Perplexities Quotes

1. "In the old stories, despite the impossibility of the incidents, the interest is always real and human.  The princes and princesses fall in love and marry--nothing could be more human than that.  Their lives and loves are crossed by human sorrows...The hero and heroine are persecuted or separated by cruel stepmothers or enchanters; they have wanderings and sorrows to suffer; they have adventures to achieve and difficulties to overcome; they must display courage, loyalty and address, courtesy, gentleness and gratitude.  Thus they are living in a real human world, though it wears a mythical face, though there are giants and lions in the way.  The old fairy tales which a silly sort of people disparage as too wicked and ferocious for the nursery, are really 'full of matter,' and unobtrusively teach the true lessons of our wayfaring in a world of perplexities and obstructions."
Author: Andrew Lang

2. "The way of the superior person is threefold; virtuous, they are free from anxieties; wise they are free from perplexities; and bold they are free from fear."
Author: Confucius

3. "I am not here to merely argue about the perplexities regarding theism or philosophy, but to be a light to the world and to reach out to those who long to be a part of that light."
Author: Criss Jami

4. "Materialism is a conviction based not upon evidence or logic but upon what Carl Sagan (speaking of another kind of faith) called a "deep-seated need to believe." Considered purely as a rational philosophy, it has little to recommend it; but as an emotional sedative, what Czeslaw Milosz liked to call the opiate of unbelief, it offers a refuge from so many elaborate perplexities, so many arduous spiritual exertions, so many trying intellectual and moral problems, so many exhausting expressions of hope or fear, charity or remorse. In this sense, it should be classified as one of those religions of consolation whose purpose is not to engage the mind or will with the mysteries of being but merely to provide a palliative for existential grievances and private disappointments. Popular atheism is not a philosophy but a therapy."
Author: David Bentley Hart

5. "Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects."
Author: David Markson

6. "I'm still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God."
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

7. "Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you."
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

8. "When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself—a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called clerical somebody), a righteous or unrighteous man,… when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God… then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metanoia and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian."
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

9. "It is through the tender austerity of our troubles that the Son of Man comes knocking. In every event He seeks an entrance to my heart, yes, even in my most helpless, futile, fruitless moments. The very cracks and empty crannies of my life, my perplexities and hurts and botched-up jobs, He wants to fill with Himself, His joy, His life...He urges me to learn of Him: 'I am gentle and humble in heart."
Author: Elisabeth Elliot

10. "Among all the disappointments and perplexities which have fallen my share in life, nothing has contributed so much to support my mind as the choice blessing of a wife...."
Author: John Adams

11. "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."
Author: John Adams

12. "If I can procure three hundred good substantial names of persons, or bodies, or institutions, I cannot fail to do well for my family, although I must abandon my life to its success, and undergo many sad perplexities and perhaps never see again my own beloved America."
Author: John James Audubon

13. "As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself."
Author: John Steinbeck

14. "It's enough that if I am rich in anything, it is in perplexities rather then in certaintes."
Author: Jorge Luis Borges

15. "Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities."
Author: Mark Twain

16. "Our own intellectual shortfalls and perplexities do not alter the fact of God's astonishing foreknowledge, which takes into account our choices for which we are responsible. Amid the mortal and fragmentary communiques and the breaking news of the day concerning various human conflicts, God lives in an eternal now where the past, present, and future are constantly before Him (see D&C 130:7)."
Author: Neal A. Maxwell

17. "I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficulties and perplexities, but they solve themselves when we leave institutions and address individuals."
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

18. "A life accumulates a collection: of people, work and perplexities. We are all our own curators."
Author: Richard Fortey

19. "In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength."
Author: Robert E. Lee

20. "Here's what you do," suggested Tansy Wagwheel, whom this job in just a few short weeks would drive screaming down Fifteenth Street and on into the embrace of the Denver County public-school system, "It's in this wonderful book I keep close to me all the time, A Modern Christian's Guide to Moral Perplexities. Right here, on page eighty-six, is your answer. Do you have your pencil? Good, write this down—‘Dynamite Them All, and Let Jesus Sort Them Out.'" "Uh . . ." "Yes, I know. . . ." The dreamy look on her face could not possibly be for Lew. "Does it do horse races?" Lew asked after a while. "Mr. Basnight, you card."
Author: Thomas Pynchon

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