Quotessence
Home / Topics / Ineffable Quotes

Ineffable Quotes

Browse 132 quotes about Ineffable.

Related topics

MenWorldKnowsLightGivingIfsMysteryWayMade

Ineffable Quotes

“Salma had read books where couples kissed, spoke in platitudes or come-ons; something about to happen, hinted at. Beyond that there was always only a white space on the page. A gap between paragraphs. She had thought often about what went on there. On the other side, when the letters appeared once more, couples smoke and drank tea or dressed one another or themselves. If there was a book to be written about Margot it should be blank; it would be those sex spaces between lines, sucked clean of words.”

DesireReadingSexBooksLustIneffable
Book:Fen
Create image

“the thing that is between you and me, there is something between you and me... it is ineffable what is between you and me it is incomprehensible what is between you and me it is indefinable what is between you and me it is indescribable what is between you and me but there is something between you and me the thing that is between you and me...”

Life PhilosophyLife Quotes And SayingsPhilosophy Of LifeDeep ThoughtsIndescribableIneffableIndefinableBetween You And MeIncomprehensibleSomething Between You And Me
Author:Avijeet Das
Create image

“Music—good music, great music—is itself magical, its mysterious inspiration entwined with the mystery of all things. When we are transported either by Mozart or Glenn Miller, we find ourselves in the presence of the ineffable, for which all words are so inadequate that to attempt to describe it, even with effusive praise and words of perfect beauty, is to engage in blasphemy.”

InspirationBeautyMusicMagicMysteryIneffableDean KoontzMozartGlenn Miller
Book:The City
Create image

“After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Charles Bukowski's skinny, chatty, muttering-stuttering antiverses. Impossibly, Mark's words make music, the faraway strains of an irresistible jazz. It's plain to any reader, within a few lines—well, go read the poems and see, Marcus Ahearn traffics with the ineffable. He makes the mind of the speaker present, in that here-and-now where the reader actually reads—that place. Such a rare thing. Samuel Beckett. Jean Follain, Ionesco—the composer Billy Strayhorn. Mark calls his process "psychic improvisation" and referred me to the painter Paul Klee; the term was Klee's. "You just get out a pen and a notebook and let your mind go long," he told me.”

WritingPoetryJazzIneffableKleePsychic Improvisation
Book:The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
Create image

“I think there was always a yearning in me for something else, something beyond myself, from which I felt excluded. Even in the most chaotic times, when I was struggling with addiction, I always felt desirous of those who had a religious dimension to their lives. I had a kind of spiritual envy, a longing for a belief in the face of the impossibility of belief that addressed a fundamental emptiness inside me. There was always a yearning. As I’ve gotten older, I have come to see that maybe the search is the religious experience - the desire to believe and the longing for meaning, the moving towards the ineffable. Maybe that is what is essentially important, despite the absurdity of it. Or, indeed, because of the absurdity of it. When it comes down to it, maybe faith is just a decision like any other. And perhaps God is the search itself.”

GodWisdomTruthReligionFaithSpiritualityJourneyAbsurditySearchIneffable
Author:Kurt Vile
Create image

“Poetry Writes The Poet (The Sonnet) The best poets are the ones, Who don't know how to write poetry. Just like the best scientists are those, Who practice science as everyday curiosity. The more you focus on the definition, The more you lose touch with the essence. That is why I never know what my work is about, To explain love is to lose love's fragrance. Painting of a landscape is not the landscape itself, Depiction must never be confused with the depicted. I don't know how to do small talk, hence the sonnets. Poet doesn't write poetry, poetry writes the poet. The moment I think I am in control, I lose all control. Craving no control, the river just nourishes the soul.”

PerceptionPoetry QuotesExistentialismIneffableHumanitarian ScientistPoetic CognitionGenius ThinkersGenius PoetPhilosophy Of Poetry
Book:Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None
Create image

“...imagine that you hold in one hand an oddly shaped stone. You keep this hand closed into a fist, but still you can feel the stone’s curvature and the pointed edges, the roughness—of course, you know the relative size and weight and might even have a mental image of the color of this stone, even if you have not yet laid eyes upon it. Imagine that stone in your hand. Imagine what it is like to know everything about the way it feels, but nothing of how it looks. Hold that in mind for a moment. Now, imagine that there is a person standing next to you who tells you that she also holds a stone in her hand. You look down and see the clenched fist and she sees yours and you confess the same. Neither of you, it seems, has yet opened the hand and seen the stone. Still, you can only trust each other’s proclamations. Standing together with your stones in hand, the two of you theorize about whether or not your respective stones are similar to one another. You discuss mundane details about your stones (not the special ones—you hesitate to make mention of the sharp point in the northern hemisphere or the flat area on the bottom). Your neighbor finally notes similarities between her stone and yours and you nod with relief and acknowledge that your stones indeed share reasonable commonalities. Over the course of your discussion, you and your neighbor finally conclude, without bothering to open your hands, that the stones you hold must indeed be quite similar. Are they? It is only suitable to say that they are. At the same time, and in spite of your desire not to offend, there is no doubt in your mind that the stone you hold bespeaks a greater prominence than that of your neighbor. You are not sure how you know this to be true, but it must be so! And I do not mean that this stone simply holds a greater subjective prominence. It has something of the universal, for it is, indeed, an auspicious stone! Silently, you hypothesize in what ways it must be special. It is possibly different in shape, color, weight, size and texture from the other, but you cannot confirm this. Perhaps, it is special by substance? Still, you are unsure. The very fact of your uncertainty begins to bother you and unleashes within you a deep insecurity. What if you are wrong and your stone is actually inferior to the other…or inferior even to some third stone not yet encountered? Meanwhile, your neighbor is silently suffering in the same agony. Both of you tacitly understand that, without comparing the two visually, it is absurd to proclaim the two stones similar. Yet, your fist remains clenched, as does your neighbor’s and so you find yourselves unable to hold out the stones before you and compare them side-by-side. Of course, this is possible, but the mutual curiosity is outstripped by an inveterate pride, and so you both become afraid of showing (and even seeing) what you have, for fear that your respective stones will be different in appearance from the model that you have each conceptualized in mind. Meekly your eyes meet and you smile to one another at your new comradeship, but, all the while, remain paralyzed by a simultaneous shame and vanity.”

FormPrideShameVanitySubstanceInsecurityMetaphysicsUnseenIneffableQuirksIdiosyncrasiesIdealRough EdgesPurity Of Essence
Author:Ashim Shanker
Create image

“The shepherds - simple souls - came to adore the Infant Savior. Mary rejoiced at seeing their homage and willing offerings they made to her Jesus... How happy is the loving soul when it has found Jesus with Mary, His Mother! They who know the Tabernacle where He dwells, they who receive Him into their souls, know that His conversation is full of divine sweetness, His consolation ravishing, His peace superabundant, and the familiarity of His love and His Heart ineffable”

KnowsHeartMadeSoulMotherFoundJesusSimpleSeeingDivineWillingConversationSaviorOfferingMarySacramentsAdoreSweetnessConsolationHis LoveInfantFamiliarityShepherdsHomageIneffable
Author:Peter Julian Eymard
Create image

“Copying is an art in itself, demanding the greatest technical ability, especially in watercolour. However well done, the copy invariably lacks that nascent, ineffable, but definite quality, provided by the furious enthusiasm with which an original is created, an essential spontaneity that defies reproduction.”

WellsArtDoneAbilityQualityEssentialsOriginalsEnthusiasmCopiesDefiniteSpontaneityFuriousReproductionWell DoneCopyingIneffable
Author:Walter J. Phillips
Create image

“Siphonophores do not convey the message a favorite theme of unthinking romanticism that nature is but one gigantic whole, all its parts intimately connected and interacting in some higher, ineffable harmony. Nature revels in boundaries and distinctions; we inhabit a universe of structure. But since our universe of structure has evolved historically, it must present us with fuzzy boundaries, where one kind of thing grades into another.”

KindWholeUniverseHigherMessagesHarmonyStructureConnectedBoundariesThemeDistinctionGradesRomanticismInteractingIneffableFuzzy
Book:The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History
Create image

“I believe in one secret and ineffable Lord; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name Chaos, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes. And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name Babalon.”

MenBelieveEarthMotherFatherNamesI BelieveStarsSecretCompanyLordSunFireAirMysteryReturnChaosI Believe InBreatheSoleWombIneffable
Author:Aleister Crowley
Create image

“It has been a long road from Plato's Meno to the present, but it is perhaps encouraging that most of the progress along that road has been made since the turn of the twentieth century, and a large fraction of it since the midpoint of the century. Thought was still wholly intangible and ineffable until modern formal logic interpreted it as the manipulation of formal tokens. And it seemed still to inhabit mainly the heaven of Platonic ideals, or the equally obscure spaces of the human mind, until computers taught us how symbols could be processed by machines.”

MindHumansLongHas BeensMadeStillsTurnsHeavenSpaceProgressModernCenturyTaughtComputerIdealsLogicMachinesSymbolsManipulationHuman MindFormalObscurePlatoTwentieth CenturyFractionsTaught UsTokensIntangibleIneffablePlatonicLong RoadPlato S
Author:Allen Newell
Create image

“The moment you decide that you're a grownup now, and therefore must put away foolish things like staying out all night or cruising down strange highways is the moment you will lose that ineffable glow of youth. If you don't believe me, look around. Study those people who would rather go to shopping malls than dance halls, who think the height of depravity is bidding two no trump with only fifteen points. Every single one of these people has a stringy neck.”

PeopleIfsThinkingBelieveLooksTwoMomentsNightLosesStudyYouthStrangeTrumpDon't BelieveFoolishHeightNecksStayingHallsShoppingBelieve In MeAdulthoodFifteenHighwaysAll NightMallsDepravityIneffableGrownupsBidding
Author:Cynthia Heimel
Create image

“I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination.”

FeelsBookFeelingsLiteratureWrittenStrangeDespairDown AndWickedRomeInclinationLambsIneffableIrresponsibilityHopefulnessDinePantheon
Book:Tales, Poems, and Other Writings
Create image

“Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.”

HumansMeanEndsGoodnessConsequenceAnd LoveEternitySelfishnessBlissContemplationDivinityAttributesConstructsIdenticalOmnipotentIneffable
Author:Dinah Maria Murlock Craik
Create image

“Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness--stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine Essence. He has entered into His rest. That is our home; here we are on a pilgrimage, and Christ calls us to His many mansions which He has prepared.”

HomeHandsJoyVoiceChristPerfectIssuesDivineEssencePreparedProfoundAwfulFancyGoodsStillnessDistressThronesAbyssEverlastingBrightnessPilgrimageMansionsRadianceHands Of GodIneffableTranquillityAscensionTumultPlaces Of Peace
Book:Parochial and Plain Sermons
Create image

“But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo; the splendor of fame fades into nothing; but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.”

MenHeartRealSoulSpiritBehindsGraceFineHauntingLovelinessIneffableSomething Real
Author:James Thurber
Create image