Ineffable Quotes - Page 3

• I saw the dance as a vision of ineffable power. A man could, with dignity and a towering majesty, dance. Not mince, cavort, do "fancy dancing" or "showoff" steps. No: Dance as Michelangelo's visions dance and as the music of Bach dances.

  Jose Limon

  Music, Dance, Art

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• The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Atheism, Mystic, Unspeakable

  The Moon and Sixpence Ch. 1

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• Beautiful city! . . . spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age . . . her ineffable charm. . . . Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic!

  Matthew Arnold

  Beautiful, Heart, Garden

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• Self-interest is an ineffable feeling which shall follow us into God's very presence since they say there is a hierarchy even among the Holy Saints.

  Honore de Balzac

  Self, Feelings, Saint

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• O man, do you believe that Christ is God? If you believe, fear, and keep His commandments? there is no other God but He (cf. Dt. 4:35). To Him no one is equal, nor can become equal (cf. Is. 40:18). He is Ruler of all things, the Judge of all, the King of all, the Maker of light and the Lord of life. He is the Light that is ineffable, inaccessible (cf. I Tim. 6:16), and He is the Only One. By His appearing He causes all His enemies to vanish before His face (cf. Ps. 68:2 f.), as well as those who do not perform His commandments, just as the sun when it rises drives away the darkness of night.

  Symeon the New Theologian

  Christian, Kings, Believe

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• Some time all kinds of letters will be published to the ineffable delight of endless readers.

  Alice B. Toklas

  Delight, Letters, Kind

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• Far be it from us to doubt that all number is known to Him 'Whose understanding is infinite' (Ps. 147:5). The infinity of number, though there be no numbering of infinite numbers, is yet not incomprehensible by Him Whose understanding is infinite. And thus, if everything which is comprehended is defined or made finite by the comprehension of him who knows it, then all infinity is in some ineffable way made finite to God, for it is comprehensible by His knowledge.

  Saint Augustine

  Christian, Numbers, Understanding

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• Siphonophores do not convey the message a favorite theme of unthinking romanticism that nature is but one gigantic whole, all its parts intimately connected and interacting in some higher, ineffable harmony. Nature revels in boundaries and distinctions; we inhabit a universe of structure. But since our universe of structure has evolved historically, it must present us with fuzzy boundaries, where one kind of thing grades into another.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Messages, Fuzzy, Kind

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.95, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The moment you decide that you're a grownup now, and therefore must put away foolish things like staying out all night or cruising down strange highways is the moment you will lose that ineffable glow of youth. If you don't believe me, look around. Study those people who would rather go to shopping malls than dance halls, who think the height of depravity is bidding two no trump with only fifteen points. Every single one of these people has a stringy neck.

  Cynthia Heimel

  Believe, Thinking, Night

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• The thing about Buddhism is that it stresses attainment of something ineffable, that is where it differs from other religions in that it's more correct. We live in a world with promises of paradise.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhist, Stress, Buddhism

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• In the way that I experience life, the physical world is really just the tip of the iceberg of reality. Whether it's trees or stones or water or animals or stars, everything has an ineffable interior quality.

  Mark Nepo

  Stars, Animal, Reality

  Mark Nepo (2013). “Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred”, p.285, Simon and Schuster

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• The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd. The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself or some one else, as he chooses. [...] The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. [...] What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire...to the unexpected as it comes along, the stranger as he passes.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Men, Thoughtful, Love Is

  Charles Baudelaire, “Crowds”

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• The wisdom of the Lord is infinite as are also His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises; sun, moon, and planets, glorify Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him, celestial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them! And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exist.

  Johannes Kepler

  Moon, Heaven, Soul

  "Methodist Review", vol. 55, (pp. 187 - 88), 1873.

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• The mystics always say that the experience they're talking about is ineffable, that you can't say it. Rumi was asked one time why he talked so much about silence. He said, "The radiant one inside me has never said a word."

  Coleman Barks

  Talking, Silence, Said

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The rapturuous, wild, and ineffable pleasure of drinking at somebody else's expense

  Leigh Hunt

  Drinking, Wine, Pleasure

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• Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best-- well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.

  Liane Moriarty

  Hurt, Children, Divorce

  Liane Moriarty (2010). “What Alice Forgot”, p.367, Penguin UK

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• The magic of film isn't just because of the big screen, or the acoustics, but the ineffable shared experience of going to the movies.

  Fernando Perez

  Magic, Acoustics, Film

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Music is a language of emotion. I'm passionate about it because I think it's the most direct way to connect to the things that are ineffable. Words just aren't necessary a good enough opportunity to express. Words are maybe less than accessible at expressing.

  Adrian Grenier

  Opportunity, Thinking, Passionate

  Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• [Bob] Dylan may, for whatever reasons of his own, do nothing of the sort with the Nobel committee. Up there on Parnassus, that is his unquestionable prerogative. But here on my anthill, it's mine to say: oh, do piss off, you ineffable snobs.

  David Bennun

  May, Bob, Reason

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I guess what inspires me most is the desire to draw out feelings that feel best expressed on the written page by really good authors, and I'm not a really good author. I feel like my job as a filmmaker is to eff the ineffable, to take feelings that only poets could describe with words and try to project them on the screen for viewers to feel. I don't think I've succeeded once but in the act of trying I've come up with all these other results which sometimes intrigue me.

  Guy Maddin

  Jobs, Thinking, Inspire

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Music, not being made up of objects nor referring to objects, is intangible and ineffable; it can only be as it were inhaled by the spirit: the rest is silence.

  Jacques Barzun

  Silence, Spirit, Made

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• There is an ineffable but fatal difference in attitude between people behaving naturally and people behaving naturally for a camera.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Attitude, Differences, People

  "Reality Clicks" by Peter Schjeldahl, www.newyorker.com. May 27, 2002.

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• Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Mean, Selfishness, And Love

  "A Woman's Thoughts About Women" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, (Ch. 10), 1858.

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• The last thing I would want is for Monbiot, Mann, Flannery, Jones, Hansen and the rest of the Climate rogues' gallery to be granted the mercy of quick release. Publicly humiliated? Yes please. Having all their crappy books remaindered? Definitely. Dragged away from their taxpayer funded troughs and their cushy sinecures, to be replaced by people who actually know what they're talking about? For sure. But hanging? Hell no. Hanging is far too good for such ineffable toerags.

  James Delingpole

  Book, Talking, People

  "Denier Delingpole Wishes For 'Climate Nuremberg,' Says 'Hanging Is Far Too Good' For Climate Scientists!". thinkprogress.org. April 7, 2013.

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• to become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words...the tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. the world of things we perceive is but a veil. It’s flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable. It’s silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away. Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear--filling grandeur. Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Lying, Heart, Curves

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