Perplexity Quotes

• Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

  Hannah Arendt

  Hypocrite, Hypocrisy, Rotten

  'On Revolution' (1963) ch. 2

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• The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.

  Khalil Gibran

  Inspirational, Cute Life, Simplicity

  Khalil Gibran “The New Frontier and Sand and Foam”, Library of Alexandria

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• God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission.

  John Henry Newman

  Saint, Serving Others, Missions

  John Henry Newman (2002). “Prayers, Verses, and Devotions”, p.338, Ignatius Press

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• God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another, I have my mission ... He has not created me for naught ... If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

  John Henry Newman

  Spiritual, Sorrow, Doe

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• Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born --a hundred million years --and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.

  Mark Twain

  Years, Together, Remember

  Autobiography ch. 49 (1959)

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• Trouble and perplexity drive me to prayer, and prayer drives away perplexity and trouble.

  Francois Fenelon

  Prayer, Praying, Trouble

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• The wise are free from perplexities; the virtuous from anxiety; and the bold from fear.

  Confucius

  Wise, Anxiety, Virtuous

  Confucius (2012). “The Analects of Confucius In Plain and Simple English: BookCaps Study Guide”, BookCaps Study Guides

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• When in these fresh mornings I go into my garden before anyone is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness. In this hour divinely fresh and still, the fair face of every flower salutes me with a silent joy. . . . All the cares, perplexities, and griefs of existence, all the burdens of life slip from my shoulders and leave me with the heart of a little child that asks nothing beyond the present moment of innocent bliss.

  Celia Thaxter

  Morning, Children, Flower

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• A life accumulates a collection: of people, work and perplexities. We are all our own curators.

  Richard Fortey

  People, Curator, Collections

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• I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain.

  John Henry Newman

  Sorrow, Doe, May

  John Henry Newman (1900). “The Works of Cardinal Newman”

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• There are greater depths and obscurities, greater intricacies and perplexities, in an elaborate and well-written piece of nonsense, than in the most abstruse and profound tract of school divinity.

  Joseph Addison

  School, Profound, Depth

  Joseph Addison (1853). “The Works of Joseph Addison: Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition, with Letters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.624

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• Why ponder thus the future to foresee, and jade thy brain to vain perplexity? Cast off thy care, leave Allah’s plans to him – He formed them all without consulting thee.

  Omar Khayyam

  Brain, Care, Jade

  Omar Khayyam (2015). “The Sufistic Quatrains”, p.404, Omar Khayyam

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• After a time I found that I could almost listen to the silence, which had a dimension all of its own. I started to attend to its strange and beautiful texture, which of course, it was impossible to express in words. I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there. Without the distraction of constant conversation, the words on the page began to speak directly to my inner self. They were no long expressing ideas that were simply interesting intellectually, but were talking directly to my own yearning and perplexity.

  Karen Armstrong

  Beautiful, Home, Ideas

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• When a child of the streets stands before you in rags, with a tear-stained face, you cannot easily forget him. And yet, you are perplexed what to do. The human soul is difficult to interfere with. You hesitate how far you should go.

  Charles Loring Brace

  Children, Choices, Soul

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• The wonderful thing is that the soul already knows to some extent that there is something behind the veil, the veil of perplexity, that there is something to be sought for in the highest spheres of life, that there is some beauty to be seen, that there is Someone to be known who is knowable.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Life, Beauty, Soul

  Hazrat Inayat Khan “The Sayings of Hazrat Inayat Khan”, Library of Alexandria

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• Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.

  David Markson

  Fundamentals, Mood, Existence

  David Markson (1995). “Wittgenstein's mistress”, Dalkey Archive Pr

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• Wherever we go, we come up against the human, a repulsive ubiquity before which we fall into stupor and revolt, a perplexity on fire.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Fall, Ubiquity, Fire

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• Nature is a hanging judge," goes an old saying. Many tragedies come from our physical and cognitive makeup. Our bodies are extraordinarily improbable arrangements of matter, with many ways for things to go wrong and only a few ways for things to go right. We are certain to die, and smart enough to know it. Our minds are adapted to a world that no longer exists, prone to misunderstandings correctable only by arduous education, and condemned to perplexity about the deepest questions we can ascertain.

  Steven Pinker

  Smart, Makeup, Judging

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• There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Real, Character, Hands

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• The Master said, At fifteen I set my heart upon learning. At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground. At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven. At sixty, I heard them with docile ear. At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of righ.

  Confucius

  Heart, Feet, Heaven

  Confucius, Arthur Waley (1949). “The Analects of Confucius”, Routledge

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• As an anti-hunger advocate, I found the perplexity of the obesity problem and the hunger problem existing side-by-side in our increasingly global food system begged further investigation.

  Ellen Gustafson

  Sides, Problem, Obesity

  "Solving the world's hunger and obesity crises together" by Ellen Gustafson, www.cnn.com. August 10, 2010.

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• If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Dream, Men, Progress

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• Prayer is sort of like an unlocked door with a giant, red-lettered sign on it that says: "Welcome. Feel Free to Take What You Need." Inside is the storehouse of all that God is. He invites us to share it all. He doesn't intend for us to stay on the outside and struggle all alone with the perplexities of life, and He not only invites us to come in, but to stay in. . . . It is an on-going process, not just an occasional religious-sounding speech we make to a nebulous divinity "out there somewhere." Prayer is meant to be a part of our lives, like breathing and thinking and talking.

  Gloria Gaither

  Religious, Prayer, Struggle

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• We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavors in it, may also become clearer.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Wise, Distance, Character

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.13, Lulu.com

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• All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

  John Adams

  Nature, Money, Ignorance

  John Adams' Letter to Thomas Jefferson, founders.archives.gov. August 23, 1787.

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