Quotes About Unknowing

A theology of unknowing is necessary for a theology of knowing because without it God would not be worshipped as infinite but rather as a creature, and that would be idolatry.10

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.

Innocence is both a privilege and a cognitive handicap, a sheltered unknowingness that, once protracted into adulthood, hardens into entitlement.

His world was gloomy; but he did not know that, for he knew no other world.

We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing.

Perhaps only this: that the greatest danger in life is certainty. Yes, I do believe that. Our last redoubt in the world is wonder. Wonder and unknowing. Now and then a random detail will stir me to faint recognitions: a row of dead beetles in the grass; the chapped knees of some dowager on the S-bahn. Tantalizing signs reminding me that infinity billows out from every moment. That's when I lean in, sniff the air, cock my ears like a foxhound- and listen.

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.

Of all the logical impasses, unknowings, paradoxes, and terrors that provoke laughter, death by its finality and unsolvable mystery is paramount.

The true terror Jonah thought the true mystery of life was not that we are all going to die but that we were all born that we were all once little babies like this unknowing and slowly reeling in the world gathering it loop by loop like a ball of string. The true terror was that we once didn't exist and then through no fault of our own we had to.

Anchored in unknowing, I yearn to rise out of the restlessness of my own forms of helplessness inside a structure that constricts possibilities.

This book is about a salvation that takes place within our unknowing and dissatisfaction

It hurts how life goes on, unknowing.

Chiaroscuro is also the technique of the uncanny. I am etched with unknowing as I continue. I have crossed into a material reserve that permits a maximum of intuition, the "as if " of a speculative thinking, which is outside of knowledge. Reading shows the wrongness of the habitual reification of "the social" and "the personal" in a binary system of values. It submits this binary to a ruinous foundering. And so, an erotics.

I know nothing, I understand nothing, I am unaware of myself. I am in love, but with whom I do not know. My heart is at the same time both full and empty of love. (Attar)

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.

Accident is design / And design is accident / In a cloud of unknowing.

Fate is nonawareness.

When there is an undoing of your life, there is an unknowing of every next millisecond. Every next breath. The peaceful predictability of what you thought would be your life is suddenly replaced by a very unexpected darkness and silence you aren't used to.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is, … W. B. YEATS, "Sailing to Byzantium

When, at a closer glance, so many objects are questionable, when all knowledge seems to be clothed in a kind of deep unknowing, why do we still place any trust at all in reality as it appears to us, in the world in which we seem to live?

We the willing, following the unknowing are doing the impossible. We have done so much for so long with so little that we are now able to do anything with nothing

W]e must come into a transformed knowing, an unknowing which comes not from ignorance but from knowledge.

Thus the soul's pursuit continues, for she holds to this knowing-by-unknowing.

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.