Enigma Quotes - Page 5

• Hamlet, Kierkegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates.

  Harold Bloom

  Jesus, Irony, Repetition

  Harold Bloom (2005). “Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine”, Riverhead Books (Hardcover)

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• As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem. As an individual he is a free agent, as a species the offspring of necessity.

  William Winwood Reade

  Men, Atoms, Agents

  William Winwood Reade (1874). “The Martyrdom of Man”, p.186

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• This land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces.

  Willa Cather

  Running, Horse, Land

  Willa Cather (2013). “The Best of Willa Cather”, p.70, Simon and Schuster

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• What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves.

  Boris Pasternak

  Writing, Symphony, People

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• Neither saints nor angels have ever increased my faith in this enigma Life; but what are called 'common men and women' have increased it.

  Phyllis Bottome

  Angel, Men, Saint

  Phyllis Bottome (1943). “Survival”, Boston : Little, Brown

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• A filmmaker should never assume he's superior to his subject. I often find that even the simplest topic remains an enigma. The best film portraits not only evoke that enigma but ingest it in a process that renders what's invisible visible.

  Damian Pettigrew

  Topics, Portraits, Assuming

  Le Parisien, May, 2003.

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• I myself am a great James Dean fan. He had this aura and enigma about him.

  Ranbir Kapoor

  Auras, Fans, Dean

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• It was a marvel, an enigma in abolition latitudes, that the slaves did not rise en-masse, at the beginning of hostilities.

  Rebecca Latimer Felton

  War, Rose, Slavery

  Rebecca Latimer Felton (1919). “Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth: Also Addresses Before Georgia Legislature Woman's Clubs, Women's Organizations and Other Noted Occasions”

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• Man himself is an enigma in motion; his questions never stay asked; whereas the mold, the footprint, and by natural extension, the statue itself, like the vaults, the arches, the temples with which man records his own passing, remain immobile and fix a moment of man's life, upon which one might endlessly meditate.

  Emile Chartier

  Men, Might, Vaults

  "The Gods". Book by Emile Chartier, 1934.

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• In Stalinism the tragedy is that its origin is some kind of radical emancipatory project. In the origins you had a kind of workers' uprising; the true enigma is how this project of emancipation went so wrong.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Uprising, Tragedy, Kind

  Interview with Dianna Dilworth, www.believermag.com. July 2004.

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• It takes people a little longer to get in to you when you have a distinct sound - especially if you're not force-feeding singles to pop radio. I try to be as much of an enigma as I can... because I want to be present and have people know what my message is, but then again, I want that mystery. There's a sensuality in the mystery that I think drives people to listen to my music.

  Cassie Ventura

  Thinking, People, Trying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• 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.

  Jon Krakauer

  Climbing, Glimpse, Stealing

  FaceBook post by Jon Krakauer from Aug 23, 2014

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• Women were supposed to be the enigmas, but men? Moody, brooding bastards, the lot of them. A woman with PMS had nothing on a man. Where women might get hormonal once a month, men suffered their own brand of PMS on a daily basis. - Faith

  Maya Banks

  Men, Pms, Might

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• Ajihad: You are an enigma, Eragon, a quandary that no one knows how to solve.

  Christopher Paolini

  Eragon, Solve, Know How

  Christopher Paolini (2014). “The Inheritance Cycle Complete Collection: Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, Inheritance”, p.481, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• It's funny how you can't ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal. The trouble with you and me is we are used to what is happening to us. We grew into our lives like a kernel beneath the earth, never able to process the enigma of our composition...Nothing is normal. It is all rather odd, isn't it, our eyes in our heads, our hands with five fingers, the capacity to understand beauty, to feel love, to feel pain.

  Donald Miller

  Pain, Eye, Feet

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• The definitive resolution of the UFO enigma will not come about unless and until the problem is subjected to open and extensive scientific study by the normal procedures of established science and administrators in universities.

  Peter A. Sturrock

  Normal, Study, Problem

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• A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Angel, Turkeys

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• Everything is prospective, and man is to live hereafter. That the world is for his education is the only sane solution of the enigma.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Men, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2676, Delphi Classics

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• There is a strange kind of tragic enigma associated with the problem of racism. No one, or almost no one, wishes to see themselves as racist; still racism persists, real and tenacious.

  Albert Memmi

  Real, Racism, Wish

  Albert Memmi (2000). “Racism”, p.3, U of Minnesota Press

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• Time is an ethereal and sometimes cruel goddess. In her relentless passing, she steals away our youth and vitality, often in ways that seem insignificant until we finally realize how much she has taken. Still, she is also a generous deity, who offers to replace what she has seized with a deeper wisdom and a clearer vision of life's enigmas. In this sense, time can be our most powerful ally-if we are patient enough.

  Michael Kelleher

  Inspirational, Powerful, Taken

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