Enigma Quotes - Page 2

• There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Personality, Clear, Allegory

  "Kubrick, Inside a Film Artist's Maze". Book by Thomas Allen Nelson, p. 10, 2000.

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• Ayla, I looked for you all my life and didn't know I was looking. You are everything I ever wanted, everything I ever dreamed of in a woman, and more. You are a fascinating enigma, a paradox. You are totally honest, open; you hide nothing: yet you are the most mysterious woman I've ever met.

  Jean M. Auel

  Mysterious Woman, Honest, Paradox

  Jean M. Auel (2010). “The Valley of Horses (with Bonus Content): Earth's Children, Book Two”, p.543, Bantam

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• Failure is an enigma. You worry about it, and it teaches you something.

  James Dyson

  Worry, Teach

  "Billionaire Inventor James Dyson On Why Failure Is So Valuable" by Max Nisen, www.businessinsider.com. December 19, 2012.

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• He makes me laugh, Mick! He tended to turn up when we were having lunch and entertain us all. He bought an Enigma machine! I've never worked with a producer who was more famous than everyone put together.

  Saffron Burrows

  Lunch, Laughing, Together

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• For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths.

  Roberto Bolano

  Reading, Labyrinth, Construction

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• Here life goes on, even and monotonous on the surface, full of lightning, of summits and of despair, in its depths. We have now arrived at a stage in life so rich in new perceptions that cannot be transmitted to those at another stage - one feels at the same time full of so much gentleness and so much despair - the enigma of this life grows, grows, drowns one and crushes one, then all of a sudden in a supreme moment of light one becomes aware of the sacred.

  May Sarton

  Crush, Light, Perception

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• Guess what: God created beings not to act in a morality play but to
  experience what is unfathomable, to elicit what can become, to descend
  into the darkness of creation and reveal it to him, to mourn and celebrate
  enigma and possibility. The universe is a whirling dervish, not a hanging
  judge in robes.

  Richard Grossinger

  Play, Judging, Darkness

  Richard Grossinger (2012). “On the Integration of Nature: Post-9/11 Biopolitical Notes”, p.78, North Atlantic Books

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• By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analyzing the observations that I had made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics. Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists.

  M. C. Escher

  Teaching, Math, Artist

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• We are very wrong to think that some fault or other can exclude virtue, or to consider the alliance of good and evil as a monstrosity or an enigma.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Thinking, Evil, Faults

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• If knowing answers to life's questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables - of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and, most of all, things unfair.

  Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

  Faith, Journey, Knowing

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• We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Greatness, Foundation, Negative

  Jean Baudrillard (1989). “America”, p.88, Verso

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• Could we say that the short short is to other kinds of fiction somewhat as the lyric is to other kinds of poetry? The lyric does not seek meaning through extension, it accepts the enigmas of confinement. It strives for a rapid unity of impression, an experience rendered in its wink of immediacy. And so too with the short short.

  Irving Howe

  Writing, Unity, Doe

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• Women are one of the Almighty's enigmas to prove to men that He knows more than they do.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Women, Almighty, Prove To Me

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• A stunning survey of the latest evidence for intelligent life on Mars. Mac Tonnies brings a thoughtful, balanced and highly accessible approach to one of the most fascinating enigmas of our time.

  Herbie Brennan

  Thoughtful, Intelligent, Mars

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• History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.

  Umberto Eco

  Errors, Blood, World

  "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana". Book by Umberto Eco, 2006.

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• There's a lot of people who don't understand the circle crops in England. Pure enigma.

  Ken Kesey

  Circles, People, Literature

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• The freedom of patient speech is necessary if the doctor is to get clues about the medical enigma before him. If the patient is inhibited, or cut off prematurely, or constrained into one path of discussion, then the doctor may not be told something vital. Observers have noted that, on average, physicians interrupt patients within eighteen seconds of when they begin telling their story.

  Jerome Groopman

  Cutting, Doctors, Average

  Jerome Groopman (2008). “How Doctors Think”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Madame Bovary is one my favorite novels. Emma Bovary will always be an enigma, but as the years pass, I feel that I understand her better. She has a violent nostalgia, almost an infantile nostalgia, to be understood by the men surrounding her. I like her relentless fight for independence, her rebellion against the mediocre, and her quest for the sublime, even if she burns her wigs in the process. I like that Flaubert never judges her morally for her self-destructiveness, for her desperate attempt to satisfy her wildest desires and appetites.

  Sophie Barthes

  Fighting, Men, Self

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I'm a walking, talking enigma. We're a dying breed.

  Larry David

  Talking, Dying, Walking

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• Mystique is rare now, isn't it? There aren't that many enigmas in this modern world.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  World, Modern, Mystique

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• Pattern-finding is the purpose of the mind and the construct of the universe. There are an infinite number of patterns, some of which are known; those still unknown hold the key to unresolved enigmas and paradoxes.

  Agnes Denes

  Keys, Numbers, Mind

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• I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Spiritual, Fall, Believe

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• There is a ... matter - much more valuable and divine than natural philosophy . ... On this matter I must speak to you in enigmas.

  Plato

  Philosophy, Matter, Speak

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• There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles, wherein two so become one, as they both become two.

  Thomas Browne

  Love, Two, Body

  "Miscellaneous Works of Sir Thomas Browne: With Some Account of the Author and His Writings".

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• One should be an enigma not just to others but to oneself too. I study myself. When I'm tired of that I light a cigar to pass the time, and think: God only knows what the good Lord really meant with me, or what He meant to make of me.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Tired, Thinking, Light

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