Great Throughts Treasury

"Be innocent, not knowledgeable. Be ignorant. It is better, because in your ignorance you accept the mystery of life. Life cannot be explained. All explanations are very tiny, small, rigid; and life is so vast, so immense — it cannot be contained in any explanation. Life is there to be lived. Life has no question-mark; it is a mystery, there is no explanation. And it is good that there is none: it would be a great misfortune if there were an explanation. If there were an answer that could satisfy you, just think how flat things would become, how boring, how monotonous — because no answer can answer your questions. Life remains an adventure, it remains a constant search. Searching, one day you come to a point where you understand that you are wasting your energies in searching. The same energies can be put to celebration. You can enjoy." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

"Love is the mystery of water and a star." - Pablo Neruda, pen name for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto

"Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design?" - Paracelsus, aka 'Paracelsus the Great', born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim NULL

"In the heart's deepest place, where the burden of ego is dropped and the mystery of soul is penetrated, a man finds the consciousness there not different in any way from what all other men may find. The mutuality of the human race is thus revealed as existing only on a plane where its humanness is transcended. This is why all attempts to express it in political and economic terms, no less than the theosophic attempts to form a universal brotherhood, being premature, must be also artificial. This is why they failed. " - Paul Brunton, born Hermann Hirsch, wrote under various pseudonyms including Brunton Paul, Raphael Meriden and Raphael Delmonte

"What saved me from moral and emotional paralysis in this pseudo-philosophy was, I think, a deep-seated interest in humanity. I could not reason myself into believing that men are only machines; I could not smother in logic the sense of mystery that broods upon the world, not find any place in the network of blind chance and fate for the human will. What is the nature of this thing we call life, this irrational power which by its own initiative expands into endless activities, and finally creates for itself a conscious soul of suffering and joy?" - Paul Elmer More

"In the creative vision of God the individual is present as a whole in his essential being and inner teleos and at the same time in the infinity of the special moments of his life process. Of course this is said symbolically, since we are unable to have a perception of or even an imagination of that which belongs to the divine life. The mystery of being beyond essence and existence is hidden in the mystery of the creativity of the divine life." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich

"Doubts are the foundation stones for a firm and robust faith. You will realise that doctrines are inventions of the human mind, as it tries to penetrate the mystery of God. You will realise that Scripture itself is the work of human minds....It is not what you believe that matters; it is how you respond with your heart and your actions. It is not just believing in Christ that matters; it is becoming like him....Jesus did not ask people to accept high-flown doctrines. In fact, he did not ask them to believe anything. Instead, he asked them to enter a relationship with God....Do not let your mind be seduced by theological speculation." - Pelagius NULL

"Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers." - Peter Matthiessen

"Possibly the most interesting first impression of my life came from the world of dreams… Suddenly I began to find a strange meaning in old fairy-tales; woods, rivers, mountains, became living beings; mysterious life filled the night; with new interests and new expectations I began to dream again of distant travels; and I remembered many extraordinary things that I had heard about old monasteries. Ideas and feelings which had long since ceased to interest me suddenly began to assume significance and interest. A deep meaning and many subtle allegories appeared in what only yesterday had seemed to be naive popular fantasy or crude superstition. And the greatest mystery and the greatest miracle was that the thought became possible that death may not exist, that those who have gone may not have vanished altogether, but exist somewhere and somehow, and that perhaps I may see them again. I have become so accustomed to think scientifically that I am afraid even to imagine that there may be something else beyond the outer covering of life. I feel like a man condemned to death, whose companions have been hanged and who has already become reconciled to the thought that the same fate awaits him; and suddenly he hears that his companions are alive, that they have escaped and that there is hope also for him. And he fears to believe this, because it would be so terrible if it proved to be false, and nothing would remain but prison and the expectation of execution. " - P.D. Ouspensky, fully Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, also Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii, also Uspenskii or Uspensky

"It is the great mystery of life itself which is at the bottom of all the mysterious language we are obliged to employ concerning it." - Peter Mere Latham

"With the maturity of his soul, a man desires to probe the depths of life, he desires to discover the power latent within him, he longs to know the sources and goal of his life, he yearns to understand the aim and meaning of his life, he wishes to understand the inner significance of things, and he wants to uncover all that is covered by name and form. He seeks insight into cause and effect, he wants to touch the mystery of time and space, and he wishes to find the missing link between God and man — where man ends, where God begins." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"Divine sound is the cause of all manifestation. The knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe. " - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"Whoever knows the mystery of vibrations indeed knows all things." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"You are called to stand up for life! To respect and defend the mystery of life. " - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

"For Posidonius, ouranos, heaven, offers the paradigm for man. The stars teach ethics. The individual who pursues his duties without emotional involvement in them and without the correlative expectation of results, who recognizes honesty as the good and the hallmark of the wise man, and who seeks to honour the higher daimon in himself discovers a fidelity within the soul which is both its overarching oikeiosis and its link to the World-Soul. He sees that the principles of physics can be translated into the laws of psychology from which are derived ethics and the rules of right conduct. Without wavering in his loyalty to the deepest insights of the Stoic tradition, Posidonius exemplified in his own life and thought the ability of the philosopher to penetrate afresh and more precisely the mystery of the kosmos and the less ordered realm in which human beings dwell. His fearlessness of method and the marriage of observation and abstract thought influenced the generations which came immediately after him, and inspired a number of thinkers in the dawn of the European Enlightenment. [paraphrased]" - Posidonius, aka Posidonius of Rhodes or Posidonius of Apameia (meaning "of Poseidon") NULL

"To love is to liberate. Love and friendship must empower those we love to become their best selves according to their own lights and visions. This means that wanting what is best for you and trying to be what you need me to be can be done only in a way that preserves your freedom to have your own feelings, think your own thoughts and make your own decisions. If your personhood is as dear to me as my own, which is the implication of love, I must respect it carefully and sensitively. When I affirm you, my affirmation is based on your unconditional value as a unique, unrepeatable and even sacred mystery of humanity." - John Powell

"Indestructibility... the mysterious and indissoluble connexion, perhaps identity... matter and force be in vain. However it is a gain worth all the toil to recognize vividly that there is a deep mystery not only in that which lives and grows, but in the very stocks and stones. No longer mistaking our own shallow conceptions for complete and absolute truth, our minds become as a clear unclouded mirror, where in dim and shadowed grandeur some suggestions of this far-off absolute truth will perhaps be reflected." - Anne Gilchrist, née Burrows

"As the depth of mystery is only felt by the most civilized and advanced soul, and is a cloud of which a savage knows nothing, it may be inferred, that it comes not as a penalty of culture, but as a delicate hand to lead it to a still better being. The solemn question of Hamlet, " To be, or not to be," surpasses the books of the school-house in shaping the spirit of man. The willow and cypress, that mourn over the tombs of our dead, impress our hearts the more deeply, because the wind that sighs through them, and the somber shades they cast, help us to pass over into the unknown world. Thus, by fact, and by the wandering shadow of fact, the soul of man is perpetual ly fed. They are the only manna that falls for it, in this wilderness march. " - David Swing, aka Professor Swing

"Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it's intimate and psychological -- resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul. " - Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander

"Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They all want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe but even here at home we have to stand up for women’s rights and we have to reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America has to set an example for the entire world." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born. " - Albert Einstein

"He who finds though that lets us penetrate even a little deeper into the eternal mystery of nature has been granted great grace. He who, in addition, experiences the recognition, sympathy, and help of the best minds of his times, had been given almost more happiness than one man can bear. " - Albert Einstein

"How can you put Beethoven's Ninth in a graph? There are realities that are not quantifiable. The universe is not my numbers: everything is pervaded by the mystery. Who has the sense of mystery is a man half dead. " - Albert Einstein

"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." - Albert Einstein

"Each one of us has something to contribute. This really depends on each one doing their own thinking, but not following any kind of rule that I can give out, any command. We're all on the frontier; we're all in a great mystery — incredibly mysterious." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"I never try to tell anybody else what to do, number one. And number two, I think that's what the individual is all about. Each one of us has something to contribute. This really depends on each one doing their own thinking, but not following any kind of rule that I can give out, any command. We're all on the frontier, we're all in a great mystery — incredibly mysterious. Each one possesses exactly what each one is working out, and what each one works out relates to their particular set of circumstances of any one day, or any one place around the world." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion." - Albert Einstein

"One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity." - Albert Einstein

"People like you and me never grow old. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born. " - Albert Einstein

"We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we are born." - Albert Einstein

"I read your categories of humanism with interest. They seem to me to be excellent and will be useful to me. As for myself, I do not know exactly where I fit. I do not know the realities of the cosmos. I only know that man with his hopes and aspirations, his capacity to sacrifice for an ideal is part of it. He uses the abilities with which he is endowed not only to maintain life but to find some meaning for it. His efforts to discover meaning ends in mystery. His attempt through the use of reason to add to his knowledge of the cosmos has brought a vast increase in that knowledge beyond the frontiers of which, however, lies mystery. To push out this frontier, to penetrate the mystery is his greatest challenge. I find that contemplation of the mystery brings that humility which is one of the virtues taught by religion. For me the aspirations (part of the cosmos) of men suggest an essence or being greater than man, worship of whom gives added strength for dealing with the vicissitudes of life." - Ralph Henry Gabriel

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson

"Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson

"Being dead filled her beyond fulfillment. Like a fruit suffused with its own mystery and sweetness, she was filled with her vast death, which was so new, she could not understand that it had happened." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"What the word God means is the mystery really. It's the mystery that we face as humans the mystery of existence, of suffering and of death." - Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert

"We have come from all the countries of the world and are going to Saintes-Maries de la Mer. Nomads of the enigma, we gather there each year after having carried our mystery through ordinary countryside and fluid towns. Since we become transformed by our wanderings we are despised by those who stand still and retain a memory of giant serpents and metallic green." - Raymond Queneau

"At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler

"Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler

"The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler

"The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler

"There are no 'classics' of crime and detection. Not one. Within its frame of reference, which is the only way it should be judged, a classic is a piece of writing which exhausts the possibilities of its form and can never be surpassed. No story or novel of mystery has done that yet. Few have come close. Which is one of the principal reasons why otherwise reasonable people continue to assault the citadel." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler

"A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"Experiences are fleeting. Sometimes one has a strong awareness of the ultimate mystery of the divine, and sometimes one is troubled by what mystics call periods of dryness. For me the main point is that the experience of faith is a total attitude toward the mystery of God and life which includes commitment, love, and hope." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"My painting is visible images which conceal nothing... they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable." - René Margritte, fully René François Ghislain Magritte

"Our practice is not to clear up the mystery. It is to make the mystery clear." - Robert Aitken, fully Robert Baker Aitken

"We think, sometimes, there's not a dragon left. Not one brave knight, not a single princess gliding through secret forests, enchanting deer and butterflies with her smile. We think sometimes that ours is an age past frontiers, past adventures. Destiny, it's way over the horizon; glowing shadows galloped past long ago, and gone. What a pleasure to be wrong. Princesses, knights, enchantments and dragons, mystery and adventure... not only are they here-and-now, they're all that ever lived on earth! Our century, they've changed clothes, of course. Dragons wear government-costumes, today, and failure-suits and disaster-outfits. Society's demons screech, whirl down on us should we lift our eyes from the ground, dare we turn right at corners we've been told to turn left. So crafty have appearances become that princesses and knights can be hidden from each other, can be hidden from themselves. Yet masters of reality still meet us in dreams to tell us that we've never lost the shield we need against dragons, that blue-fire voltage arcs through us now to change our world as we wish. Intuition whispers true: We're not dust, we're magic!" - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach

"Providence is a greater mystery than revelation. The state of our world is more humiliating to our reason than the doctrines of the Gospel. A reflecting Christian sees more to excite his astonishment, and to exercise his faith, in the state of things between Temple Bar [in Dublin] and St. Paul's [in London], than in what he reads from Genesis to Revelation." - Richard Cecil

"Each week The X-Files poses a mystery and offers two rival kinds of explanation, the rational theory and the paranormal theory. And, week after week, the rational explanation loses. But it is only fiction, a bit of fun, why get so hot under the collar?" - Richard Dawkins

"Explaining is a difficult art. You can explain something so that your reader understands the words; and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones. To do the latter, it sometimes isn't enough to lay the evidence before the reader in a dispassionate way. You have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate's trade. This book is not a dispassionate scientific treatise. Other books on Darwinism are, and many of them are excellent and informative and should be read in conjunction with this one. Far from being dispassionate, it has to be confessed that in parts this book is written with a passion which, in a professional scientific journal, might excite comment. Certainly it seeks to inform, but it also seeks to persuade and even - one can specify aims without presumption - to inspire. I want to inspire the reader with a vision of our own existence as, on the face of it, a spine-chilling mystery; and simultaneously to convey the full excitement of the fact that it is a mystery with an elegant solution which is within our grasp. More, I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence. This makes it a doubly satisfying theory. A good case can be made that Darwinism is true, not just on this planet but all over the universe, wherever life may be found." - Richard Dawkins