Mystery

Famous quotes containing the word mystery:

    You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing interest ceases also.... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty: without certainty, without formulation there is no interest;... the clearer the formulation the greater the interest.
    Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)

    Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth
    Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see
    In simple childhood something of the base
    On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel,
    That from thyself it comes, that thou must give,
    Else never canst receive. The days gone by
    Return upon me almost from the dawn
    Of life: the hiding-places of man’s power
    Open; I would approach them, but they close.
    William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

    The mystery of the evening-star brilliant in silence and distance between the downward-surging plunge of the sun and the vast, hollow seething of inpouring night. The magnificence of the watchful morning-star, that watches between the night and the day, the gleaming clue to the two opposites.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)