Quotessence
Home / Topics / Mystery Quotes

Mystery Quotes

Browse 5304 quotes about Mystery.

Related topics

WorldKnowsIfsThinkingPeopleMenHumansWayUniverseHeartWritingWantWonderFeelsMindNeedsArtDoeBookBelieveLittlesSecretTryingStillsScienceFactsShouldGivingLife IsSoulKindMayMeanSeemsExistenceMystery Of LifeStoriesLooksMomentsEndsMadeTwoAnswersLightFirstsRealLyingWholeMagicEarthEyeLifeWellsPersonsNovelMysteriousMatterCertainDivineHas BeensLongReasonEnoughOrderUnderstandingChristSaidSelfSpiritChildrenDifferentMovingRealitySometimesFacesYearsBeautifulFictionSolveSpiritualBodyLove IsProblemHappensJoyArtistHelpingIdeasShowsDarkMightMurderCharacterCreationStarsAweGivenGrowsImportantKnownmore

Mystery Quotes

“Our lives are part of a unique adventure... Nevertheless, most of us think the world is 'normal' and are constantly hunting for something abnormal--like angels or Martians. But that is just because we don't realize the world is a mystery. As for myself, I felt completely different. I saw the world as an amazing dream. I was hunting for some kind of explanation of how everything fit together.”

ThinkingWorldKindDifferentDreamTogetherFeltRealizingSawsOur LivesMysteryAdventureFitNormalUniqueAngelExplanationHuntingNeverthelessAbnormalMartians
Book:The Solitaire Mystery
Create image

“In the time of your life, live - so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed...In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

WorldFoundMysterySorrowGoodnessInfiniteAddMiseryDelightGood TimesHidingUglinessWondrousHiding PlaceTime Of Your Life
Author:William Saroyan
Create image

“But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us—to know Whence our lives come and where they go.”

KnowsWorldHeartDesireCoursesForceFireOur LivesMysteryStreetsBeatsOriginalsLongingBuriedThirstStrifeRestlessCrowdedUnspeakableTrackingCrowded Streets
Book:Dover Beach and Other Poems
Create image

“I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion - that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”

PeopleWorldHeartBookCharacterMysteryTreeWorstFieldsStandingCloudsConfusionAntidoteDeep InsideOtherness
Book:Upstream: Selected Essays
Create image

“I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of the miracle is here, among us. The eternal as an idea is much less preposterous than time, and this very fact should seize our attention.”

ThinkingWorldShouldIdeasFactsEyeHeavenAttentionMysteryCreationSceneEternalConceptsMiracleTranscendenceMisreading
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions - such as merit, such as past, present, and future - our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment.”

WorldMindChildrenIdeasMomentsPastYoungLife IsLostOur LivesMysteryDirectFilledMeritParadisePresent MomentRelativeYearningSpontaneousAbstractionLiftingIncompletePrecisionYoung ChildrenPast PresentPast Present And Future
Book:Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982
Create image

“Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.”

IfsWorldLoveWholeLightLastsGrowsUnderstandingAnimalMysteryCreationUniversalPlantWhole WorldPerceiveSandRaysGrainLeafsAnimal LoveGrains Of SandGod's CreationRays Of LightMystery Of God
Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky
Create image

“EPITAPH Now I'm not the brightest knife in the drawer, but I know a couple things about this life: poverty silence, impermanence discipline and mystery The world is not illusory, we are From crimson thread to toe tag If you are not disturbed there is something seriously wrong with you, I'm sorry And I know who I am I'll be a voice coming from nowhere, inside-- be glad for me.”

IfsKnowsWorldVoiceSilencePovertyMysteryCoupleDisciplineSorryGladWho I AmThis LifeKnivesThreadI'm SorryToesDisturbedImpermanenceTagDrawersEpitaphIllusoryCrimsonCouple Things
Book:Walking to Martha's Vineyard
Create image

“She understood now why her friend Elizabeth, with her near-genius, analytical mind gave wide berth to murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, and horror stories, and read only romance novels. Because, by God, when a woman picked up one of those steamy books, she had a firm guarantee that there would be a Happily-Ever-After. That though the world outside those covers could bring such sorrow and disappointment and loneliness, between those covers, the world was a splendid place to be.”

WorldMindBookStoriesWould BeRomanceNovelMysteryLonelinessGeniusSorrowHorrorUnderstoodMurderDisappointmentWidePsychologicalFirmGuaranteesSplendidThrillersRomance NovelHappily Ever AfterEver AfterGuarantees ThatHorror StoriesMurder MysteriesPsychological ThrillersWhy Her
Author:Karen Marie Moning
Create image

“I pray for meaning. I pray for the limits of reality to become clear. For a world – and a type of being – that makes sense. I pray for a life after death that is not like this life. I pray for the end of mystery. What would a life be like with all the mysteries solved? If there were no questions, there’d be no stories. If there were no stories, there’d be no language. If there was no language there’d be no . . . What?”

IfsWorldEndsStoriesRealityLife IsLanguageClearMysteryTypePrayingLimitsThis LifeMake SenseI PrayLife Is LikeAfter DeathLife After Death
Author:Scarlett Thomas
Create image

“Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”

WorldDoePleasureMysteryFoodIgnoranceDependsGratitudeCreaturesEatingConnectionsDependence
Book:What Are People For?: Essays
Create image

“Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.”

WorldHumansScienceUniverseWishHuman BeingsWonderKnowledgeMysteryComfortAspectPrejudiceStructureAweCosmosSuperstitionsSkepticismFleetingPenetrateSense Of WonderPale Blue Dot
Author:Carl Sagan
Create image

“Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes -- with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.”

WorldFeelsShouldTakenMysteryComfortableClothesOrdinaryDirectExperienceRegionsClosetsSurroundingsRefrigeratorsInvigoratingDaily Routines
Book:Travels
Create image

“In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery.”

WorldWayWritingSaidUseChristianFoundBeliefFictionMoralSeeingHeardMysteryJudgementDramaticDogmaStorytellerHindranceMoral Judgement
Author:Flannery O'Connor
Create image

“Corrigan told me once that Christ was quite easy to understand. He went where He was supposed to go. He stayed where He was needed. He took little or nothing along, a pair of sandals, a bit of a shirt, a few odds and ends to stave off the loneliness. He never rejected the world. If He had rejected it, He would have been rejecting mystery. And if He rejected mystery, He would have been rejecting faith.”

IfsWorldLittlesHas BeensEndsEasyBitsChristMysteryLonelinessNeededShirtsPairsOddsRejectedRejectingSandalsOdds And Ends
Book:Let The Great World Spin
Create image

“When the stories of our life no longer bind us, we discover within them something greater. We discover that within the very limitations of form, of our maleness and femaleness, of our parenthood and our childhood, of gravity on the earth and the changing of the seasons, is the freedom and harmony we have sought for so long. Our individual life is an expression of the whole mystery, and in it we can rest in the center of the movement, the center of all worlds.”

WorldLongWholeStoriesEarthFormLife IsIndividualGreaterOur LivesMysteryChildhoodMovementExpressionSeasonsHarmonyLimitationParenthoodGravityIndividual LifeMaleness
Author:Jack Kornfield
Create image

“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life. But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made . Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.”

PeopleWorldMindLooksRealitySpiritualLife IsFoundMysteryFitFinishedAwakeningIdeologyMake SensePerceiveMeaning Of LifeAwakenedMeaning Life
Author:Anthony de Mello
Create image

“Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”

WorldFirstsMovingWishWhiteCitiesMysteryCarNew YorkPromiseFirst TimeBuiltRiversConstantBridgesRisingNew York CitySugarSunlightLumpsFlickerRising Up
Book:F. Scott Fitzgerald: Trimalchio: An Early Version of 'The Great Gatsby'
Create image

“The green thumb is equable in the face of nature's uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is to be happy amid the babble of the objective world, untroubled by its refusal to be reduced by our ideas of it, its indomitable rankness.”

WorldNeedsWellsIdeasFeelingsFacesMovingMysterySolutionsGardenGreenObjectivesUncertaintyExplanationGardeningRefusalThumbsIndomitable
Author:Michael Pollan
Create image

“Do you realize it’s been only a century that we’ve been able to go from house to car to office to car to wherever, with the heater on, and the defroster on, protected from the rain and the cold? It hasn’t been much longer than that we’ve had lighting for streets. Think of all that darkness, all that world out there, all that mystery that we’ve turned into well-lighted concrete bunkers, safe and warm and dull.”

ThinkingWorldWellsAbleHouseRealizingDarknessMysteryStreetsCenturyCarColdSafeOfficeRainWarmDullConcreteProtectedLightingBunkers
Author:Sheri S. Tepper
Create image

“That was the thing: Once, the difference between light and dark had been basic. One was good, one bad. Suddenly, though, things weren’t so clear. The dark was still a mystery, something hidden, something to be scared of, but I’d come to fear the light, too. It was where everything was revealed, or seemed to be. Eyes closed, I saw only the blackness, reminding me of this one thing, the most deep of my secrets; eyes open, there was only the world that didn’t know it, bright, inescapable, and somehow, still there.”

KnowsWorldStillsLightEyeDifferencesDarkSecretClearSawsOne ThingMysteryScaredRemindingBlacknessLight And Dark
Author:Sarah Dessen
Create image

“If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not, for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts.”

IfsMenWorldHeartMysteryColorCreaturesLimitsBoundsHorribleAliensBeastWildernessAlienation
Book:Blood Meridian: Picador Classic
Create image

“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”

MenWorldWayBelieveOrderFearTermDecisionSecretForeverTakenFateMysteryEffectsRainTasksDeedsDragSuperstitionsThreadTapestryErodeTaking Charge
Book:Blood Meridian: Picador Classic
Create image

“People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”

PeopleWorldMaySometimesWonderMysteryJudgingAppearanceInvisibleVisibleShallowSuperficialShallownessDo Not Judge
Book:The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)
Create image

“I reminded myself: when a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant moment before opening, contains everything. Every possibility, both perfect and putrid. Surely such mysteries are the most enticing things You grant us in this mortal mere -- the fruit in the garden, too, was like this. Unknown, and therefore infinite. Eve and her mate swallowed eternity, every possible thing, and made the world between them.”

WorldMadeBookMomentsMightLyingPerfectMysteryPossibilityGardenEternityInfiniteMereFruitOpeningMortalsGrantsMatesPregnantEnticing
Author:Catherynne M. Valente
Create image

“Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream. Inside, the fireplace is brightly lit, and the Yule log crackles with orange and crimson sparks. There’s a steaming mug in your hands, warming your fingers. There’s a friend seated across from you in the cozy chair, warming your heart. There is mystery unfolding.”

WorldHeartDreamHandsHealingMysteryWindowBlueFingersChristmasChairsWarmthSparksOrangeLitUnfoldingOutside WorldCozySnowflakeCrimsonHazeSwirlsMugFireplacesYule
Author:Vera Nazarian
Create image

“School was more than academics; an education prepared you for the humdrum of real life: working with others, tempering one's personality to assimilate with the group but without losing your individual identity, understading the factors of logic, reasoning, and debate. For a person - vampire or human - to succeed in the world, unlocking the mysteries of the universe was insufficient. One would also need to grasp the mysteries of human nature.”

WorldNeedsHumansPersonsRealSchoolUniverseIndividualGroupsMysteryHuman NatureIdentityPersonalitySucceedLosingLogicPreparedDebateReal LifeFactorsVampireReasoningInsufficientHumdrumUnlockingWorking With Others
Book:The Van Alen Legacy: Number 4 in series
Create image

“It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.”

KnowsWorldWayLittlesDoeMadeSaidSometimesReasonLightRomanceSciencePassionBitsWhiteAirMysterySkyFiguresColorLittle BitResearchRedScientistBlueWaveHarmPerceiveSunsetPaleTransparentStirringWhite LightPale Blue DotWavelength
Book:Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Create image

“At night, the house thick with sleep, she would peer out her bedroom window at the trees and sky and feel the presence of a mystery. Some possibility that included her--separate from her present life and without its limitations. A secret. Riding in the car with her father, she would look out at other cars full of people she'd never seen, any one of whom she might someday meet and love, and would feel the world holding her making its secret plans.”

PeopleWorldFeelsLooksMightNightFatherHouseSleepSecretPlansMysteryTreeSkyCarPossibilityWindowAnd LoveLimitationSomedayThickRidingBedroomPeersPresent Life
Book:Look at Me: A Novel
Create image

“Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.”

KnowsWorldKindMightWould BeChoicesCoursesPeacePerfectMysteryDangerCreaturesSolutionsOppositesPhilosopherParadoxImperfectFinding PeaceA Perfect WorldImperfect World
Book:Duke Elric
Create image