant a lot to me to finally get to play it after all these years. ~ Andy Serkis

I don't myself think much of science as a phase of human development. It has given us a lot of ingenious toys; they take our attention away from the real problems, of course, and since the problems are insoluble, I suppose we ought to be grateful for distraction. But the fact is, the human mind, the individual mind, has always been made more interesting by dwelling on the old riddles, even if it makes nothing of them. Science hasn't given us any new amazements, except of the superficial kind we get from witnessing dexterity and sleight-of-hand. It hasn't given us any richer pleasures, as the Renaissance did, nor any new sins-not one! Indeed, it takes our old ones away. It's the laboratory, not the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. You'll agree there is not much thrill about a physiological sin. We were better off when even the prosaic matter of taking nourishment could have the magnificence of a sin. I don't think you help people by making their conduct of no importance-you impoverish them. As long as every man and woman who crowded into the cathedrals on Easter Sunday was a principal in a gorgeous drama with God, glittering angels on one side and the shadows of evil coming and going on the other, life was a rich thing. The king and the beggar had the same chance at miracles and great temptations and revelations. And that's what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own little individual lives. It makes us happy to surround our c ~ Willa Cather

Mystics love to make things as obscure as possible, I've learned, and never use a sentence when a paragraph of riddles will do. Priests, savants, politicians, and barristers are much the same.

The ambitious believe that if you want people to think you're smart, pose as pretentiously as possible and charge a premium for confusion and wasted time. ~ William Dietrich

As long as something was a mystery, there was still the potential for amazement. Maybe that's where I went wrong before. Some riddles weren't meant to be solved. ~ Chelsea Sedoti

Women are riddles - I only argued upon the common sense of the thing. ~ Frederick Marryat

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"
"Come, we shall have some fun now!", thought Alice. "I'm glad they've begun asking riddles - I believe I can guess that," she added aloud.
"Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?" said the March Hare.
"Exactly so," said Alice.
"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.
"I do," Alice hastily replied; "At least - at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing, you know."
"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well said that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!".
"You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!".
"You might just as well say," added the Dormouse, which seemed to be talking in its sleep, "that "I breath when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breath"!".
"It is the same thing with you," said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much. ~ Lewis Carroll

A circle has no end. ~ Isaac Asimov

Nighttime riddles plague your mind
so what you've dreamt, you quickly write.
A notebook, words - that's all you get,
No faint idea have you yet.
Be patient, and look close to see
what the riddle's answer be
'Cause only one who learns that key
can read truth in my prophecies
So think, my dearest, long and deep
You might just find the news I keep. ~ Kata Mlek

Life of a man revolves around happiness and sadness, love and hatred, crime and justice, riddles and solutions, positives and negatives, and then there's an ultimate end; death. ~ Aiysha Abbas

To say that I have found the answer to all riddles of the soul would be inaccurate and presumptuous. But in the knowledge I have developed there must lie the answers to that riddle, to that enigma, to that problem - the human soul - for under my hands and others, was seen the best in man rehabilitated. I discovered that a human being is not his body and demonstrated that through Scientology an individual can attain certainty of his identity apart from that of the body. We cannot deal in the realm of the human soul and ignore the fact. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

Puck laughs, warm and pealing. 'Your concern is touching, but deeply unnecessary. Did Ariel not tell you, child? I'm a trickster, and though my enemies try as they might, it's tricky to trick a trickster with even the trickiest trickeries. And in any case, should anyone try to trick me'
his smile turns vulpine, sharper even than his teeth
'they must do so in the knowledge that I'll trick back. ~ Foz Meadows

Said he little prince "But why do you always speak in riddles?"
"I solve them all" said the snake ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

What kind of house will these dreamers become? What will it be like to live among people who don't fidget in fear of what's around the next bend? What kind of melodies will they compose?

He guessed that they would make strange company. Mysterious. Aggressively curious. Scary. Ignoring urgent concerns, distracted by insects and clouds and children. Each would live with one foot planted in another world. No more worry about their reputation. No more sugarcoated persuasion. No more flourishes designed to solicit a shower of coins. Only riddles and play and prophecy. ~ Jeffrey Overstreet

I love math and was a math teacher for many years, so it was fun for me to write several math books, including 'Fraction Fun,' 'Calculator Riddles,' and 'Shape Up!' 'Fun with Triangles and Other Polygons.' ~ David A. Adler

He is a true hero," she said, "a dragonslayer, a giantkiller, a rescuer of maidens, a solver of impossible riddles. He may be the greatest hero of all, because he's a good man as well. They aren't always. ~ Peter S. Beagle

Life is a gift full of riddles in which suffering and happiness are inextricably intertwined. Any attempt to have one without the other was simply bound to fail. ~ Jan-Philipp Sendker

From time to time
I once wondered how one wanders from time to time
And think up the paradox line
Speak of Epoch's crime
Oh I lied, it hasn't happened yet
But bet you better believe it's such a habit that
I just said that in a past mindset ~ Criss Jami

Indeed the Book of Job avowedly only answers mystery with mystery. Job is comforted with riddles; but he is comforted. Herein is indeed a type, in the sense of a prophecy, of things speaking with authority. For when he who doubts can only say, 'I do not understand,' it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat 'You do not understand.' And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief knotted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kite flying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring. ~ Carl Sandburg

Of course money buys happiness. You ever seen a homeless person skip? The answer to that riddle's no. They're not allowed. ~ Daniel Tosh

Mother was like this sometimes. Conversations became riddles with traps in them, and your answers had consequences. ~ Frances Hardinge

You are not singular in your suspicions that you know but little," he had told Caroline, in response to her quandary over the riddles of life. "The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know. . . . Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough. . . . So questions and so answers your affectionate grandfather." Adams ~ David McCullough

Humanity's "progress of knowledge" and the "evolution of consciousness" have too often been characterized as if our task were simply to ascend a very tall cognitive ladder with graded hierarchical steps that represent successive developmental stages in which we solve increasingly challenging mental riddles, like advanced problems in a graduate exam in biochemistry or logic. But to understand life and the cosmos better, perhaps we are required to transform not only our minds but our hearts. For the whole being, body and soul, mind and spirit, is implicated. Perhaps we must go not only high and far but down and deep. Our world view and cosmology, which defines the context for everything else, is profoundly affected by the degree to which all out faculties–intellectual, imaginative, aesthetic, moral, emotional, somatic, spiritual, relational–enter the process of knowing. How we approach "the other," and how we approach each other, will shape everything, including out own evolving self and the cosmos in which we participate. ~ Richard Tarnas

Life, U May told her, is a gift full of riddles in which suffering and happiness are inextricably intertwined. Any attempt to have one without the other was simply bound to fail. The monastery itself was surrounded ~ Jan-Philipp Sendker

Absurdly simple, like most riddles when you see the answer. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The mind loves riddles but not the heart. The heart loves only to touch and be touched. ~ Marty Rubin

Dreams and prophecies. Why must they always be in riddles? I hate this. ~ George R R Martin

Freud "interpreted" dreams by treating them as intellectual riddles whose details, once processed through free association, exposed hidden wishes. ~ Rodger Kamenetz

Let's all forsake,
The Land of Wake,
And break for the Land of Nod.

Where we can try,
To touch the sky,
Or dance beneath the sod.

A toll for the living,
A toll for the lost,
A toll for the wise ones,
Who tally the cost,

So let's escape,
Due south of Wake,
And make for the Land of Nod. ~ Neal Shusterman

The Bear The day animals and the night animals got together to decide what they would do about the sun, which then came and went whenever it liked. The animals resolved to leave the problem to fate. The winning group in the game of riddles would decide how long the world would have sunlight in the future. They were still talking when the sun approached, intrigued by the discussion. The sun came so close that the night animals had to scatter. The bear was a victim of the general flurry. He put his right foot into his left moccasin and his left foot into his right moccasin, and took off on the run as best he could. According to the Comanches, since then the bear walks with a lurch. (132) ~ Eduardo Galeano

I think to this day, 'Superman/Wonder Woman' is probably one of the trickiest things I've been working on. It's like being asked to write a 'Star Wars' movie or something like that. You don't know how you're going to handle it; you don't know if you can. You don't know if you should be the guy. ~ Charles Soule

Mathematics was actually a logical puzzle with endless variations - riddles that could be solved. The trick was not to solve arithmetical problems. Five times five would always be twenty-five. The trick was to understand combinations of the various rules that made it possible to solve any mathematical problem whatsoever. ~ Stieg Larsson

The inexorable search for a stanza of meaning hangs like a thundercloud over the troposphere of humankind's prosaic existence. A dithering sense of loss engulfs us. Humankind's unattainable desire to achieve a slice of perfection generates a suspenseful haze of doom. A lingering stab of incompleteness coupled with the tantalizing riddles of fate are inalterably interlinked and imbued in all thinking people's tormented soul. This cross coalescence of unattainable longing melds with the mystic tinged edges of uncertainty, spawned by the unanswerable questions posed by fate, fomenting a dialectical dissonance that distinguishes and ultimately exemplifies the arc of humankind's plaintive subsistence. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

All gifts are riddles, all lives/are in the middle of mother-lives. ~ Brenda Shaughnessy

People are always changing themselves and their world, dear. Very few of the changes are new. We rather confuse change and newness, I think. What is truly new never changes."

"You speak in riddles, aged progenitor."

"The world worships a certain kind of newness. People are always talking about a new car, or a new drink or p-p-play or house, but these things are not truly new, are they? They begin to get old the minute you acquire them. New is not in things. New is within us. The truly new is something that is new forever: you. Every morning of your life and every evening, every moment is new. You have never lived this moment before and you never will again. In this sense the new is also the eternal. ~ Tony Hendra

On what can we now place our hopes of solving the many riddles which still exist as to the origin and composition of cosmic rays? It must be emphasized here above all that to attain really decisive progress greater funds must be made available. ~ Victor Francis Hess

For Felix Henriot, with his admixture of foreign blood, was philosopher as well as vagabond, a strong poetic and religious strain sometimes breaking out through fissures in his complex nature. He had seen much life; had read many books. The passionate desire of youth to solve the world's big riddles had given place to a resignation filled to the brim with wonder. Anything might be true. Nothing surprised him. The most outlandish beliefs, for all he knew, might fringe truth somewhere. He had escaped that cheap cynicism with which disappointed men soothe their vanity when they realise that an intelligible explanation of the universe lies beyond their powers. He no longer expected final answers. ~ Algernon Blackwood

Tangier and Lucy were the same, I thought. Both unsolvable riddles that refused to leave me in peace. And I had tired of it - of the not knowing, of always feeling as though I were on the outside of things, just on the periphery. ~ Christine Mangan

It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers. ~ Thomas Kuhn

I like the old wisdom
puns, riddles, spells, proverbs. ~ Mason Cooley

Well, my epic freedom moment was short-lived, because I realized my cell phone was dead. I walked down the road to a gas station and asked if I could use the phone. I called Tracy and told her where I was and asked her to pick me up. When Tracy arrived I hopped in the car and the very first thing I said to her was "I gotta get home. I have to print out some TV guides and I need to write a letter to some of the guys in there." She started laughing and when she could compose herself enough to talk said, "My sisters and I all said we guarantee Noah is going to come out of jail with new friends. He's going to be friends with everybody."
I got home and immediately wrote a letter to Michael Bolton. I put my email address at the bottom. I printed out TV guides. I printed out crossword puzzles. I even printed a couple of pages of jokes and riddles and whatever would be fun to read and do and folded them up and put them in an envelope. All that was left to do was to write the address, put a stamp on the envelope, and put it in the mailbox. I put the envelope in the car in between the seat and the center console to take to the post office.
I must have been distracted or had to do something else because the envelope sat there for months. Every so often I would look at it and go, Oh crap, I haven't sent that yet. And then at some point I spilled something on it so I knew I would never send it now. I threw it out.
To this day I'm worried that one day I'm going to be at the ~ Noah Galloway

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now. ~ Mark Twain

All records are riddles, and whatever you may want people to think it's about, it may just be throwing them off. And you don't want it to get in the way of what someone else's understanding is. It's not really about anything. At the same time, it will find some meaning. ~ Tom Waits