Enigma Quotes - page 2

The tender pragmatisms of flesh have poetries no enigma - human or divine - can deminish or demean. Indeed, it can only cause them, and then walk out. (John Fowles)
As much as I love her, I admit that she has always remained somewhat of an enigma to me... I liked this about her. I liked the mystery she added to my life. I liked the occasional silence between us, for ours was a comfortable silence. It was a passionate silence, one that had its roots in comfort and desire. View quote
Nicholas Sparks
There's a lot of people who don't understand the circle crops in England. Pure enigma. View quote
Ken Kesey
Prehistoric images speak to us more evocatively than any other element of the archeological record: colorful, vibrant paintings of horses, of bison, of a panoply of animals and humans that often seem alive and in motion. And yet there is a dimension of unreality about them... The images seem plucked from life... often arranged chaotically to our eye, frequently superimposed... sometimes apparently incomplete. ...There is an enigma in these images, a profound challenge to our understanding of the past. View quote
Richard Leakey
A compulsive dissenter, he had all along remained outside the precincts of governmental power – a fact that has made him an enigma. View quote
Chandra Shekhar
It was titillating to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier. Climbing was a magnificient activity, I firmly believed, not in spite of the inherent perils, but precisely because of them. View quote
Jon Krakauer
When I was a student in the 1950s, I read Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty. When you feel an overwhelming influence, you try to open a window. Paradoxically enough, Heidegger is not very difficult for a Frenchman to understand. When every word is an enigma, you are in a not-too-bad position to understand Heidegger. Being and Time is difficult, but the more recent works are clearer. Nietzsche was a revelation to me. I felt that there was someone quite different from what I had been taught. I read him with a great passion and broke with my life, left my job in the asylum, left France: I had the feeling I had been trapped. Through Nietzsche, I had become a stranger to all that. View quote
Michel Foucault
It was patent that this terrible man was no ignorant clod, such as one would inevitably suppose him to be from his exhibitions of brutality. At once he became an enigma. View quote
Jack London
Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.) View quote
Victor Hugo
I suppose I've been knocking on heaven's door for about 11 years now, with one sort of high or another. The only kinds of drugs I use, though, are ones that keep me working for longer periods of time. I haven't gotten involved in anything heavy since '68. I had a silly flirtation with smack then, but it was only for the mystery and enigma of trying it. I never really enjoyed it at all. I like fast drugs. I've said that many times. I hate falling out, where I can't stand up and stuff. It seems like such a waste of time. I hate downs and slow drugs like grass. I hate sleep. I would much prefer staying up, just working, all the time. It makes me so mad that we can't do anything about sleep or the common cold. View quote
David Bowie
I was to slowly discover that Savarkar was a bundle of contradictions and a historian's enigma. He simultaneously means many things to many people. An alleged atheist and a staunch rationalist who strongly opposed orthodox Hindu beliefs and the caste system and dismissed cow worship as mere superstition, Savarkar was also the most vocal political voice for the Hindu community through the entire course of the Indian freedom struggle.... A feted revolutionary who created an intellectual corpus of literature that inspired the revolutionary movement in India for decades, Savarkar was also a passionate and sensitive poet, a prolific writer and playwright, and a fiery orator. ...The social reformer in him strove to dismantle the scourges of untouchability and caste hierarchies, and advocated a unification of Hindu society. (Vinayak Damodar Savarkar)
The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma. The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Savior. It loosed the bands by which He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocks of ecclesiastical doctrine, and rejoiced to see life and movement coming into the figure once more, and the historical Jesus advancing, as it seemed, to meet it. But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own. What surprised and dismayed the theology of the last forty years was that, despite all forced and arbitrary interpretations, it could not keep Him in our time, but had to let Him go. He returned to his own time, not owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulum returns to its original position. View quote
Albert Schweitzer
Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma. View quote
Joseph Joubert
Just as I was starting on my journey the idea came to me for a new symphony, this time with a program, but a program which will remain an enigma to all- let them guess it who can. It will be called "A Programmatic Symphony" (No. 6). During my trip, while composing in my mind, I frequently shed tears. When I got home I settled down to sketch it, and the work went so furiously that I had the first movement completely ready in less than four days and the remaining movements are already clearly outlined in my head. Half the third movement is already done. There will be much innovation of form in this symphony- and incidentally, the finale will not be a noisy allegro but, on the contrary, a long drawn-out adagio. You can't imagine what bliss I feel, being convinced that my time is not yet passed and I can still work. Perhaps, of course, I'm mistaken, but I don't think so. View quote
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out". View quote
Joseph Conrad
Even though these complex systems differ in detail, the question of coherence under change is the central enigma for each. View quote
John Henry Holland
All novels... are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped? View quote
Milan Kundera
I myself am a great James Dean fan. He had this aura and enigma about him. View quote
Ranbir Kapoor
Whoever said that Russia was an enigma inside a something-or-other inside something else, was dead right. I don't understand the place yet. View quote
George MacDonald Fraser
It is enigma enough that the world is described by mathematics; but by simple mathematics, of the sort that a few years energetic study now produces familiarity with, this is an enigma within an enigma. View quote
John D. Barrow
I must warn you that Gurdjieff is far more of an enigma than you can imagine. I am certain that he is deeply good, and that he is working for the good of mankind. But his methods are often incomprehensible. For example, he uses disgusting language, especially to ladies who are likely to be squeamish about such things. He has the reputation of behaving shamelessly over money matters, and with women also. At his table we have to drink spirits, often to the point of drunkenness. People have said that he is a magician, and that he uses his powers for his own ends... I do not believe that the scandalous tales told of Gurdjieff are true: but you must take into account that they may be true and act accordingly. (John G. Bennett)
I'm a conundrum. Or an enigma. I forget which. View quote
James A. Owen
It was one of those great miracles of history that they managed to smuggle an Enigma machines out to Britain just before they were invaded by the Nazis. View quote
Michael Apted
I'm not creating an enigma or leaving mystery, I'm just respecting myself enough as an artist to give myself room to grow and not to be devoured all in one go. View quote
Mika
Alas, nothing reveals man the way war does. Nothing so accentuates in him the beauty and ugliness, the intelligence and foolishness, the brutishness and humanity, the courage and cowardice, the enigma. View quote
Oriana Fallaci