Quotes & Sayings About Ineffability

You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say. — Terry Pratchett

It seems to me that the pleasure one feels in a work of art is just one thing that one does not have to explain. — Willa Cather

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. — Don DeLillo

I've seen plays that are, objectively, total messes that move me in ways that their tidier brethren do not. That's the romantic mystery of great theater. Translating this ineffability into printable prose is a challenge that can never be fully met. — Ben Brantley

It will seem to many persons very inconsistent with their ideas of the dignity of a spirit that they should appear and act in the manner I have described, and shall describe further; and I have heard it objected that we cannot suppose God would permit the dead to return merely to frighten the living, and that it is showing Him little reverence to imagine He would suffer them to come on such trifling errands, or demean themselves in so undignified a fashion. But God permits men of all degrees of wickedness, and of every kind of absurdity, to exist, and to harass and disturb the earth, whilst they expose themselves to its obloquy or its ridicule. — Catherine Crowe

The claw, that's the beast that enters your flesh; the sucker, that's you yourself who enters into the beast. ( ... ) Beyond the terror of being eaten alive is the ineffability of being drunk alive. — Victor Hugo

Robert Frost didn't like to explain his poems - and for good reason: to explain a poem is to suck the air from its lungs. This does not mean, however, that poets shouldn't talk about their poetry, or that one shouldn't ask questions about it. Rather, it suggests that any discussion of poetry should celebrate its ultimate ineffability and in so doing lead one to further inquiry. I think of that wonderful scene from Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, where Mosche the Beadle of the local synagogue, in dialogue with the young, precocious author, explains: Every question possesses a power that does not lie in the answer. — Tony Leuzzi

Now, tantra is a little bit different than other forms of Buddhism because in tantra what we do is we use the sensorial worlds as access points or pathways to ineffability. — Frederick Lenz