Mysterious Ways Quotes & Sayings

It's often said that God works in mysterious ways. You have to really think about what He's trying to do. You can't be lazy and believe in God; He doesn't make it that easy. It takes spirit and faith and passion to really believe. Like most things worthwhile in life, you get back what you put into it. Only with faith, you get back a lot more. — David Baldacci

God works in mysterious ways. Things may look good outwardly, but there may be evil contained inside. Let no one be deluded by pride that he himself has conceived good ideas or done good deeds. If everything were as it seemed, the Prophet would not have cried out with such illuminated and illuminating perspicacity, Show me things as they are! You make things appear beautiful when in reality they are ugly; You make things appear ugly when in reality they are beautiful. Show us therefore each thing as it is lest we fall into a snare and be ever errant. — Rumi

The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man. — Marquis De Sade

Criticism is an act of love. We can never learn those people we love, but we can learn about them in such ways as to perceive more clearly that unfathomable, mysterious core that is the source of their beauty. — Richard L. McGuire

The lord works in mysterious ways. Indeed. And a shorter way to say that is: God is a sneak. — Demetri Martin

God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes he uses anonymous people. — Khaled Talib

But what really won me over was his butt. What finally made it impossible for me not to like the man was how right out there on the Adventist basepaths, right in front of eighty or ninety of the kind of pious adult spectators who spent their every Sabbath if not their entire lives trying to forget the existence of things like butts, Beal's buns were trying to light a fire by friction inside his jeans; they were gyrating like a washing machine with its load off balance; they were thrashing against his pants like two big halibut against the bottom of a boat. And the wonderful thing, the amazing thing, was how once his older audience got over the shock of it, they began to look amused at, then fascinated by, and finally downright grateful toward his writhing reminder that yes, buns did exist, and yes, every one of us owned not one but two of the things, and yes, like the God who created them in His Image, they did indeed move in mysterious ways. — David James Duncan

86. I get angry when believers unhesitatingly attribute every good thing in the world to God - and then respond to bad things by saying, "God works in mysterious ways." If God's ways are so mysterious, and we can't begin to understand his thinking behind tsunamis and drought and pediatric cancer, then what makes you think you understand his intentions when it comes to pretty sunsets or cute puppies or helping you find the peanut butter? — Greta Christina

Life works in mysterious ways, Ember, and the secret is to not think too hard on the why or how of it, and to not mourn what is no longer, but live: live hard and love hard. — L.A. Fiore

All of us, all of us, all of us trying to save our immortal souls, some ways seemingly more round about and mysterious than others. We are having a good time here. But hope all will be revealed soon. — Raymond Carver

Many will tell you "The Lord works in mysterious ways." What they are really telling you is they don't know the answer. The Lord does not work in mysterious ways. There is a purpose and beauty in all that God does and although many don't notice it, it is there for those who know what to look for.
From: Revelations of 2012 Beyond Faith: Finding God in A Chaotic World — The Prophet Of Life

The power generated of ten minds for good is superior to that of ten thousand minds acting on a lower motive. But it is a silent power. It moves in mysterious ways. It is noiseless. It makes no show of open opposition. It uses no methods of effort through tongue or arm or physical force. — Prentice Mulford

A whore with a veil is mysterious. God's ways appear to be ... insane. — Joe Abercrombie

China was not at all what I expected it to be. I had an image of China as a very quaint and mysterious and peaceful place. Well, it's quaint and mysterious in some respects, but not in the ways I had thought. The people are mysterious. They don't often tell you what they feel. — Rosemary Mahoney

As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing ... he did not claim that God moves in mysterious ways. Instead he seemed to believe, as she did, though they never could have discussed it, that everything else is in motion while God does not move at all. God sits still, perfectly at rest, the silver dollar at the bottom of the well, the question. — Barbara Kingsolver

Jackson [Rathbone], who plays Jasper Cullen. He's such a mysterious kid. I've been friends with him for a long time, and I still don't get him, and I don't think he gets himself! He's really friendly, but there's this mystery about him and he's talented in so many ways. It's too much talent for one person. He reminds me of a vampire. — Kellan Lutz

So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life. — Amy Tan

God is often silent when we prefer that he speak and he interrupts us when we prefer that he stay silent. His ways are not our ways. To live with the sacred God of creation means that we conduct our lives with a God who does not explain himself to us. It means that we worship a God who is often mysterious - too mysterious to fit our formulas for better living. It means that God is not our best friend our secret lover or our good-luck charm. He is God. — Craig S. Barnes

Trust in Creation which is made fresh daily and doesn't suffer in translation. This God does not work in especially mysterious ways. The sun here rises and sets at six exactly. A caterpillar becomes a butterfly. A bird raises its brood in the forest and a greenheart tree will only grow from a greenheart seed. He brings drought sometimes followed by torrential rains and if these things aren't always what I had in mind, they aren't my punishment either. They're rewards, let's say for the patience of a seed. — Barbara Kingsolver

Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. — Michael Ende

The Law works in the
most mysterious of ways. — Robin S. Sharma

To say that the Force works in mysterious ways is to admit one's ignorance, for any mystery can be solved through the application of knowledge and unrelenting effort. — James Luceno

How did you get in?" "I move in mysterious ways." "God moves in mysterious ways. You move like lightening-here one moment, gone the next. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Time is like a wheel. Turning and turning - never stopping. And the woods are the center; the hub of the wheel. It began the first week of summer, a strange and breathless time when accident, or fate, bring lives together. When people are led to do things, they've never done before. On this summer's day, not so very long ago, the wheel set lives in motion in mysterious ways. — Natalie Babbitt

It is good to have many personae, to make collections, sew up several, collect them as we go along in life. As we become older, with such a collection at our behest, we find we can portray any aspect of self most anytime we wish. However, at some point, most particularly as one grows into past mid-life and on into old age, one's personas shift and meld in mysterious ways. Eventually, there is a kind of 'meltdown', a loss of personae complete, thereby revealing what would, in its greatest light, be called 'the true self. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The idea that God works in mysterious ways is rubbish. There's nothing mysterious about his ways. They're premeditated and slightly conniving, and they place you in an impossible situation. — Melina Marchetta

Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players,* to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time. Secondly, the Earth's a Libra. — Terry Pratchett

Isn't it incredible?, I said.
There was nothing incredible about it, she said.
I thought it was so because I spoke English, because I read books, and because my parents paid for my education and my upkeep. For me everything was surprising, the world was full of wonder, the most random idiotic occurrence was incredible because my luck made it so. For people like her, for the poor, the only incredible thing in the whole world was money and the mysterious ways in which it worked. — Jeet Thayil

God works in mysterious ways but at least he works, he's never on welfare in a mysterious way. — Stephen Colbert

I'm Sorry,' he says. It's simple and direct, with none of the nonsense about God calling home an angel too young and who are we to question his mysterious ways. — Libba Bray

Know this ... she does not want to become the shadow of her husband, but the moon of his life, for when she appears, her presence is powerful in all her mysterious ways ... she comes and goes so discreetly, waning and waxing whilst forever leaving her presence behind, reminding you that you cannot survive life without her ... — Jemina Akhtar

To imagine that "God moves in mysterious ways" is to put up a smokescreen of mystery behind which fantasy may survive in spite of all the facts. — Barbara Smoker

The Lord works in mysterious ways, all right. Wish a baby dead, get another one in return as punishment. This is my reckoning. — Amy Lukavics

The lesson is letting go, giving up and giving thanks for what is. Life unfolds in mysterious and beautiful ways; I have very little say in this process. — Judy Liautaud

God moves in mysterious ways
His wonders to performs — William Cowper

The ways of Wayne are mysterious and incomprehensible. — Brandon Sanderson

The new racism, like God, works in mysterious ways and is quite effective in maintaining white privilege, for example, instead of saying as they used to say during the Jim Crow era that they do not want us as neighbors, they say things nowadays such as 'I am concerned about crime, property values and schools. — Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Sometimes God's ways are mysterious.
Sometimes He reveals them bit by bit over long periods of time.
Then sometimes they're just plain bizarre, but immediately clear -- picture-perfect. — Cindy McCormick Martinusen

I believe in God. I believe in a higher power. And I do believe that God works in mysterious ways. — Davone Bess

I believe that every blessing, every breakthrough, every miracle traces back to the prayers that were prayed by you or for you. One of the greatest moments in eternity will be the day God peels back the space-time curtain and unveils His sovereignty by connecting the divine dots between our prayers and His answers. That infinite web of prayer crisscrosses every nation, every generation. And when God finally reveals His strange and mysterious ways, it will drop us to our knees in worship. We will thank Him for the prayers He did answer. We'll also thank Him for the prayers He didn't answer because we'll finally understand why. And we'll thank Him for the answered prayers we weren't even aware of. — Mark Batterson

Dr. Inchbald tried his best to comply. 'I've come to the conclusion that God is sovereign, even over science, and that I cannot pretend to fully know His ways. They really are mysterious, as the saying goes. And they are not of the mind of men, no matter how hard we try to wrap our minds about these ways. I can marvel at the intricacies of the human body, which really are pretty miraculous to behold. In fact, I don't know how one can go to medical school and not be in greater awe of a Creator than ever before. — Carolyn Weber

a spouse is taking a part of his heart away from his mate and bringing it to an outside source. This is not only painful, but also unjust. It works against what God intended to develop in marriage - the mysterious unity that brings the couple closer to each other in ever-deepening ways. Triangulation betrays trust and fractures the union. — Henry Cloud

What is that which can never die It is that faithful force that is born into us that one that is greater than us that calls new seed to the open and battered and barren places so that we can be resown. It is this force in its insistence in its loyalty to us in its love of us in its most often mysterious ways that is far greater far more majestic and far more ancient than any heretofore ever known. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The Lord might work in mysterious ways he told himself, but human beings performed untold evils. - Dr. Christopher Logan — Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

Serendipity works in crazy mysterious ways, doesn't it? I thought I was going to die when Nathan broke our engagement, now here I am on my honeymoon falling in love with another man. — Leah Marie Brown

There is a beauty in paradox when it comes to talking about things of ultimate concern. Paradox works against our tendency to stay superficial in our faith, or to rest on easy answers or categorical thinking. It breaks apart our categories by showing the inadequacy of them and by pointing to a reality larger than us, the reality of gloria, of light, of beyond-the-beyond. I like to call it paradoxology - the glory of paradox, paradox-doxology - which takes us somewhere we wouldn't be capable of going if we thought we had everything all wrapped up, if we thought we had attained full comprehension. The commitment to embracing the paradox and resisting the impulse to categorize people (ourselves included) is one of the ways we follow Jesus into that larger mysterious reality of light and love. — Nanette Sawyer

I had only one Teammate. And He moved, as ever, in mysterious ways. — Marcus Luttrell

Never fret, my love, the universe always balances the scales. Her ways may be mysterious, but they are always just." Isabelle Dallaire, "Gram — Mia Sheridan

God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways — Penn Jillette

Love works in mysterious ways, — Julia Quinn

Divine impassibility is not some arbitrary invention, due to the quirkiness of theologians, but it points instead to the intensely mysterious character of God. Understanding even a little of such grandeur taxes our minds, and stretches our thinking, leading us to use language that Scripture itself uses- negative language, to say what God is not, and metaphorical language to portray the ways that God deals with us in creation and redemption, and stretched language to attempt to do justice to God's supreme eminence".

Confessing the Impassible God, pg. 23-24 — Richard Barcellos

Reading-not occasionally, not only on vacation but everyday-gives me nourishment and enlarges my life in mysterious and essential ways. — Mona Simpson

What happens is consciousness operates in mysterious ways. One of those ways is that the old paradigm suddenly starts to die. — Deepak Chopra

There is titillating pleasure in looking back at the past and asking oneself, 'What would have happened if...' and substituting one chance occurrence for another, , observing how, from a gray, barren, humdrum moment in one's life, there grows forth a marvelous rosy even that in reality had failed to flower. A mysterious thing, this branching structure of life: one senses in every past instant a parting of ways, a 'thus' and an 'otherwise', with innumerable dazzling zigzags bifurcating and trifurcating against the dark background of the past. — Vladimir Nabokov

The truth is, God has redeems the world across cultures, countries, world powers, systems, religious orders, trends, movements, and human heart since the beginning of time. His ways are entirely outside of our understanding. Sure, I know and love God and my contacts, because it is the only one I know; and I am grateful he found me here. But he has rescued people in and out of church, in and out of religions, and in and out of traditions since the beginning. He operates and truly mysterious ways we won't know until heaven. And we will probably be shocked. — Jen Hatmaker

God might work on mysterious ways, but hell worked on efficient ones. — Richelle Mead

I'm just interested in all of the different ways that a woman can be. We don't have enough, when it comes to American film, that shows all of the different complexities and ways that a woman is interesting and mysterious and dynamic and really complicated. — Brie Larson

It is one of the mysterious ways of Allah to make women troublesome when he makes them beautiful. — George Bernard Shaw

I slip my canteen strap over my head, open the lid, and take a drink. Then I hand it to Hampton. A peace offering. "It's not communionif there's no wine."
Hampton tips it to his lips and swallows long and hard. He wipes his mouth when he's done. "Well, darn. The Savior got confused and turned this wine into water."
"The Lord works in mysterious ways," Henry says, taking the canteen fromHampton — Rae Carson

Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain. — William Cowper

And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. "There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. — Joseph Heller

Ah, paths of the soul, mysterious ways of the heart! One must walk their full lengths before facing the supreme equation of Eternal Life. It is essential for you to live all their conflicts and to know them fully in the long process of spiritual ascension. — Andre Luiz Moreira

Paris, on the other hand, looked exactly as it was supposed to look. It wore its heart on its sleeve, and the strange thing was that the heart it wore so openly was in other ways so closed-mysterious, uninviting. — Adam Gopnik

The music and the philosophy feed off of one another on a subconscious level, though I've never really integrated my academic teaching into songwriting. But what they have in common is that they're both ways to tap into the mysterious parts of our world. — Steve Weinstein

God works in mysterious ways so if you let the world dictate the way God works, you will miss God working. — Jonah Books

Part of me thinks we're fools to trust either of the, Hapexamendios or His Reconciler. If He was such a loving God, why did He do so much harm? And don't tell me He moves in mysterious ways because that's so much horse shit and we both know it. — Clive Barker

Life works in mysterious ways, and I believe one of the biggest challenges and successes is to let go and let it be. — Brittany Burgunder

Truly, God works in mysterious ways. The wheels of His mercy and justice move quietly, but they do move. — Billy Graham

I don't believe in God. Not with my mind. Not with my sense. I believe in what you can see and feel and hear and know. But sometimes a mood comes over me when all of life seems mysterious. The seasons. Things that grow. The different ways to be a person. My dreams. — Sybil Claiborne

And yet, for a writer of fiction, part of the heart remains that of a stranger, for what we are trying to do is to understand those others who are our fictional characters, somehow to gain entrance to their minds and feelings, to respect them for themselves as human individuals, and to portray them as truly as we can. The whole process of fiction is a mysterious one, and a writer, however experienced, remains in some ways a perpetual amateur, or perhaps a perpetual traveller, an explorer of those inner territories, those strange lands of the heart and spirit. — Margaret Laurence

Different sorts of survival machine appear very varied on the outside and in their internal organs. An octopus is nothing like a mouse, and both are quite different from an oak tree. Yet in their fundamental chemistry they are rather uniform, and, in particular, the replicators that they bear, the genes, are basically the same kind of molecule in all of us - from bacteria to elephants. We are all survival machines for the same kind of replicator - molecules called DNA - but there are many different ways of making a living in the world, and the replicators have built a vast range of machines to exploit them. A monkey is a machine that preserves genes up trees, a fish is a machine that preserves genes in the water; there is even a small worm that preserves genes in German beer mats. DNA works in mysterious ways. — Richard Dawkins

Burke, and the better men among his disciples, knew that change in society is natural, inevitable, and beneficial; the statesman should not struggle vainly to dam the whole stream of alteration, because then he would be opposing Providence; instead, his duty is to reconcile innovation and prescriptive truth, to lead the waters of novelty into the canals of custom. This accomplished, even though he may seem to himself to have failed, the conservative has executed his destined work in the great mysterious incorporation of the human race; and if he has not preserved intact the old ways he loved, still he has modified greatly the ugly aspect of the new ways. — Russell Kirk

Whoever believes in a God at all, believes in an infinite mystery; and if the existence of God is such an infinite mystery, we can very well expect and afford to have many of His ways mysterious to us. — Ichabod Spencer

he argued that the Europeans of the 1800s struggled to understand divine energy in two ways, first through theatrical acts where mesmerists and hypnotists amazed audiences with illusions and parlor tricks. When the audiences confronted inexplicable illusions, the performers on stage suggested that mysterious forces were at work. — Scott Carney

I'm one of those people that thinks the world changes in smaller and in more mysterious ways than a lot of people like to think. A lot of traditional charities and organizations do things that on the surface seem like a good idea, but it doesn't change the way that people think about interacting with other people. — Misha Collins

I'd ask [God] why he keeps trying to kill us all with disease, pestilence, and natural disasters. I'd ask why 99% of all species there ever were are now extinct
if God works in mysterious ways, that way is mysteriously genocidal. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I think we should stop treating ["God works in mysterious ways"] as any kind of wisdom and recognize it as the transparently defensive propaganda that it is. A positive response might be, "Oh good! I love a mystery. Let's see if we can solve this one, too. Do you have any ideas? — Daniel C. Dennett

The Lord knows all - His timing and reasoning is perfect. If we really trust Him, then we no longer see our failures as a bad thing. We will see them as an answer to our prayers even if we don't understand how in the moment. — Lindsey Rietzsch

Sharing secrets is the way in which women tie themselves together, for it reveals complicity and trust. Holding secrets shows trustworthiness and a sort of quite defiance. It is a natural thing for a female to hold secrets within her breast until the time is ripe to release them. Does it not follow the way in which her body is formed? A woman is made with that dark and mysterious recess that can grow a child safely until the child is ready to come out onto the birthing bed. And like birthing, secrets present themselves in many ways. some slip easily into the world, others must be torn out, if the body is unwilling. — Kathleen Kent

These are the mysterious ways of knowledge, power and enlightenment. I can only allude to them in words. I cannot possibly explain what this process is like. — Frederick Lenz

Expectation works in mysterious ways---and totally unconsciously. — Michael Crichton

Seated upon the convex mound Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays And sings his canticles and hymns, Making the hollow vault resound God's goodness and mysterious ways, Till the great fish spouts music as he swims. — Aldous Huxley

Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars -all the beauties of creation. — Victor Hugo

God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, as Reenie used to say. Could it be that Myra is my designated guardian angel? Or is she instead a foretaste of Purgatory? And how do you tell the difference? — Margaret Atwood

A microscopic egg had failed to divide in time due to a failure somewhere along a chain of chemical events, a tiny disturbance in a cascade of protein reactions. A molecular event ballooned like an exploding universe, out onto the wider scale of human misery. No cruelty, nothing avenged, no ghost moving in mysterious ways. Merely a gene transcribed in error, an enzyme recipe skewed, a chemical bond severed. A process of natural wastage as indifferent as it was pointless. Which only brought into relief healthy, — Ian McEwan

Those with less curiosity or ambition just mumble that God works in mysterious ways. I intend to catch him in the act. — Damien Echols

Dr. Leon Stone turned out to be one of the most important people in Horselover Fat's life. To get to Stone, Fat had to nearly kill himself physically, matching his mental death. Is this what they mean about God's mysterious ways? How else could Fat have linked up with Leon Stone? Only some dismal act of the order of a suicide attempt, a truly lethal attempt, would have achieved it; Fat had to die, or nearly die, to be cured. Or nearly cured. — Philip K. Dick

The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers. — Scott Adams

Mr. Christ, I read you as an infinitely patient entity who, as they say, often works in mysterious ways, a rebel unafraid to take the tougher, less traveled paths. Seems to me you're playing the long game. Is that why more states are coming out in favor of marriage equality? Is that why the Affordable Care Act is now with us? — Henry Rollins

If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend. — Daniel Dennett

Sometimes, if you're lucky, the biggest hardship can lead to your greatest blessing. It just takes time to see that God works in mysterious ways. — Penelope Ward

As a believer, I know that Jesus Christ has a plan and it's not going to be my plan. It's not always succeeding and looking back it's amazing looking back to see how God works in mysterious ways, not always good ways, rough ways but those rough times, those rough patches, and those swamps and all those things that I went through are looking back, were such an incredible life lessons for me not only to shape and build me as an athlete but most importantly, my character as a person. — Jennie Finch

When I was maybe five or six years old, a woman down the street ... got flattened by a train. When I got older I realized it probably wasn't an accident. It was a late train and she was so sick and swollen with age she could barely move, so what the hell was she doing crossing the tracks at midnight on a Tuesday? But at the time my mom only said that God works in mysterious ways. AKA, God will make a pancake of a sick old woman who never did harm to anybody, so what do you think he'll do to you if you don't clean your room and brush your teeth and mind your gospel? — Lauren Oliver

its alright
its alright
its alright — U2

Stories come to me in mysterious ways, more like dreams than reasoned creations. — Anthony Browne

Life works in mysterious ways but when you find your inner glow is back and shining brighter, you know it's right. — Lily Collins

The Lord works in mysterious ways. What's true to one man, a wonder and a marvel, might not seem so to another, as God didn't intend it for him. — Katherine Howe

It was like carrying a rabbit's foot or throwing salt over your shoulder if you happened to spill any; these things were part of the grain and texture of life, and better to do them than not, just in case God's ways were more mysterious than we Christians could grasp. — Robert McCammon

Goodness works in mysterious ways. Even in the deepest dark, you'll find a light to shine your way through. — Melissa De La Cruz

Sometimes My blessings come to you in mysterious ways: through pain and trouble. At such times you can know My goodness only through your trust in Me. Understanding will fail you, but trust will keep you close to Me. — Sarah Young