Enigma Quotes

1. "... While much recent historicist criticism has assumed early nineteenth-century readers attuned to subtle ideological nuances in poetry, actual responses from readers often come closer to clulessness. ... It is no surprise that no one understood Blake, but other poets fared not much better. ... Coleridge's 'Christabel' was 'the standing enigma which puzzles the curiosity of literary circles. What is it all about?', while another reviewer asked about Shelley, 'What, in the name of wonder on one side, and of common sense on the other, is the meaning of this metaphysical rhapsody about the unbinding of Prometheus?'. Even Keats was condemned for 'his frequent obscurity and confusion of language' and his 'unintelligible quaintness'. Byron, never to be outdone, boasted in 'Don Juan' that not only did he not understand many of his fellow poets, he did not understand himself either: 'I don't pretend that I quite understand / My own meaning when I would be very fine.' ..."
Author: Andrew Elfenbein

2. "Pudgy Marks and Elizabeth Ann Winter were an item, a masquerade and a mystery wrapped in an enigma."
Author: Anonymous

3. "The enigma.The flowers that bloom in the dark shine the brightest. We bloom from the moonlight."
Author: Antonia Perdu

4. "How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do."
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer

5. "My many years of living have not made the actions of teenage boys any less enigmatic."
Author: Avery Williams

6. "Mystique is rare now, isn't it? There aren't that many enigmas in this modern world."
Author: Benedict Cumberbatch

7. "It was here, at the threshold of our flat earth, that the ultimate enigma of land, sea and sky all fused against me in the omega point of the female fashion statement; an essence distracted the lifeguards which, in escaping me, threatened to implode my self and my soul (a totality which, yet again, I could not comprehend)."
Author: Benson Bruno

8. "As is so often the case with a legend, every incident has two possible interpretations, the plausible and the one that is molded to suit the making of the myth. Man is a romantic at heart and will always put aside dull, plodding reason for the excitement of an enigma. As Doc had pointed out, mystery, not logic, is what gives us hope and keeps us believing in a force greater than our own insignificance."
Author: Bryce Courtenay

9. "Acel gest simbolic de a o întrona pe Déesse Raison la Notre-Dame pare sa fi însemnat pentru lumea apuseana ceva asemanator cu taierea Stejarilor lui Wotan de catre misionarii crestini, caci nici atunci, nici acum, fulgerul razbunator nu i-a lovit pe nelegiuiti. Este probabil mai mult decât o gluma a istoriei universale faptul ca tocmai în acel moment si tocmai un francez, Anquetil du Perron, se afla în India si, la începutul secolului al XIX-lea, aducea acasa o traducere a Oupnek'hat, o culegere de cincizeci de Upanisade, care au permis pentru prima oara Occidentului sa arunce o privire mai adânca înauntrul enigmaticului spirit al Orientului … Masa anonima de oameni întunecati, care s-a adunat cu gânduri distrugatoare în Notre-Dame, s-a napustit si asupra individului, nimerindu-l si pe Anquetil du Perron, în care a provocat un raspuns devenit istoric. De la el se trag Schopenhauer si Nietzsche, de la el apare acea influenta spirituala înca incalculabila a Orientului."
Author: C.G. Jung

10. "And enigmatic smile is worth ten pages of dialog."
Author: Connie Brockway

11. "He's an enigma wrapped up in sensuality padlocked with a dozen chains of desire and topped off with a razor-sharp ribbon of danger. There are more layers to him than a billionaire's wedding cake."
Author: Darynda Jones

12. "One realizes that everything about the world that seems so unexceptional and drearily predictable is in fact charged with an immense and imponderable mystery. In that instant one is aware, even if the precise formulation eludes one, that everything one knows exists in an irreducibly gratuitous way: "what it is" has no logical connection with the reality "that it is"; nothing within experience has any "right" to be, any power to give itself existence, any apparent "why." The world is unable to provide any account of its own actuality, and yet there it is all the same. In that instant one recalls that one's every encounter with the world has always been an encounter with an enigma that no merely physical explanation can resolve. One cannot dwell indefinitely"
Author: David Bentley Hart

13. "I have become an enigma to myself. So said Saint Augustine. And herein lies my sickness."
Author: Don DeLillo

14. "He is the enigmatic, mysterious artist, who is undeniably attractive, and he is the man who every woman wants to pose for, but he wants none of that. He only wants her. It all begins and consequently ends with Chantel Rosenberg."
Author: Ella Frank

15. "Listen- all that she was then, all that she is now, those gestures, everything I remember but won't or can't articulate anymore, the perfect words that are somehow made imperfect when used to describe her and all that should remain unsaid about her- it is all unsupported by reason. I know that. But that enigmatic calm that attaches itself to people in the presence of reason- it's something from which I haven't been able to take comfort, not reliably, not since her."
Author: Elliot Perlman

16. "Women are pleasing because they come to us wrapped in the catkin of an enigma and they cease to please when they lose their intrigue.Do women believe that men are only interested in what's between their legs? That would be an error.:men are more attracted by a woman's romantic side than by her sexuality."
Author: Éric Emmanuel Schmitt

17. "I have always knocked at the door of that wonderful and terrible enigma which is life."
Author: Eugenio Montale

18. "Eu enigmatizo a minha vida na esperança de que alguém a resolva. Entre a minha e a do outro há um labirinto de cartas de amor e pedidos de socorro."
Author: Filipe Russo

19. "Virtue is under certain circumstances merely an honorable form of stupidity: who could be ill-disposed toward it on that account? And this kind of virtue has not been outlived even today. A kind of sturdy peasant simplicity, which, however, is possible in all classes and can be encountered only with respect and a smile, believes even today that everything is in good hands, namely in the "hands of God"; and when it maintains this proportion with the same modest certainty as it would that two and two make four, we others certainly refrain from contradicting. Why disturb THIS pure foolishness? Why darken it with our worries about man, people, goal, future? And even if we wanted to do it, we could not. They project their own honorable stupidity and goodness into the heart of things (the old God, deus myops, still lives among them!); we others — we read something else into the heart of things: our own enigmatic nature, our contradictions, our deeper, more painful, more mistrustful wisdom."
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

20. "Intrigued by that enigma, he dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her."
Author: Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

21. "Intrigado con ese enigma, escarbó tan profundamente en los sentimientos de ella, que buscando el interés encontró el amor, porque buscando que ella lo quisiera terminó por quererla."
Author: Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

22. "The fantastically wasteful prodigality of human tongues, the Babel enigman, points to a vital multiplication of mortal liberties. Each language speaks the world in its own ways. Each edifies worlds and counter-worlds in its own mode. The polyglot is a freer man."
Author: George Steiner

23. "Maugham's success, in fact, lies a good deal less in what he positively does than in what he discreetly leaves undone. He gets the colors of life into his Charles Strickland, not by playing a powerful beam of light upon him, but by leaving him a bit out of focus--by constantly insisting, in the midst of every discussion of him, upon his pervasive mystery--in brief, by craftily making him appear, not as a commonplace, simple and completely understandable man, but as the half comprehended enigma that every genuine man of genius seems to all of us when we meet him in real life."
Author: H.L. Mencken

24. "The creative artist has something in common with the hero. Though functioning on another plane, he too believes that he has solutions to offer. He gives his life to accomplish imaginary triumphs. At the conclusion of every grand experiment, whether by statesman, warrior, poet or philosopher, the problems of life present the same enigmatic complexion. The happiest people, it is said, are those which have no history. Those which have a history, those which have made history, seem only to have emphasized through their accomplishments the eternality of struggle. These disappear too, eventually, just as those who made no effort, who were content merely to live and to enjoy."
Author: Henry Miller

25. "Radio astronomy reflects our fascination with how audio can be used to understand information or ideas. Just as scientists visualize data through charts and pictures, we can use 'data sonification' to translate radio signals into sound that help us better understand some of our most enigmatic planetary systems."
Author: Honor Harger

26. "Powerful winds that crack the boughs of November! - and the bright calm sun, untouched by the furies of the earth, abandoning the earth to darkness, and wild forlornness, and night, as men shiver in their coats and hurry home. And then the lights of home glowing in those desolate deeps. There are the stars, though! - high and sparkling in a spiritual firmament. We will walk in the windsweeps, gloating in the envelopment of ourselves, seeking the sudden grinning intelligence of humanity below these abysmal beauties. Now the roaring midnight fury and the creaking of our hinges and windows, now the winder, now the understanding of the earth and our being on it: this drama of enigmas and double-depths and sorrows and grave joys, these human things in the elemental vastness of the windblown world."
Author: Jack Kerouac

27. "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."
Author: James Joyce

28. "It is not science which leads to unbelief but rather ignorance. The ignorant man thinks he understands something provided that he sees it every day. The natural philosopher walks amid enigmas, always striving to understand and always half-understanding. He learns to believe what he does not understand, and that is a step on the road to faith."
Author: Jan Potocki

29. "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."
Author: Jon Krakauer

30. "Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out"."
Author: Joseph Conrad

31. "Socrates (770-399 B.C.[E.]) is possibly the most enigmatic figure in the entire history of philosophy. He never wrote a single line. Yet he is one of the philosophers who has had the greatest influence on European thought, not least because of the dramatic manner of his death."
Author: Jostein Gaarder

32. "With his current mood, Elizabeth realized, she was going to have to make her own opening. Lifting her eyes to his enigmatic golden ones, she said quietly, "Ian, have you ever wanted something very badly-something that was within your grasp-and yet you were afraid to reach out for it?" Surprised by her grave question and her use of his name, Ian tried to ignore the jealousy that had been eating at him all night. "No," he said, scrupulously keeping the curtness from his voice as he gazed down at her alluring face. "Why do you ask? Is there something you want?" Her gaze fell from his, and she nodded at his frilled white shirtfront. "What is it you want?" "You."
Author: Judith McNaught

33. "Enigmatical"
Author: Jules Verne

34. "And if you don't think I can hold my own against all those eighteenth-century mortals you were out tagging, then you're a fool, Casanova." ... "Oh, yes, I know all about you."He went still. "What are you talking about?""I was alive back then. And all the Lore heard about the ruthless warlord brothers from Estonia. The general, the scholar, the enigma, and . . . the manwhore."
Author: Kresley Cole

35. "So begins the exhausting analysis of the cavalcade of unknowable smiles and cryptic sentences uttered by someone your newly interested in. When everything boils down to a succession of enigmatic moments. Moments played and replayed from the perspective you attribute to your lover-to-be, but that are actually from the part of you that's sure you're far too flawed to be loved."
Author: Liza Palmer

36. "Cuando uno se enamora las cuadrillasdel tiempo hacen escala en el olvidola desdicha se llena de milagrosel miedo se convierte en osadíay la muerte no sale de su cuevaenamorarse es un presagio gratisuna ventana abierta al árbol nuevouna proeza de los sentimientosuna bonanza casi insoportabley un ejercicio contra el infortuniopor el contrario desenamorarsees ver el cuerpo como es y nocomo la otra mirada lo inventabaes regresar más pobre al viejo enigmay dar con la tristeza en el espejo"
Author: Mario Benedetti Enamorarse Y No

37. "Una mujer desnuda y en lo oscuro tiene una claridad que nos alumbra de modo que si ocurre un desconsuelo un apagón o una noche sin luna es conveniente y hasta imprescindible tener a mano una mujer desnuda. Una mujer desnuda y en lo oscuro genera un resplandor que da confianza entonces dominguea el almanaque vibran en su rincon las telarañas y los ojos felices y felinos miran y de mirar nunca se cansan.Una mujer desnuda y en lo oscuro es una vocación para las manos para los labios es casi un destino y para el corazón un despilfarro una mujer desnuda es un enigma y siempre es una fiesta descifrarlo. Una mujer desnuda y en lo oscuro genera una luz propia y nos enciende el cielo raso se convierte en cielo y es una gloria no ser inocente una mujer querida o vislumbrada desbarata por una vez la muerte."
Author: Mario Benedetti Una Mujer Desnuda Y En Lo Oscuro

38. "Were he supreme, were he mighty, were he just, were he good, this God you tell me about, would it be through enigmas and buffooneries he would wish to teach me to serve and know him?"
Author: Marquis De Sade

39. "And the more I live, the more I dread death, even while I abhor life. Such an enigma is man -- born to perish -- when he wars, as I do, against the established laws of his nature."
Author: Mary Shelley

40. "You are an enigma wrapped in a mystery," he teased me once. "And you're failing French."
Author: Melissa Jensen

41. "To imagine writing as absence seems to be a simple repetition, in transcendental terms, of both the religious principle of the inalterable and yet never fulfilled tradition, and the aesthetic principle of the work's survival, its perpetuation beyond the author's death, and it enigmatic excess in relation to him."
Author: Michel Foucault

42. "That's another enigma about memory, more basic than all the rest: do recollections have some measurable temporal volume? do they unfold over a span of time? […] And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a moment the way we reread a book or resee a film."
Author: Milan Kundera

43. "Gregorius was never to forget this scene. They were his first Portuguese words in the real world and they worked. That words could cause somethinge in the world, make someone move or stop, laugh or cry: even as a child he had found it enigmatic and it had never stopped impressing him. How did words do that? Wasn't it like magic?But at this moment, the mystery seemed greater than usual, for these were words he hadn't even known yesterday morning."
Author: Pascal Mercier

44. "Woman, especially her sexuality, provides the object of endless commentary , description, supposition. But the result of all the telling only deepens the enigma and makes woman's erotic force something that male storytelling can never quite explain or contain."
Author: Peter Brooks

45. "He'd never seen one so vibrant, though, or so vividly compelling... those glowing green eyes sparkling with sunlight and curiosity and silent laughter, and when she glanced in Henry's direction, she held his gaze, a look that was both challenging and enigmatic... He was utterly certain that this was Eleanor of Aquitaine, and no less sure that the French King must be one of God's greatest fools."
Author: Sharon Kay Penman

46. "I wanted her and only her.I wanted to be a part of her storm. I wanted to feel my pulse against hers.I wanted the bitter on her sweet tongue. I wanted the sadness in her sweet syrup eyes. I wanted the silence in her screaming mind and the enigma that is really quite simple- a complicated happiness. I wasn't willing to let go. I was falling completely, forever, into solid fucking love that was swimming through my veins. I wanted to be the breath in her mouth and the rhythm in her chest that would beat only for me."
Author: Shey Stahl

47. "Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?"
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

48. "Vampires are so old that they don't need to impress anyone anymore. They're comfortable in their own skin. It's this enigmatic strength that's very romantic and old-fashioned. I think it goes back to something of a Victorian attitude of finding a strong man who's going to look after his woman."
Author: Stephen Moyer

49. "I was very camera shy. People like hot girls, so I put my music to hot girls and it just became a trend. The whole 'enigmatic artist' thing, I just ran with it. No one could find pictures of me."
Author: The Weeknd

50. "Each person is an enigma. You're a puzzle not only to yourself but also to everyone else, and the great mystery of our time is how we penetrate this puzzle."
Author: Theodore Zeldin

Enigma Quotes Pictures