Unknowing Quotes

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Quotes About Unknowing

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The story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 1o) can he interpreted mystically in such a way that the question of the knowledge of God becomes its focus. The priest and the Levite, who walk past the man who fell among robbers and was seriously hurt, are pious God-fearing persons. They "know" God and the law of God. They have God the same way that the one who knows has that which is known. They know what God wants them to be and do. They also know where God is to he found, in the scriptures and the cult of the temple. For them, God is mediated through the existing institutions. They have their God - one who is not to he found on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.

What is wrong with this knowledge of God? The problem is not the knowledge of the Torah or the knowledge of the temple. (It is absurd to read an anti-Judaistic meaning into a story of the Jew Jesus, since it could just as well have come from Hillel or another Jewish teacher.) What is false is a knowledge of God that does not allow for any unknowing or any negative theology. Because both actors know that God is "this," they do not see "that." Hence the Good Samaritan is the anti-fundamentalist story par excellence.

"And so I ask God to rid me of God," Meister Eckhart says. The God who is known and familiar is too small for him. ~ Dorothee Solle
Unknowing quotes by Dorothee Solle
For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the earth to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time always to unknowing nowhere, this time and again for always to nowhere, now not to be borne once again always and to nowhere, now beyond all bearing up, up, up and into nowhere, suddenly, scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
Unknowing quotes by Ernest Hemingway,
A log-in simulator is a program to trick some unknowing user into providing their user name and password. ~ Kevin Mitnick
Unknowing quotes by Kevin Mitnick
You are the king no doubt, but in one respect,
at least, I am your equal: the right to reply.
I claim that privilege too.
I am not your slave. I serve Apollo.
I don't need Creon to speak for me in public.

So,
you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this.
You with your precious eyes,
you're blind to the corruption in your life,
to the house you live in, those you live with-
who are your parents? Do you know? All unknowing
you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood,
the dead below the earth and the living here above,
and the double lash of your mother and your father's curse
will whip you from this land one day, their footfall
treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding
your eyes that now can see the light!

Soon, soon,
you'll scream aloud - what haven won't reverberate?
What rock of Cithaeron won't scream back in echo?
That day you learn the truth about your marriage,
the wedding-march that sang you into your halls,
the lusty voyage home to the fatal harbor!
And a crowd of other horrors you'd never dream
will level you with yourself and all your children.

There. Now smear us with insults - Creon, myself
and every word I've said. No man will ever
be rooted from the earth as brutally as you. ~ Robert Fagles
Unknowing quotes by Robert Fagles
A northerner, insensitive in some ways and full of self-righteousness could gravely offend a southerner in a second. The northerner would be giving his general opinion, more than likely unasked for, and all unknowing challenging the southerner's every deeply held belief, not to mention, with sundry looks and expressions, suggesting that the southerner was possessed of numerous flaws of character and person. The southerner was bound to see offense in every suggestion, insult in every difference of opinion, and to act upon his stung pride. ~ Jane Smiley
Unknowing quotes by Jane Smiley
The fact is that the more we take flight upward [to God], the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming; so that now as we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing. ~ Pope Dionysius
Unknowing quotes by Pope Dionysius
I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

"I Am Vertical", 28 March 1961 ~ Sylvia Plath
Unknowing quotes by Sylvia Plath
Seeing is believing and believing is knowing and knowing beats unknowing and the unknown. ~ Philip Roth
Unknowing quotes by Philip Roth
Don't you think he may be pursuing an ideal that is hidden in a cloud of unknowing - like an astronomer looking for a star that only a mathematical calculation tells him exists? ~ W. Somerset Maugham
Unknowing quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Death: When next we meet, the hour will strike for you and your friends.
Antonius Block: And will you reveal your secrets?
Death: I have no secrets.
Antonius Block: So do you know nothing?
Death: I am unknowing. ~ Ingmar Bergman
Unknowing quotes by Ingmar Bergman
One's mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion, mental rivers wear away abstract banks, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought, ideas decompose into stones of unknowing, and conceptual crystallizations break apart into deposits of gritty reason. ~ Robert Smithson
Unknowing quotes by Robert Smithson
I will meet the cruel and the cowardly today, she thought, liars and the envious, the uncaring and unknowing: they will be all around. But their numbers and their carelessness do not mean I have to be like them. For my own part, I know my job; my commissions comes from Those Who Are. ~ Diane Duane
Unknowing quotes by Diane Duane
Ecstasy! In common parlance ecstasy is fun. But ecstasy is not fun. Your very soul is seized and shaken until it tingles. After all, who will choose to feel undiluted awe? The unknowing vulgar abuse the word; we must recapture its full and terrifying sense. ~ R. Gordon Wasson
Unknowing quotes by R. Gordon Wasson
From deep in the tradition, from The Cloud of Unknowing, a fourteenth-century text from an unnamed English monk: "You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God." The words slap. Busyness is not much of an excuse if it only takes a minute or two to move toward God. But the monk's words console, too. For, of time and person, it seems that scraps are all I have to bring forward. That my ways of coming to God these days are all scraps. ~ Lauren F. Winner
Unknowing quotes by Lauren F. Winner
I can't let her stand trial." Her head lolled; she snapped it back. "I have to find ... I need to go ... " She couldn't even lift her weighted arm to her head. "Damn it, Roarke, damn it, that was a tranq." "Go to sleep," he murmured and gently unhooked her weapon harness and set it aside. "Lie back." "Inducing chemicals on unknowing people is a violation of ... " She slipped deeper, barely felt him unbutton her shirt. "Arrest me in the morning," he suggested. He undressed her, then himself, before slipping into bed beside her. "Just sleep now." She slept, but even there, dreams chased her. ~ J.D. Robb
Unknowing quotes by J.D. Robb
I think unknowing is the most important theological idea for me. Unlearning the things you think you know. ~ Darcey Steinke
Unknowing quotes by Darcey Steinke
Accident is design / And design is accident / In a cloud of unknowing. ~ T. S. Eliot
Unknowing quotes by T. S. Eliot
You normally have to let go of the old and go through a stage of unknowing or confusion, before you can move to another level of awareness or new capacity. ~ Richard Rohr
Unknowing quotes by Richard Rohr
He was attracted to this edge of unknowing, of hope and fear, he instinctively knew that surfing it was precondition for growth and transformation. And for feeling alive. Waking up and going out into the world not knowing what each day would hold, taking life as it comes, relinquishing any illusion of control. That's fresh, that's a good morning! ~ Matt Padwick
Unknowing quotes by Matt Padwick
Perhaps - and this goes for the Kyoto School too - one of these insights is that nothingness and unknowing don't have to be equated with a destructive nihilism but with the experience of unity and participation - whilst resisting the tendency of objectifying metaphysics to claim that we can in some way 'know' that this experienced unity is really the truth of how things are, i.e., reveals being itself. ~ George Pattison
Unknowing quotes by George Pattison
We can never speak about God rationally as we speak about ordinary things, but that does not mean we should give up thinking about God. We must push our minds to the limits of what we could know, descending ever deeper into the darkness of unknowing. ~ Joy Williams
Unknowing quotes by Joy Williams
Unknowing, or agnosia, is not ignorance or absence of knowledge as ordinarily understood, but rather the realization that no finite knowledge can fully know the Infinite One, and that therefore He is only truly to be approached by agnosia, or by that which is beyond and above knowledge. ~ Pseudo-Dionysius The Areopagite
Unknowing quotes by Pseudo-Dionysius The Areopagite
When I went to school, they told me literature was a rope I must use to climb out of the dark well of unknowing. Writers are the knots on the rope. ~ Jennifer Stone
Unknowing quotes by Jennifer Stone
That's what torture does: it creates a miasma of unknowing, about as dangerous a situation in wartime as one can imagine. This hideous fate was made possible by an inexperienced president with a fundamentalist psyche and a paranoid and power-hungry vice-president who decided to embrace "the dark side" almost as soon as the second tower fell, and who is still trying to avenge Nixon. Until they are both gone from office, we are in grave danger the kind of danger that only torturers and fantasists and a security strategy based on coerced evidence can conjure up. ~ Andrew Sullivan
Unknowing quotes by Andrew Sullivan
Be not defeated by the rain, Nor let the wind prove your better.
Succumb not to the snows of winter. Nor be bested by the heat of summer.

Be strong in body. Unfettered by desire. Not enticed to anger. Cultivate a quiet joy.
Count yourself last in everything. Put others before you.
Watch well and listen closely. Hold the learned lessons dear.

A thatch-roof house, in a meadow, nestled in a pine grove's shade.

A handful of rice, some miso, and a few vegetables to suffice for the day.

If, to the East, a child lies sick: Go forth and nurse him to health.
If, to the West, an old lady stands exhausted: Go forth, and relieve her of burden.
If, to the South, a man lies dying: Go forth with words of courage to dispel his fear.
If, to the North, an argument or fight ensues:
Go forth and beg them stop such a waste of effort and of spirit.

In times of drought, shed tears of sympathy.
In summers cold, walk in concern and empathy.

Stand aloof of the unknowing masses:
Better dismissed as useless than flattered as a "Great Man".

This is my goal, the person I strive to become. ~ Kenji Miyazawa
Unknowing quotes by Kenji Miyazawa
Many people are willing to learn techniques that help them live their lives. But the person who seeks to confirm their life at its roots by reaching beyond technique to the fundamentals - to true religion - is exceedingly rare. I find this state of affairs most regrettable. That is why I can't help but urge you to refrain from evaluating your daily life on the basis of what you think you know, on the basis of collected data. ~ Soko Morinaga
Unknowing quotes by Soko Morinaga
The whole pleasure of being in a state of unknowing is that as long as you don't know, all possible outcomes feel as if they are happening. ~ John Green
Unknowing quotes by John Green
What has happened to our ability to dwell in the unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting. ~ Sue Monk Kidd
Unknowing quotes by Sue Monk Kidd
You have to be willing to endure the discomfort, the doubts and unknowing, you somehow find the courage to walk through your doubts and the difficult times because you are living the life you are meant to live. ~ Mary Pope Osborne
Unknowing quotes by Mary Pope Osborne
When I write, I don't know what is going to emerge. I begin in a condition of complete unknowing, an utter nakedness of concept or goal. A word appears, another word appears, an image. It is a moving into mystery. ~ Jane Hirshfield
Unknowing quotes by Jane Hirshfield
I know not what tomorrow will bring. ~ Fernando Pessoa
Unknowing quotes by Fernando Pessoa
Political marketing...plays to people's emotions, not their thoughts. It operates on the belief that repeating a catchy phrase, even if it's untrue, will seal an idea in the mind of the unknowing or uncaring public. It assumes that citizens will always choose on the basis of their individual wants and not society's needs. It divides the country into "niche" markets and abandons the hard political work of knitting together broad consensus or national vision ~ Susan Delacourt
Unknowing quotes by Susan Delacourt
Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do. People like you enrich the dreams of the worlds, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love. ~ Ben Okri
Unknowing quotes by Ben Okri
And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world How these things came about. So shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts; Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters; Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause; And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on th' inventors' heads - all this can I Truly deliver. (5.2.371-78) The ~ William Shakespeare
Unknowing quotes by William Shakespeare
And in that moment, I felt my own ignorance spread suddenly out behind me like a pair of wings, and every single thing I didn't know was a feather on those wings. I could feel them tugging at the air, restless to be airborne. ~ Frank Cottrell Boyce
Unknowing quotes by Frank Cottrell Boyce
The safest course for an Infinite Way student to follow is to admit freely that he does not know how to pray, how to go out or come in, or what to pray for, and then open himself in receptivity to that still small Voice which is within, closer than breathing, and let It pray through him, let It utter Its voice, let It have Its way. If you are praying for someone else, let It inform you, let It inform your patient or your student.

Do not try to be Omniscience yourself in your praying, because you can be Omniscience only when you are completely absent from the personal sense of self, when you are absent from any knowledge, when you have attained that place of unknowing in which you definitely know that you do not know, and do not even want to know, but are willing and open to receive spiritual wisdom, spiritual guidance, spiritual strength.

When you are praying or meditating for someone else, do not try to transfer thoughts to him, do not try to know what is right for him or best for him, but sit in a state of complete receptivity, and then let the Father function as your consciousness. You may not receive any message for your patient or student, but you do not need any. He will receive it, and he will receive it not from you, but from the Source of you. Your consciousness acts only as the instrument of contact, and you yourself may never know what the message is, or even whether any message has been received ~ Joel S. Goldsmith
Unknowing quotes by Joel S. Goldsmith
The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can anyone conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear, we would probably be left completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies. ~ Werner Heisenberg
Unknowing quotes by Werner Heisenberg
The Master made it his task to destroy systematically every
doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these
things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now
being taken as descriptions.
He loved to quote the Eastern saying When the sage points
to the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger. ~ Anthony De Mello
Unknowing quotes by Anthony De Mello
The author of the quaint old English classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, teaches us how to do this. Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods. And thereto, look thee loath to think on aught but God Himself. So that nought work in thy wit, nor in thy will, but only God Himself. This is the work of the soul that most pleaseth God. ~ A.W. Tozer
Unknowing quotes by A.W. Tozer
Unknowing, let us sleep. Chest against chest,
Our breathing mingled, hand in hand without dreams. ~ Yves Bonnefoy
Unknowing quotes by Yves Bonnefoy
[W]e must come into a transformed knowing, an unknowing which comes not from ignorance but from knowledge. ~ Meister Eckhart
Unknowing quotes by Meister Eckhart
One branch after another of chemistry, physics, and cosmology has merged in the majestic river as it approaches the estuary-to be swallowed up by the ocean, lose its identity, and evaporate into the clouds; the final act of the great vanishing process, and the beginning, one hopes, of a new cycle. It has been said that we know more and more about less and less. It seems that the more universal the 'laws' which we discover, the more elusive they become, and that the ultimate consummation of all rivers of knowledge is in the cloud of unknowing. ~ Arthur Koestler
Unknowing quotes by Arthur Koestler
I didn't know where it would lead. I wanted things to develop naturally. ~ Earl Lovelace
Unknowing quotes by Earl Lovelace
The Cloud of Unknowing was written by someone who was exceedingly tough-minded in the sense in which William James used the phrase. He was most unsentimental, matter of fact, and down to earth; and he regarded this habit of mind as a prerequisite for the work in which he was engaged. He proceeded upon the belief that when an individual undertakes to bring his life into relation to God, he is embarking upon a serious and demanding task, a task that leaves no leeway for self-deception or illusion. It requires the most rigorous dedication and self-knowledge. The Cloud of Unknowing is therefore a book of strong and earnest thinking. It makes a realistic appraisal of the problems and weaknesses of individual human beings, for it regards man's imperfections as the raw material to be worked with in carrying out the discipline of spiritual development. ~ Ira Progoff
Unknowing quotes by Ira Progoff
Whatever we say about God always rests within the larger reality of what we can't say; meaning always resides within a larger mystery; knowing always takes place within unknowing; whatever has been revealed to us surrounded by that which hasn't been revealed to us. ~ Rob Bell
Unknowing quotes by Rob Bell
I've never been afraid of ghosts. I live with them daily, after all. When I look in a mirror, my mother's eyes look back at me; my mouth curls with the smile that lured my great-grandfather to the fate that was me. No, how should I fear the touch of those vanished hands, laid on me in love unknowing? How could I be afraid of those that molded my flesh, leaving their remnants to live long past the grave? ... All the time the ghosts flit past and through us, hiding in the future. We look in the mirror and see shades of other faces looking back through the years; we see the shape of memory, standing solid in an empty doorway. By blood and by choice, we make our own ghosts; we haunt ourselves. ~ Diana Gabaldon
Unknowing quotes by Diana Gabaldon
We are conjured voiceless out of nothing and must return to an unknowing state. What happens in between is an uncontrolled dance, and what we ask for in love is no more than a momentary chance to get the steps right, to move in harmony until the music stops. ~ Louise Erdrich
Unknowing quotes by Louise Erdrich
The worst predijudice is unknowing. We think we treat others as equals, but, in our deepest heart, we regard ourselves as superior. In part, this is because we are, in ways, powerful. But that does not make the race of humans (funanga) better than that of the dog or equine. ~ Isobelle Carmody
Unknowing quotes by Isobelle Carmody
Children used to be unknowing and innocent when it came to certain issues in life. But that innocence has been lost in today's electronic environment. Kids are exposed to ideas and content their minds and emotions are not ready to handle. And under the onslaught of this corrupt world with its wrong concepts, wrong desires, wrong deeds, and wrong attitudes, children come under all sorts of negative influences that end up bringing serious problems into the home. ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.
Unknowing quotes by John F. MacArthur Jr.
Hermes bowed his head in thankfulness to the Great Dragon who had taught him so much, and begged to hear more concerning the ultimate of the human soul. So Poimandres resumed: "At death the material body of man is returned to the elements from which it came, and the invisible divine man ascends to the source from whence he came, namely the Eighth Sphere...
"Then, being naked of all the accumulations of the seven Rings, the soul comes to the Eighth Sphere, namely, the ring of the fixed stars. Here, freed of all illusion, it dwells in the Light and sings praises to the Father in a voice which only the pure of spirit may understand. Behold, O Hermes, there is a great mystery in the Eighth Sphere, for the Milky Way is the seed-ground of souls, and from it they drop into the Rings, and to the Milky Way they return again from the wheels of Saturn. But some cannot climb the seven-runged ladder of the Rings. So they wander in darkness below and are swept into eternity with the illusion of sense and earthiness.
"The path to immortality is hard, and only a few find it. The rest await the Great Day when the wheels of the universe shall be stopped and the immortal sparks shall escape from the sheaths of substance. Woe unto those who wait, for they must return again, unconscious and unknowing, to the seed-ground of stars, and await a new beginning. Those who are saved by the light of the mystery which I have revealed unto you, O Hermes, and which I now bid you to establish among ~ Thoth Hermes Trismegistus
Unknowing quotes by Thoth Hermes Trismegistus
The heart is in darkness, unknowing, like those animals in mines that have never seen the day. It has no loyalties, no hopes; it has its task. ~ James Salter
Unknowing quotes by James Salter
The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide to contemplative prayer. "Be willing to be blind, and give up all longing to know the why and how, for knowing will be more of a hindrance than a help." This 1912 edition was edited by Evelyn Underhill, and contains her introduction. ~ Geerhardus Vos
Unknowing quotes by Geerhardus Vos
Any company run by unknowing and mechanistic minds is in jeopardy and faces a limited life. Specifically, the pursuance of policies that focus on cost reduction and a continued optimisation of the bottom line just accelerate progress towards sudden death ~ Peter Cochrane
Unknowing quotes by Peter Cochrane
Beginning a conversation is an act of bravery. When you initiate a conversation, you fearlessly step into the unknown. Will the other person respond to favorably or unfavorably? Will it be a friendly or hostile exchange? There is a feeling of being on the edge. That nanosecond of space and unknowing can be intimidating. It shows your vulnerability. You don't know what is going to happen. You feel quite exposed. There's a chance you'll experience embarrassment. Yet this very feeling is what allows you to connect to the other person. ~ Sakyong Mipham
Unknowing quotes by Sakyong Mipham
A person can be utterly foolish and unknowing: as long as he knows the way to adapt, to be flexible, and how to move about, he still is not lost, but will come through life better perhaps than someone who is clever and stuffed with knowledge. ~ Robert Walser
Unknowing quotes by Robert Walser
To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity. ~ Maya Angelou
Unknowing quotes by Maya Angelou
And it is hard to let go, to imagine alternatives, but you are bold with unknowing, you are ready to explore. ~ Terra Elan McVoy
Unknowing quotes by Terra Elan McVoy
Faith is the fuel that moves us through the unknowing-ness of life. ~ Michelle McDonald Vlastnik
Unknowing quotes by Michelle McDonald Vlastnik
A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots can't stay alone; like the communicative life of people, two or three polka-dots become movement ... Polka-dots are a way to infinity. ~ Yayoi Kusama
Unknowing quotes by Yayoi Kusama
Powerless But for the star destroyer Unknowing She crash-lands in his heart. ~ Elizabeth Fama
Unknowing quotes by Elizabeth Fama
Fathers are teachers of the true and not-true, and no father ever knowingly teaches what is not true. In a cloud of unknowing, then, the father proceeds with his instruction. ~ Donald Barthelme
Unknowing quotes by Donald Barthelme
There have been a lot of critiques of the finance industry's having possibly foisted subprime mortgages on unknowing buyers, and a lot of those kinds of arguments are even more powerful when used against college administrators who are probably in some ways engaged in equally misleading advertising. ~ Peter Thiel
Unknowing quotes by Peter Thiel
the past, like the future, is dark. There is so much we don't know, and to write truthfully about a life, your own or your mother's, or a celebrated figure's, an event, a crisis, another culture is to engage repeatedly with those patches of darkness, those nights of history, those places of unknowing. They tell us that there are limits to knowledge, that there are essential mysteries, starting with the notion that we know just what someone thought or felt in the absence of exact information. Often ~ Rebecca Solnit
Unknowing quotes by Rebecca Solnit
To the Nightingale


On what secret night in England

Or by the incalculable constant Rhine,

Lost among all the nights of my nights,

Carried to my unknowing ear

Your voice, burdened with mythology,

Nightingale of Virgil, of the Persians?

Perhaps I never heard you, yet my life

I bound to your life, inseparably.

A wandering spirit is your symbol

In a book of enigmas. El Marino

Named you the siren of the woods

And you sing through Juliet's night

And in the intricate Latin pages

And from the pine-trees of that other,

Nightingale of Germany and Judea,

Heine, mocking, burning, mourning.

Keats heard you for all, everywhere.

There's not one of the bright names

The people of the earth have given you

That does not yearn to match your music,

Nightingale of shadows. The Muslim

Dreamed you drunk with ecstasy

His breast trans-pierced by the thorn

Of the sung rose that you redden

With your last blood. Assiduously

I plot these lines in twilight emptiness,

Nightingale of the shores and seas,

Who in exaltation, memory and fable

Burn with love and die melodiously. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
Unknowing quotes by Jorge Luis Borges
Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description. ~ Anthony De Mello
Unknowing quotes by Anthony De Mello
We all got used to living in the cloud of unknowing. ~ Amanda Palmer
Unknowing quotes by Amanda Palmer
We open the successive doors in Bluebeard's castle because each leads to the next by a logic of intensification which is that of the mind's own awareness of being. To leave one door closed would be not only cowardice but a betrayal - radical, self-mutilating-of the inquisitive, probing, forward-tensed stance of our species. We are hunters after reality, wherever it may lead. The risk the disasters incurred are flagrant. But so is, or has been until very recently, the axiomatic assumption and a priori of our civilization, which holds that man and truth are companions, that their roads lie forward
are dialectically cognate....We cannot turn back. We cannot choose the dreams of unknowing. We shall, I expect, open the last door in the castle even if it leads, perhaps because it leads, onto realities which are beyond the reach of human comprehension and control. We shall do so with that desolate clairvoyance, so marvelously rendered in Bartók s
music, because opening doors is the tragic merit of our identity. ~ George Steiner
Unknowing quotes by George Steiner
Sometimes it feels like we are only this: moments of knowing and unknowing one another. A sound that is foreign until it's familiar. A drill that's a scream until it's a drill. Sometimes it's nothing more than piecing together the ways in which our hearts have all broken over the same moments, but in different places. But that's romantic. Sometimes it's realer than that. ~ T Kira Madden
Unknowing quotes by T Kira Madden
And certainly there are many speakers whom I'd like to see do more trembling, more unknowing, more apologizing. ~ Maggie Nelson
Unknowing quotes by Maggie Nelson
Boy with a maiden's glance,
I seek you out, but you hear not,
Unknowing that you are the charioteer
Of my soul. ~ Anacreon
Unknowing quotes by Anacreon
I came into the unknown
and stayed there unknowing
rising beyond all science.

I did not know the door
but when I found the way,
unknowing where I was,
I learned enormous things,
but what I felt I cannot say,
for I remained unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

It was the perfect realm
of holiness and peace.
In deepest solitude
I found the narrow way:
a secret giving such release
that I was stunned and stammering,
rising beyond all science.

I was so far inside,
so dazed and far away
my senses were released
from feelings of my own.
My mind had found a surer way:
a knowledge of unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

And he who does arrive
collapses as in sleep,
for all he knew before
now seems a lowly thing,
and so his knowledge grows so deep
that he remains unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

The higher he ascends
the darker is the wood;
it is the shadowy cloud
that clarified the night,
and so the one who understood
remains always unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

This knowledge by unknowing
is such a soaring force
that scholars argue long
but never leave the ground.
Their knowledge always fails the source:
to understand unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

This knowledge is supreme
crossing a blazing hei ~ Juan De La Cruz
Unknowing quotes by Juan De La Cruz
Life was rich with possibility, or life was possibly rich...She felt incandescent with the news.
Cold sun. Jack in the pulpits nosing out of the still-frozen mud. Lotto lay watching the world incrementally wake up. They had been married for seventeen years, she lived in the deepest room in his heart, and sometimes that meant that wife occurred to him before Mathilde, helpmeet before herself, abstraction of her before the physical being.
But not now. When she came across the veranda, he saw Mathilde all of the sudden, the dark whip at the center of her, how, so gently, she flicked it and kept him spinning. She put her cold hand on his stomach, which he was sunning to banish the winter's white. 'Vain,' she said.
'An actor in a playwright's hide,' he said. 'I'll never not be vain.'
'Oh well, it's you,' she said. 'You're desperate for the love of strangers, to be seen.'
'You see me,' he said. And he heard the echo with his thoughts a minute before and was pleased.
'I do,' she said. 'Now please, talk.'
She stretched her arms over heads...she looked at him, savoring her own knowing, his unknowing... ~ Lauren Groff
Unknowing quotes by Lauren Groff
Unknowing ignorance is preferred to informed stupidity. ~ Brandon Sanderson
Unknowing quotes by Brandon Sanderson
Each of them, all unknowing, fairly gives its due to each chance of life, to each germ of death within itself. ~ Paul Valery
Unknowing quotes by Paul Valery
I.P. was at that age when our sense of who we are, or of who we have been told we are, chafes against what we discover in our reading. And immediately a choice seems to appear: to let the reading show us the way forward, like water picking its course over unfamiliar ground; or to direct the reading, to channel the stream, so that it confirms what we already think we know. I.P. was among those few people who could do the former. He had a mind that welcomed doubt and uncertainty; he revelled in it, in fact; he was not one to ever make the perilous decision of deciding to know. His mind was happy to grope its way to its own conclusions, happy to breathe easy in a state of unknowing. ~ Aatish Taseer
Unknowing quotes by Aatish Taseer
One of the odd enjoyments in life is to be alone in a room full of people. To have them there as unknowing human filler in your wide shot. ~ Henry Rollins
Unknowing quotes by Henry Rollins
I pray we ... come to this darkness so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge. For this would be really to see and to know: to praise the Transcendent One in a transcending way ... We would be like sculptors who set out to carve a statue. They remove every obstacle to the pure view of the hidden image, and simply by the act of clearing aside they show up the beauty which is hidden. ~ Pope Dionysius
Unknowing quotes by Pope Dionysius
Come unto me. Come unto me, you say. All right then, dear my Lord. I will try in my own absurd way. In my own absurd way I will try to come unto you, a project which is in itself by no means unabsurd. Because I do not know the time or place where you are. And if by some glad accident my feet should stumble on it, I do not know that I would know that I had stumbled on it. And even if I did know, I do not know for sure that I would find you there. … And if you are there, I do not know that I would recognize you. And if I recognized you, I do not know what that would mean or even what I would like it to mean. I do not even well know who it is you summon, myself.

For who am I? I know only that heel and toe, memory and metatarsal, I am everything that turns, all of a piece, unthinking, at the sound of my name. … Come unto me, you say. I, … all of me, unknowing and finally unknowable even to myself, turn. O Lord and lover, I come if I can to you down through the litter of any day, through sleeping and waking and eating and saying goodbye and going away and coming back again. Laboring and laden with endless histories heavy on my back. ~ Frederick Buechner
Unknowing quotes by Frederick Buechner
There's freedom in hitting bottom, in seeing that you won't be able to save or rescue your daughter, her spouse, his parents, or your career, relief in admitting you've reached the place of great unknowing. This is where restoration can begin, because when you're still in the state of trying to fix the unfixable, everything bad is engaged: the chatter of your mind, the tension of your physiology, all the trunks and wheel-ons you carry from the past. It's exhausting, crazy-making. ~ Anne Lamott
Unknowing quotes by Anne Lamott
I am
asking myself what is fear not what I am afraid of.
I lead a certain kind of life; I think in a certain pattern; I have
certain beliefs and dogmas and I don't want those patterns of
existence to be disturbed because I have my roots in them. I don't
want them to be disturbed because the disturbance produces a state
of unknowing and I dislike that. If I am torn away from everything
I know and believe, I want to be reasonably certain of the state of
things to which I am going. So the brain cells have created a
pattern and those brain cells refuse to create another pattern which
may be uncertain. The movement from certainty to uncertainty is
what I call fear. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
Unknowing quotes by Jiddu Krishnamurti
We walk unknowing amid the shadows of our past and, forgetting our history, are ignorant of ourselves. ~ Salman Rushdie
Unknowing quotes by Salman Rushdie
Now pay attention to this. God is nameless for no one can either speak of him or know him. Therefore a pagan master says that what we can know or say of the First Cause reflects ourselves more than it does the First Cause, for this transcends all speech and all understanding . . . He is being beyond being: he is a nothingness beyond being. Therefore St. Augustine says: 'The finest thing that we can say of God is to be silent concerning him from the wisdom of inner riches.' Be silent therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin. If you wish to be perfect and without sin, then do not prattle about God. Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding. A master says: If I had a God that I could understand, I would not regard him as God. If you understand anything about him, then he is not in it, and by understanding something of him, you fall into ignorance, and by falling into ignorance, you become like an animal since the animal part in creatures is that which is unknowing. If you do not wish to become like an animal therefore, do not pretend that you understand anything of the ineffable God. ~ Meister Eckhart
Unknowing quotes by Meister Eckhart
Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions ... as soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing. ~ Jacqueline Winspear
Unknowing quotes by Jacqueline Winspear
The path of waiting and listening forgoes certainty and exposes us to a sense of tentative unknowing, which is often uncomfortable at best.

This may only be tolerable when we have developed some degree of trust in the inherent healing capacity built into the human system and the power of interpersonal receptivity to animate the process.

For most of us, this trust arrives because we have experienced it ourselves and can now embody it for others.

As this deep learning proceeds in us, we may be able to rest more easily into the waiting because the unknowing is increasingly being held within our expanding window of tolerance.

As we are able to work in this way, I believe our people get a felt sense of our profound and enduring respect for their inherent wisdom, something that is likely a unique and healing experience given their history of traumatic relationships.

I don't believe I have found any offering that is more empowering than respect. ~ Bonnie Badenoch
Unknowing quotes by Bonnie Badenoch
How did my parents live before texting? Before the internet? I'm used to knowing things and all of this unknowing is driving me mad. ~ Stephanie Perkins
Unknowing quotes by Stephanie Perkins
What sets one Southern town apart from another, or from a Northern town or hamlet, or city high-rise? The answer must be the experience shared between the unknowing majority (it) and the knowing minority (you). All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood. ~ Maya Angelou
Unknowing quotes by Maya Angelou
Ignorance of the law of irreducibility was no excuse. I could no longer excuse myself with the claim that I didn't know the law
for knowledge of self and of the world is the law that, even though unattainable, cannot be broken, and no one can excuse himself by saying that he doesn't know it ... The renewed originality of the sin is this: I have to carry out my unknowing, I shall be sinning originally against life. ~ Clarice Lispector
Unknowing quotes by Clarice Lispector
He trudged along unknowing what he sought, And whistled as he went, for want of thought. ~ John Dryden
Unknowing quotes by John Dryden
I wonder if this is what it feels like, falling out of love: feeling yourself fading out of existence - the gray sky, the coffee shop limbo - everything a way station of sorts. Making promises you know you can't keep. Making promises - period. People in love shouldn't have to vow or demand, petition or exhort. Nothing. Not even question. No collisions with your surroundings or yourself - you move gently, unknowing, in time. ~ Michael Thomas
Unknowing quotes by Michael Thomas
As on enquiring agnostic one seeks, not the smugness of atheism, not the blindness of idolatry - nor even the complacency of established religion - but the intelligent quest of the unknowing, in humility and with a clarity of mind ~ Andrew Ashdown
Unknowing quotes by Andrew Ashdown
Love. Who knows about another's love? The more you love the more you know the burnt out loss of love, the more you heed the silence of unknowing in the face of another's spiritual bondage. ~ Anne Rice
Unknowing quotes by Anne Rice
It took me a long time, my lifetime so to speak, to realise that the colour of an eye half seen, or the source of some distant sound, are closer to Giudecca in the hell of unknowing than the existence of God, or the origins of protoplasm, or the eistence of self, and even less worthy than these to occupy the wise, It's a bit much, a lifetime, to achieve this consoling conclusion, it doesn't leave you much time to profit by it. ~ Samuel Beckett
Unknowing quotes by Samuel Beckett
Twilight souls, caught somewhere between dark and light, knowing and unknowing. Neither one thing nor another. A crossbreed race. ~ Jim Krusoe
Unknowing quotes by Jim Krusoe
were Huguenots who abhorred the Church to which it belonged. That huge donjon, built by the Counts of Poitiers, was still a place of formidable strength; but Richelieu would soon be in power and the days of local autonomy and provincial fortresses were numbered. All unknowing the parson was riding into the last act of a sectarian war, into the prologue to a nationalist revolution. At ~ Aldous Huxley
Unknowing quotes by Aldous Huxley
I recognize the unknowing, involuntary effect that 'Facts of Life' had and continues to have on several generations of people. ~ Kim Fields
Unknowing quotes by Kim Fields
The whole world might know you and acclaim you, but someone in the past, forever unreachable, forever unknowing, spoils it all. ~ Isaac Asimov
Unknowing quotes by Isaac Asimov
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