Inscrutable Quotes - Page 3

• Do you like my working persona?" Saiman asked softly. "An aesthetically pleasing combination of intelligence and elegance, wouldn't you say?" Aren't we pleased with ourselves. "Are you Chinese, Japanese, half-white? I can't tell, your features are neither here nor there." "I'm inscrutable, mysterious and intellectual." He forgot conceited. "Did you have any trouble getting that ego through the door?" Saiman didn't even blink. "Not in the least.

  Ilona Andrews

  Conceited, Doors, White

  Ilona Andrews (2010). “Magic Bleeds”, p.106, Penguin

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• King Duncan looked up and swept his gaze slowly around the room. Cassandra, he saw, was defiant as ever. Arald's face was set and determined. Halt and Crowley's faces were inscrutable in the shadows of their cowls. The two younger men were both a little wide-eyed- obviously uncomfortable at the emotions that had been bared in the room. There was still a hint of admiration in Will's eyes, however, as he continued to stare at the Baron. Rodney was nodding in agreement with Arald's statements, while Gilan made a show of studying his nails.

  John Flanagan

  Kings, Eye, Men

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• In my mind's eye Shakespeare is a huge, hot sea-beast, with fire in his veins and ice on his claws and inscrutable eyes, who looks like an inchoate hump under the encrustations of live barnacle-commentaries, limpets and trailing weeds.

  A. S. Byatt

  Weed, Eye, Fire

  "Reading while you're wonder-wounded" by A. S. Byatt, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2002.

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• ..this indiscriminate love feels entirely serious to her, as if everything in the world is part of a vast, inscrutable intention and everything in the world has its own secret name, a name that cannot be conveyed in language but is simply the sight and feel of the thing itself.

  Michael Cunningham

  Sight, Names, Secret

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.12, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

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• For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sports, Weed, Wind

  Virginia Woolf (1996). “Mrs Dalloway”, p.117, Wordsworth Editions

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• I didn’t look to the shore much after this first long and memorable glimpse. I looked up at Heaven and her court of mythical creatures fixed forever in the all powerful and inscrutable stars. Ink black was the night beyond them, and they so like jewels that old poetry came back to me, the sound even of hymns sung only by men.

  Anne Rice

  Stars, Powerful, Memorable

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• There was something I needed to say. “Sorry. About before.” Fang shot a sideways glance at me, his eyes dark and inscrutable, as always. He looked back out at the water. I didn’t expect any more acknowledgment than that. Fang never- “You almost gave me a heart attack,” he said quietly. “When I saw you, and all that blood . . .” He threw a small rock as hard as he could down the beach. “I’m sorry.” “Don’t do it again,” he said. I swallowed hard. “I won’t.” Something changed right then, but I didn’t know what.

  James Patterson

  Beach, Sorry, Heart

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• Boy, there's nothing worse than an inscrutable omen.

  Bill Watterson

  Boys, Omen

  "The Days Are Just Packed". Book by Bill Watterson, October 1993.

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• Without the suitable conditions life could not exist. But both life and its conditions set forth the operations of inscrutable Power. We know not its origin; we know not its end. And the presumption, if not the degradation, rests with those who place upon the throne of the universe a magnified image of themselves, and make its doings a mere colossal imitation of their own. Wonder was the motive that led people to philosophy ... wonder is a kind of desire in knowledge. It is the cause of delight because it carries with it the hope of discovery.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Philosophy, Knowledge, Discovery

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• The brain seems to be made up of a bewildering complexity of parts, and the cells within the parts seem to be characterized by an inscrutable complexity of form, extent, and relationships with each other.

  Gordon Shepherd

  Cells, Brain, Form

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• The dual substance of Christ - the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God. [...] has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. [...] My principle anguish and source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. [...] And my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Army, Men, Two

  "The Last Temptation of Christ". Book by Nikos Kazantzakis, Simon and Schuster, Prologue, 2012.

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• Because Christian morality leaves animals out of account, they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere 'things,' mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights, and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Christian, Horse, Struggle

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• But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.

  E. M. Forster

  Get Well, Soul, Secret

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• One ship is very much like another and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.

  Joseph Conrad

  Ignorance, Past, Destiny

  Joseph Conrad (2008). “Heart of Darkness and Other Tales”, OUP Oxford

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• When over long periods of human history I scrutinized the activity of the Jewish people, suddenly there arose up in me the fearful question whether inscrutable Destiny, perhaps for reasons unknown to us poor mortals, did not, with eternal and immutable resolve, desire the final victory of this little nation.

  Adolf Hitler

  Destiny, Long, People

  Adolf Hitler (1971). “Mein Kampf”, Mariner Books

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• These warriors of the Sacred Band were inscrutable; they loved their war and death and picking through the bones of time to sort out right from wrong, good from bad, holy from profane, honor from dishonor.

  Janet Morris

  Love, War, Honor

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• The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.

  Immanuel Kant

  Wisdom, Respect, Dignity

  Immanuel Kant, Lewis White Beck (1976). “Critique of practical reason, and other writings in moral philosophy”, Taylor & Francis

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• America is not only big and rich, it is mysterious; and its capacity for the humorous or ironical concealment of its interests matches that of the legendary inscrutable Chinese.

  David Riesman

  Humorous, America, Chinese

  David Riesman (1950). “The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character”

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• Ultimately, Leibniz argued, there are only two absolutely simple concepts, God and Nothingness. From these, all other concepts may be constructed, the world, and everything within it, arising from some primordial argument between the deity and nothing whatsoever. And then, by some inscrutable incandescent insight, Leibniz came to see that what is crucial in what he had written is the alternation between God and Nothingness. And for this, the numbers 0 and 1 suffice.

  David Berlinski

  Simple, Two, Numbers

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Life, Eye, Equality

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• Before exulatation had vanished, I felt as if I had been granted a marvellous privilege. Out of the inscrutable waters a beautiful fish had somehow leaped to show me fleetingly the life and spirit of his element.

  Zane Grey

  Beautiful, Lakes, Sea

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• A total reverse of fortune, coming unawares upon a man who 'stood in high degree,' happy and apparently secure,-such was the tragic fact to the mediaeval mind. It appealed strongly to common human sympathy and pity; it startled also another feeling, that of fear. It frightened men and awed them. It made them feel that man is blind and helpless, the plaything of an inscrutable power, called by the name of Fortune or some other name,-a power which appears to smile on him for a little, and then on a sudden strikes him down in his pride.

  A. C. Bradley

  Pride, Men, Names

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• The carved images on the early Minoan sealstones are tantalising, inscrutable. The Nature Goddess is yanked from the soil like a snake or a sheaf of barley; the Mistress of the Animals suckles goats and gazelles. There are male Adorants certainly - up on tiptoe, their outstretched arms hoisted in a kind of heil, their bodies arched suggestively, pelvis forward, before the Goddess - but there are no masculine deities, not a single one in sight. No woman worth her salt, one might think, could fail to be intrigued.

  Alison Fell

  Animal, Thinking, Sight

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• We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Fall, Inspiration, People

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.76, Cambridge University Press

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• Tell me something, Raphael?" He was already turning, heading to the door. "What is it you'd like to know, Guild Hunter?" She hid her smile at his slip. "What do I call you? Husband? Mate? Boyfriend?" Stopping with his hand on the doorknob, he shot her an inscrutable look. "You can call me 'Master'.

  Nalini Singh

  Husband, Doors, Hands

  Nalini Singh (2010). “Archangel's Kiss”, p.7, Penguin

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