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

  104 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  7 Copy quote

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

  Alice B. Toklas

  Delight, Letters, Kind

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

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

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Atheism, Mystic, Unspeakable

  The Moon and Sixpence Ch. 1

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  151 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is an ineffable mystery that underlies ourselves and the world. It is the darkness from which the light shines. When you recognize the integrity of the universe and that death is as certain as birth, then you can relax and accept that this is the way it is. There is nothing else to do.

  Alan Watts

  Integrity, Light, Shining

  16 Copy quote

• I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

  Pierre Bourdieu

  Art, Struggle, Understanding

  40 Copy quote

• Can theology give to the mind the ineffable boon of conceiving that which no man is in a capacity to comprehend? Can it procure to its agents the marvellous faculty of having precise ideas of a god composed of so many contradictory qualities?

  Baron d'Holbach

  Men, Ideas, Giving

  5 Copy quote

• The violence of language consists in its effort to capture the ineffable and, hence, to destroy it, to seize hold of that which must remain elusive for language to operate as a living thing.

  Judith Butler

  Effort, Violence, Language

  Judith Butler (2013). “Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative”, p.19, Routledge

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn't be so damn ineffable.

  Jo Walton

  Omnipotence, Damn, Omnipotent

  Jo Walton (2011). “Among Others”, p.111, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The 'peace' the gospel brings is never the absence of conflict, but an ineffable divine reassurance within the heart of conflict; a peace that surpasses understanding.

  Walter Wink

  Heart, Understanding, Conflict

  Walter Wink (2010). “The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium”, p.121, Harmony

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Neither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points.

  Eckhart Tolle

  God, Reality, Important

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.14, New World Library

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• We cannot look upon our lives as dreams of a dreamer who has no awakening in all time. We have a personality to which matter and force are unmeaning unless related to something infinitely personal, whose nature we have discovered, in some measure, in human love, in the greatness of the good, in the martyrdom of heroic souls, in the ineffable beauty of nature, which can never be a mere physical fact nor anything but an expression of personality.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Life, Dream, Greatness

  Rabindranath Tagore (2010). “My Life In My Words”, p.163, Penguin UK

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful universe of God, nothing seems to me more surprising than the planting of a seed in the blank earth and the result thereof. Take that Poppy seed, for instance: it lies in your palm, the merest atom of matter, hardly visible, a speck, a pin's point in bulk, but within it is imprisoned a spirit of beauty ineffable, which will break its bonds and emerge from the dark ground and blossom in a splendor so dazzling as to baffle all powers of description.

  Celia Thaxter

  Beauty, Lying, Dark

  Celia Thaxter (2008). “An Island Garden”, p.3, Applewood Books

  69 Copy quote

  Show source

• Justice requires lawyers who are prepared, witnesses who tell the truth, judges who know the law, and jurors who stay awake. Justice is the North Star, the burning bush, the holy virgin. It cannot be bought, sold, or mass produced. It is intangible, ineffable, and invisible, but if you are to spend your life in its pursuit, it is best to believe it exists, and that you can attain it.

  Paul Levine

  Stars, Believe, Law

  4 Copy quote

• As I walk, I construct perfect sentences that I cannot remember later at home. I don’t know if the ineffable poetry of those sentences derived from what they were or from their never having been (written).

  Fernando Pessoa

  Home, Perfect, Remember

  6 Copy quote

• You sit back in the darkness, nursing your beer, breathing in that ineffable aroma of the old-time saloon: dark wood, spilled beer, good cigars, and ancient whiskey - the sacred incense of the drinking man.

  Bruce Aidells

  Humorous, Drinking, Nursing

  8 Copy quote