Mystery

Famous quotes containing the word mystery:

    Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth
    Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see
    In simple childhood something of the base
    On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel,
    That from thyself it comes, that thou must give,
    Else never canst receive. The days gone by
    Return upon me almost from the dawn
    Of life: the hiding-places of man’s power
    Open; I would approach them, but they close.
    William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

    It is not enough for us to prostrate ourselves under the tree which is Creation, and to contemplate its tremendous branches filled with stars. We have a duty to perform, to work upon the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to worship the incomprehensible while rejecting the absurd; to accept, in the inexplicable, only what is necessary; to dispel the superstitions that surround religion—to rid God of His Maggots.
    Victor Hugo (1802–1885)

    How strange a scene is this in which we are such shifting figures, pictures, shadows. The mystery of our existence—I have no faith in any attempted explanation of it. It is all a dark, unfathomed profound.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)