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Quotes About Mystery

he was like a man into whose life a woman, whom he has seen for a moment passing by, has brought a new form of beauty, which strengthens and enlarges his own power of perception, without his knowing even whether he is ever to see her again whom he loves already, although he knows nothing of her, not even her name.
~ Marcel Proust
Et quand vint l'heure du courrier, je me dis ce soir-la comme tous les autres: Je vais recevoir une lettre de Gilberte, elle va me dire enfin qu'elle n'a jamais cessé de m'aimer, et m'expliquera la raison mysterieuse pour laquelle elle a été forcée de ma le cacher jusqu'ici, de faire semblant de pouvoir être heureuse sans me voir, la raison pour laquelle elle a pris l'apparence de la Gilberte simple camarade.
~ Marcel Proust
the glow of a sunset more lasting, more roseate. more human - filling, perhaps, with romantic wonder the thoughts of some solitary lover, wandering in the street below and brought to a standstill before the mystery of the human presence which those lighted windows at once revealed and screened from sight...
~ Marcel Proust
In the case of Albertine, I felt that I should never discover anything, that, out of that tangled mass of details of fact and falsehood, I should never unravel the truth: and that it would always be so, unless I were to shut her up in prison (but prisoners escape) until the end.
~ Marcel Proust
It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your breath; you feel ticklish all over - and not the faintest clue how it's done. The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring trick, it's a miracle,"...
~ Marcel Proust
All the great writers are like that: the beauty of their sentences, like the beauty of a woman one has not yet met, is unforeseeable...
~ Marcel Proust
Ambition is more intoxicating than fame; desire makes all things blossom, possession wilts them; it is better to dream your life than to live it, even if living it means dreaming it, though both less mysteriously and less vividly, in a murky and sluggish dream, like the straggling dream in the feeble awareness of ruminant creatures.
~ Marcel Proust
For, since a purely musical work contains none of those logical sequences, the interruption or confusion of which, in spoken or written language, is a proof of insanity, so insanity diagnosed in a sonata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as the insanity of a dog or a horse, although instances may be observed of these.
~ Marcel Proust
He also went invisible, yet stayed (such privilege hath omnipresence).
~ John Milton
Numerous, and every Starr perhaps a World   Of destind habitation; but
~ John Milton
Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the ayr
~ John Milton
It seems supernatural, but only because it is not understood.
~ John Muir
What can poor mortals say about clouds?
~ John Muir
Silence is the voice of the mystery. Silence let us dream again.
~ John O'Donohue
It's strange to be here, the mystery never leaves you alone.
~ John O'Donohue
Each one of us is the custodian of an inner world that we carry around with us. Now, other people can glimpse it from [its outer expressions]. But no one but you knows what your inner world is actually like, and no one can force you to reveal it until you actually tell them about it. That's the whole mystery of writing and language and expression — that when you do say it, what others hear and what you intend and know are often totally different kinds of things.
~ John O'Donohue
The earth is full of thresholds where beauty awaits the wonder of our gaze.
~ John O'Donohue
One of John's favorite quotes was from Meister Eckhart: Nothing in the universe resembles God more than silence.
~ John O'Donohue
The beauty of being human is the capacity and desire for intimacy. Yet we know that even those who are most intimate remain strange to us. Like children, we often "make strange" with each other.
~ John O'Donohue
IT IS STRANGE TO BE HERE. THE MYSTERY NEVER LEAVES YOU alone. Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits.
~ John O'Donohue
Each of us is a secret envoi of the earth. We
~ John O'Donohue
It is such a great moment of liberation when you learn to forgive yourself, let the burden go, and walk out into a new path of promise and possibility. Self-compassion is a wonderful gift to give yourself. You should never reduce the mystery and expanse of your presence to a haunted fixation with something you did or did not do.
~ John O'Donohue
The real mystery is not that things are the way they are, but that there is something rather than nothing.
~ John O'Donohue
God wants to be known, but not in a way that overwhelms us, that takes away the possibility of love freely chosen. "God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away," said Meister Eckhart.
~ John Ortberg Jr.