Quotes About Mystery

It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realize his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realize their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realized, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting point for an ideal that is other than itself. This is why music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret.

It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

I suppose in about fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.

It was an ill-omened place. Death walked there in the sunlight.

Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss.

Ah! ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me? If thou hadst looked at me thou hadst loved me. Well I know that thou wouldst have loved me, and the mystery of Love is greater than the mystery of Death.

When they entered they found, hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was.

Prism! Where is that baby?

Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?

Look at the moon! How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. You would fancy she was looking for dead things.

The critic will certainly be an interpreter, but he will not treat Art as a riddling Sphinx, whose shallow secret may be guessed and revealed by one whose feet are wounded and who knows not his name. Rather, he will look upon Art as a goddess whose mystery it is his province to intensify, and whose majesty his privilege to make more marvellous in the eyes of men.

Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks.

The drawback of stealing a thing, is that one never knows how wonderful the thing that one steals is.

When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the only thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

the secrets of art are best learned in secret, and that Beauty, like Wisdom, loves the lonely worshipper.

The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

Describe us as a sex, was her challenge. Sphinxes without secrets.

The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also.

Define us as a sex. LORD ILLINGWORTH Sphinxes without secrets.

When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. it is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life.

I get hungry for her presence; and when I think of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am filled with awe.

You know how I love secrecy. It is the only thing that can make modern life wonderful or mysterious to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

fantastic shadows of birds