quotations about mystery
We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The principle that ultimate and intransigent mysteries are indefensible and unintelligible is a criterion for judging a philosophical viewpoint: does it dissipate mysteries or install them in rigid permanence.
STEPHEN DAVID ROSS
Philosophical Mysteries
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mystery is the magnet of inquiry.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
As soon as the mysterious is stood alongside the familiar details of the world and compared with this or that thing, we immediately lose it. To lock it into concepts, to circumscribe it with adjectives, is a wishful attempt to bring it into the range of calculation.
STEPHEN BATCHELOR
The Faith to Doubt: Glimpses of Buddhist Uncertainty
There is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Mary Barton
We cannot describe it. We cannot reveal it. And when we do, we disappear.
BABA HARI DASS
introduction, The Yellow Book
Why else lead a life of bad banquet dinners, cigar smoke, camp chairs, foul breath, and excruciatingly dull jargon if not to avoid the echoes of what is not known.
NORMAN MAILER
Superman Comes to the Supermarket
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
"Old Man's Advice to Youth", Life Magazine, May 2, 1955
The Mysteries are gateways, thresholds between this world and the Otherworld, the meeting place of gods and people.
CAITLIN & JOHN MATTHEWS
Walkers Between the Worlds: The Western Mysteries from Shaman to Magus
It is the nature of an enigma to remain unsolved.
WILLIAM GAY, Provinces of Night
Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.
RAY BRADBURY
When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed
Most mysteries are soluble in time.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
One may say "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
ALBERT EINSTEIN
"Physics and Reality", 1936
There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
I'm for mystery, not interpretive answers.... The answer is never the answer.
KEN KESEY
"The Art of Fiction", The Paris Review, spring 1994
It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed.
THOMAS MOORE
Care of the Soul
All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.
ANAIS NIN
Under a Glass Bell
Our mysteries are lurking right around the corner. All we have to do is face them -- with resolve and, perhaps, goose pimples!
JOHN ROBERT COLOMBO
Mysteries of Ontario
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
The World As I See It