A Glass Darkly Quotes & Sayings

As it says in the Bible, For now we through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.
If it is face to face, there must be two looking. — Margaret Atwood

Antonio: Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you?
Sebastian: By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you. — William Shakespeare

Once a priest told us that no one gets up in the pulpit without promulgating a heresy. He was joking, of course, but what I suppose he meant was the truth was so pure, so holy, that it was hard to emphasize one aspect of the truth without underestimating another, that we did not see things as a whole, but through a glass darkly, as St. Paul said. — Dorothy Day

L.P. So your work must fight religion?
J.H. No, not at all! It fights the unconsciousness, the blindness, that all myth creates about itself. You never can see the actual myth you are in or only through a glass darkly. — James Hillman

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. — Anonymous

I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium ... I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried by the help of my senses to apprehend them. And I thought that I had better had recourse to ideas, and seek in them truth in existence. I dare to say that the simile is not perfect
for I am far from admitting that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas, sees them only "through a glass darkly," any more than he who sees them in their working and effects. — Socrates

We see through a glass, darkly." The verse surprised him. He hadn't picked up a Bible in a year, yet he knew the phrase came from the New Testament. He knew it went on to say that one day everything would be clear. One day believers would know without a shadow of a doubt, and one day they would be in the presence of God. — Janice Cantore

I prayed as we walked up the hill. I prayed and felt a measure of calm return. No visions. No angels singing. But a feeling of peace flowed over me. Ii took a deep breath, and something hard and tight and ugly in my heart let go. I took it as a good sign that I'd get to Jeff in time. But part of me was skeptical. God doesn't always save someone. Often He just helps you live through the loss. I guess I don't entirely trust God. I never doubt Him, but His motives are too beyond me. Through a glass darkly and all that. Just once I'd like to see through the damn glass clearly. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Perhaps, too, you will then believe that nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life, and that all that a writer can do is to present it as "in a glass, darkly". — E.T.A. Hoffmann

You do not know your vampire nature. You are like an adult who, looking back on his childhood, realizes that he never appreciated it. You cannot, as a man, go back to the nursery and play with your toys, asking for the love and care to be showered on you again simply because now you know their worth. So it is with you and mortal nature. You've given it up. You no longer look "through a glass darkly." But you cannot pass back to the world of human warmth with your new eyes. — Anne Rice

How she wanted to put away adult things and go back to seeing through a looking-glass, darkly. — Gregory Maguire

So as through a glass, and darkly - The age long strife I see - Where I fought in many guises, - Many names, but always me. — George S. Patton

There is a wonderful expression: seeing through a glass darkly. Everything, even life, is inevitably removed from you. You can't reach, or touch, the real. You just see reflections — Douglas Sirk

we see now through a glass darkly" and — Stephen King

The conclusion of Dowell's narrative offers not a resolution, so much as a plangent confirmation of complexities. While Ford would certainly have agreed with Dowell that it is a novelist's business to make a reader 'see things clearly', his interest in clarity had little to do with simplicity. There is no 'getting to the bottom of things', no triumphant answers to the epistemological muddle offered in this beautiful, bleak story - only a finer appreciation of that confusion. We may remove the scales from our eyes, Ford suggests, but only the better to appreciate the glass through which we see darkly. — Zoe Heller

Eternity is the divine treasure-house, and hope is the window, by means of which mortals are permitted to see, as through a glass darkly, the things which God is preparing. — William Mountford

We should not expect too much from faith," he said. "Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. — Margaret Atwood

Everything on earth
both the good things and the bad things
is not given to a man according to his just deserts, but as a result of certain as yet unknown, yet logical, laws which I won't even undertake to suggest to you, although it sometimes seems to me that I feel them as through a glass darkly. — Ivan Turgenev

It's so horrible to see your own confusion and understand it. — Ingmar Bergman

For now we see the beauty of God through a glass, darkly, but then face to face; now we appreciate only in part, but then we shall affirm and appreciate God, even as the living God has affirmed and appreciated us. So now our tasks are worship, mission, and management, these three; but the greatest of these is worship. — N. T. Wright

(As human beings) We see everything everything in a glass, darkly. Sometimes we can peer through the glass and catch a glimpse of what is on the other side. If we were to polish the glass clean, we'd see much more. But then we would no longer see ourselves. — Jostein Gaarder

Evil is nothing more than that, which was once divine, and has fallen into shit. Indrid Night - Through A Glass Darkly. — Donald Allen Kirch

Those circumstances, which to the dim eye of Jacob's faith wore a hue so somber, were at that very moment developing and perfecting the events which were to shed around the evening of his life the halo of a glorious and cloudless sunset. All things were working together for his good! And so, troubled soul, the "much tribulation" will soon be over, and as you enter the "kingdom of God" you shall then see, no longer "through a glass darkly" but in the unshadowed sunlight of the Divine presence, that "all things" did "work together" for your personal and eternal good. — Arthur W. Pink

You're in a world of diversity. You see things through a glass darkly. There is a separation everywhere. — Frederick Lenz

Nature is objective, and nature is knowable, but we can only view her through a glass darkly and many clouds upon our vision are of our own making: social and cultural biases, psychological preferences, and mental limitations (in universal modes of thought, not just individualized stupidity). — Stephen Jay Gould

Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God. — Margaret Atwood

In Heaven we'll understand why we've suffered on Earth. The Apostle Paul explained, For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known [of God] . — David Berg

We see through a glass darkly, says St. Paul as he peers toward what lies ahead. All our language about future states of the world and of ourselves consists of complex pictures that may or may not correspond very well to the ultimate reality. But that doesn't mean it's anybody's guess or that every opinion is as good as every other one. — N. T. Wright

So again and again we see how under the prevailing paradigm our real past - and the original thrust of our cultural evolution - can only be seen as through a glass darkly. But once we are face to face with the full import of what this past foreshadowed - what we, at our level of technological and social development, could have been and still can be - we confront a haunting question. What brought about the radical change in cultural direction, the shift that plunged us from a social order upheld by the Chalice to one dominated by the Blade? When and how did this happen? And what does this cataclysmic change tell us about our past - and our future? — Riane Eisler

Prophets (must) humbly accept the truth that they see through a glass darkly, that they know only in part. In other words, they make mistakes. Mature prophets urge everyone to who they prophesy to judge, test and compare with scripture everything they say. They are not offended when people are careful. — Stephen Mansfield

Even in ordinary times there are very few of us who do not see the problems of life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision of the best and the bravest is dimmed. — Theodore Roosevelt

I often think of you all, one cannot do what one wants in life. The more you feel attached to a spot, the more ruthlessly you are compelled to leave it, but the memories remain, and one remembers - as in a looking glass, darkly - one's absent friends. — Vincent Van Gogh