Quotes & Sayings About Mystery Man

There are few things, - whether in the outward world, or to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought, - few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There aren't many things a man finds more appealing than loyalty. Unless it's a woman with really big knockers. — Lois Greiman

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, - the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heavens artillery, - but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggots life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear od death, of God, of the universe, comes over him, - the hope of the Resurrection and the life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, - it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God.
- The White Silence — Jack London

Every man has three worlds. What he perceives, what he shows to the world and his reality. The third one is the mystery to be lived. — Harshit Walia

The media are always on the lookout for possible sightings of D.B. Cooper, the man who parachuted from a plane with $200,000 in ransom money in November 1971. But the truth is, the mystery man wearing dark sunglasses almost certainly died during the jump, according to the FBI agents on the case at the time. — Ronald Kessler

It is Mystery - the mystery any one man or woman can feel but not understand as the meaning of any event - or accident - in any life on earth ... — Eugene O'Neill

It is obvious that the aspects of mystery which gather round the word "election" are not confined to it alone. An important class of words, such as "calling," "predestination" "foreknowledge," "purpose," "gift," bears this same character; asserting or connoting, in appropriate contexts, the element of the inscrutable and sovereign in the action of the Divine will upon man, and particularly upon man's will and affection toward God. And it will be felt by careful students of the Bible in its larger and more general teachings that one deep characteristic of the Book, which with all its boundless multiplicity is yet one, is to emphasize on the side of man everything that can humble, convict, reduce to worshipping silence (see for typical passages Job 40:3, 1; Ro 3:19), and on the side of God everything which can bring home to man the transcendence and sovereign claims of his almighty Maker. — James Orr

Participation in the dance was entirely voluntary, a mental vow to worship the Mystery in this manner being expressed by a man ardently desiring the recovery of a sick relative; or surrounded by an enemy with escape apparently impossible; or, it might be, dying of hunger ... since some inscrutable power had swept all game from forest and prairie. Others joined in the ceremony in the hope and firm belief that the Mystery ... would grant them successes against the enemy and consequent eminence at home. — Edward S. Curtis

Without the heavy set aristocratic man snoring away on his side of the bed, without the fresh-eyed child whose hair ribbon needs retying; without the conversation at meals and the hearty appetites and getting dressed for church on time; without the tears of laughter or the worry about making both ends meet, the unpaid bills, the layoffs, both seasonal and unexpected; without the toys that have to picked up lest somebody trip over them, and the seven shirts that have to be washed and ironed, one for every day in the week; without the scraped knee and the hurt feelings, the misunderstandings that need to be cleared up, the voices calling for her so that she is perpetually having to stop what she is doing and go see what they want - without all this, what have you? A mystery: How is it that she didn't realize it was going to last such a short time? — William Maxwell

A wise man does not always admit to everything he knows. And sometimes an overly-credulous friend can be a source of mild amusement."
~Sherlock Holmes — Stephanie Osborn

You heard me, only Friend whom I love. To ravish my heart, you became man. You shed your blood, what a supreme mystery! ... And you still live for me on the Altar. If I cannot see the brilliance of your Face Or hear your sweet voice, O my God, I can live by your grace, I can rest on your Sacred Heart! — Therese Of Lisieux

You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life. — Emil Cioran

If women do not find a male attractive, he is simply not offering them enough genetic value; his behavior is unattractive, and he can only become attractive by improving his behavior to become more masculine and thus in fact more valuable to women.However, women not only want a male they are attracted to, but they also prefer a man who is attracted to them, so the process of seduction boils down to demonstrating that attraction too. What women want is supposed to be some sort of unsolved mystery that has haunted males, and even females, since the dawn of civilization.Well, no more! Women want men who treat them like women, males who are masculine and who make females feel feminine-men with confidence, charm, and responsibility — Anonymous

She would not have another man push her aside like some appetizer, there to wet his whistle only to be left once the main dish arrived.

No more. She pushed her thumb into his throat a little harder. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

I opened my eyes to see a silver chain, like his but thinner, longer, with a saint pendant on it. I wasn't the same as his, though; the image was of a man's profile, his eyes turned upward.
'Who is it?' I asked.
'No idea. I found it in a jar my mom has full of them,' he said. 'I was looking for someone like mine, then just someone I recognized. But then I thought maybe it was cooler to have it be a mystery, you know? So it's not just about one thing, but anything. That way, it can be about what you want it to be.'
I turned it over in my hand. Like the image on the front, the back was well-worn, the few words there unreadable.
'Saint Anything.' I looked up at him. 'I love it. Thank you. — Sarah Dessen

The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present. — Alice Morse Earle

Any man who is capable of being offended or insulted after the age of forty is either immature or a damned hypocrite." (Senator) — Leonard Holton

Shouldering the duffel bag with the Marine Corps bulldog, Old Man knocked Jan's photo off the bed table. He turned to stone staring down at the photo. His face then splintered into hurt. Tears seeped into his eyes. He grappled for the nearest bedpost and slumped forward on extended arms. His shoulders jerked and head sagged a little while his heart broke. Old Man cried the mute cry of men of his generation. — Ed Lynskey

Forget the buildings and the monuments. Let the softness of dark come in, all those light-years between stars and planets. Cities were the works of men but the earth before and after those cities, outside and beneath and around them, was the dream of a sleeping leviathan--it was god sleeping there and dreaming, the same god that was time and transfiguration. From whatever dreamed the dream at the source, atom or energy, flowed all the miracles of evolution--tiger, tiger burning bright, the massive whales in the deep, luminescent specters in their mystery. The pearls that were their eyes, their tongues that were wet leaves, their bodies that were the bodies of the fantastic.

Spectacular bestiaries of heaven, the limbs and tails of the gentle and the fearsome, silent or raging at will . . . they could never be known in every detail and they never should be. — Lydia Millet

Never you fight a man that knows and understand the mysteries about God. — Ikechukwu Izuakor

Sometimes it's nice to have a man around the house. But a dog will clean the dishes. — Lois Greiman

How do you generalize? War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. The truths are contradictory. — Tim O'Brien

Watch out for your daughters.
The man is coming.
He'll promise you the world.
But if you accept, there's no turning back.
Watch out for your daughters.
Because here comes Jack. — Nancy Glynn

Man determines to dictate your turn, but God determines your time. It was Saul's turn, but it was David's time. Don't wait for your turn, wait for your time. — Lee M. Sapp

The advances of biology during the past 20 years have been breathtaking, particularly in cracking the mystery of heredity. Nevertheless, the greatest and most difficult problems still lie ahead. The discoveries of the 1970's about the chemical roots of memory in nerve cells or the basis of learning, about the complex behavior of man and animals, the nature of growth, development, disease and aging will be at least as fundamental and spectacular as those of the recent past. — H. Bentley Glass

When I see a man or woman alone, he or she looks mysterious to me, which is only to say that for a moment I see another human being clearly. — Marilynne Robinson

I don't know where the sun beams end
and the starlight(start of our lives) begin(s), it's all a mystery
And I don't know how a man decides what's right for his own life, it's all a mystery. — Wayne Coyne

Every man is half God, half man; he is both spirit and flesh. That is why the mystery of Christ is not simply a mystery for a particular creed: It is universal. — Nikos Kazantzakis

Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept us safe among them ... The animals had rights - the right of man's protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right to freedom, and the right to man's indebtedness. This concept of life and its relations filled us with the joy and mystery of living; it gave us reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. — Chief Luther Standing Bear

Every man will tell you little boys should not play with dolls but ask any mother and they will tell you, every little boy has gone to sleep cuddled into one at one time in there life. — Peter Fryer

There are three things you need to know about me before we go any farther. I'm the heiress to the Fitzsimmons' Vidalia onion empire and as southern as the day is long. (Now, you get the name, right?) I'll be thirty in less than two months, my curves have curves, I'm in love with the man of my dreams, and I have great hair (not conceited, just honest. Put away the claws.). And... I'm a vampire. (Not the biting kind. The cursed kind.) Any questions? — Julia Mills

Life's funny. Sometimes it's your oyster, and sometimes you're it's bitch-slapped man-whore. — Lois Greiman

A man could shoot a squirrel out of a tree from a distance of sixty feet. But he couldn't vomit into a bucket or pee into a pot only two feet away. It was one of the great mysteries of life. — Maggie Osborne

Certainly the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions about the ultimate mystery of the universe and man's relation to it is placed beyond the reach of law. Government may not interfere with organized or individual expressions of belief or disbelief. Propagation of belief - or even of disbelief - in the supernatural is protected, whether in church or chapel, mosque or synagogue, tabernacle or meeting-house. — Felix Frankfurter

Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what
had befallen him. His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was suspended over them. No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Growth is a greater mystery than death. All of us can understand failure, we all contain failure and death within us, but not even the successful man can begin to describe the impalpable elations and apprehensions of growth. — Norman Mailer

Faced with the immensity of the universe, Job realized that there are limits to man's rationalizing, that we cannot find where the cloud of sorrow starts, that all our boasted knowledge is but an island in the vast ocean of mystery, and as the island of knowledge grows larger, the shore line of mystery becomes longer. At the end of his wits, he surrendered in trust to a Higher Wisdom. — Ralph Washington Sockman

When a man grows old his joy
Grows more deep day after day,
His empty heart is full at length
But he has need of all that strength
Because of the increasing Night
That opens her mystery and fright. — William Butler Yeats

There was only one hope she didn't and wouldn't allow herself to hold on to: that if, in almost thirty years, she hadn't found a man, not a single one, who was exclusively significant for her, who had become inevitable to her, someone who was strong and brought her the mystery she had been waiting for, not a single one who was really a man and not an eccentric, a weakling or one of the needy the world was full of - then the man simply didn't exist, and as long as this New Man did not exist, one could only be friendly and kind to one another, for a while. There was nothing more to make of it, and it would be best if women and men kept their distance and had nothing to do with each other until both had found their way out of the tangle and confusion, the discrepancy inherent in all relationships. — Ingeborg Bachmann

Then he walked in, the Great Mystery Man, now known as Cabe "Hawk" Delgado.
I'd fallen in love with him at first sight. No joke. He was hot but it wasn't lust. It was love.
Okay, it was part lust but it was mostly love. — Kristen Ashley

The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
- "Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'" LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64 — Albert Einstein

A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all loneliness and men know it best. — Bernard Malamud

Nothing woke up a man as quickly in the morning as a scorpion in his pants. — Dana Marton

The range of the human mind, the scale and depth of the metaphors the mind is capable of manufacturing as it grapples with the universe, stand in stunning contrast to the belief that there is only one reality, which is man's, or worse, that only one culture among the many on earth possesses the truth.
To allow mystery, which is to say to yourself, "There could be more, there could be things we don't understand," is not to damn knowledge. It is to take a wider view. It is to permit yourself an extraordinary freedom: someone else does not have to be wrong in order that you may be right. — Barry Lopez

Fritz Mondale is not some synthetic Masked Marvel or Mystery Man. He is not made of silicon and micro-chip flakes. He is made of flesh and blood and brains. — Lane Kirkland

Everything about the man spoke of virility
his quick reaction, his calm control now that danger had passed. And she'd never seen a man wield a gun in real life
it was kind of a turn-on to know that he'd protected her. Of course he had protected everyone, but he _had_ sort of singled her out by heaving her to the floor. — Stephanie Bond

It takes a certain kind of man willing to work long, grueling hours in a career offering few rewards. — Jon Michaelsen

It is only God himself who brings Job joy in the end. And, when all is done, the mystery remains. God stands revealed in his hiddenness, an object of terror, adoration and love. And Job stands before him 'like a man' (38:3; 40:7), trusting and satisfied. — Francis I. Andersen

If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not, for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts. — Cormac McCarthy

Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them — Miriam Makeba

If God created everything, and if man is created in God's image, and if man can dream a fate greater than the one set out for him by God, could God dream a fate greater than his own? — Michael Anthony

The greatest riddle of all ... the riddle of man! The complex mystery of the universal human being as he stands wihtin the threshold of universal laws. This is the most fascinating puzzle! — Adriana Koulias

I was crazy about goal keeping. In Russia and the Latin countries, that gallant art had been always surrounded with a halo of singular glamour. Aloof, solitary, impassive, the crack goalie is followed in the streets by entranced small boys. He vies with the matador and the flying ace as an object of thrilled adulation. His sweater, his peaked cap, his kneeguards, the gloves protruding from the hip pocket of his shorts, set him apart from the rest of the team. He is the lone eagle, the man of mystery, the last defender. Photographers, reverently bending one knee, snap him in the act of making a spectacular dive across the goal mouth to deflect with his fingertips a low, lightning-like shot, and the stadium roars in approval as he remains for a moment or two lying full length where he fell, his goal still intact. — Vladimir Nabokov

The ultimate divine mystery is there found immanent within each. It is not "out there" somewhere. It is within you. And no one has ever been cut off. The only difficulty is, however, that some folk simply don't know how to look within. The fault is no one's, if not one's own. Nor is the problem one of an original Fall of the "first man," many thousand years ago, and of exile and atonement. The problem is psychological. And it can be solved. — Joseph Campbell

Just the night before, a puma's howl had set a chill at my spine and, man, life didn't get any richer than that. — Ed Lynskey

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand. — Neil Armstrong

Love - such a keen mystery prone to pierce and shatter the delicate heart. Yet it possesses more strength, power, and influence than any other magic known to man. — Richelle E. Goodrich

No man will be present in those mysteries,
yet all men will kneel,
no man will be potent,
important,
yet all men will feel
what it is to be a woman. — Hilda Doolittle

Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate. — Richard P. Feynman

Creative ideas, in my opinion, show their value in that, like keys, they help to "unlock" hitherto unintelligible connections of facts and thus enable man to penetrate deeper into the mystery of life. I am convinced that Jung's ideas can serve in this way to find and interpret new facts in many fields of science (and also everyday life) simultaneously leading the individual to a more balanced, more ethical, and wider conscious outlook. If the reader should feel stimulated to work further on the investigation and assimilation of the unconscious-which always begins by working on oneself-the purpose of this introductory book would be fulfilled. — C. G. Jung

The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock - more than a maple - universe. — Annie Dillard

How, in such an alien and inhuman world, can so powerless a creature as man preserve his aspirations untarnished? A strange mystery it is that nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking mother. In spite of death, the mark and seal of the parental control, man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticize, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world with which he is aquainted, this freedom belongs; and in this lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control his outward life. — Bertrand Russell

There is proverbially a mystery among most men of new wealth, how they made their first ten thousand; it is the qualities they showed then, before they became bullies, when every man was someone to be placated, when only hope sustained them and they could count on nothing from the world but what could be charmed from it, that make them, if they survive their triumph, successful with women. — Evelyn Waugh

Spirit in its human manifestation is man's response to his You. Man speaks in many tongues - tongues of language, of art, of action - but the spirit is one; it is response to the You that appears from the mystery and addresses us from the mystery. Spirit is word. And even as verbal speech may first become word in the brain of man and then become sound in his throat, although both are merely refractions of the true event because in truth language does not reside in man but man stands in language and speaks out of it - so it is with all words, all spirit. Spirit is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe. Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his You. He is able to do that when he enters into this relation with his whole being. It is solely by virtue of his power to relate that man is able to live in the spirit. — Martin Buber

There is therefore a tremendous mystery in the fact that God may be united with man and the man with God. — Michael Servetus

Raoul," she said, "forget THE MAN'S VOICE and do not even remember its name ... You must never try to fathom the mystery of THE MAN'S VOICE. — Gaston Leroux

I believe in mystery and, frankly, I sometimes face this mystery with great fear. In other words, I think that there are many things in the universe that we cannot perceive or penetrate, and that also we experience some of the most beautiful things in life only in a very primitive form. Only in relation to these mysteries do I consider myself to be a religious man ... — Albert Einstein

Who his father was. But she left a clue: posters of Herman E. Calloway and his famous band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!! Bud's got an idea that those posters will lead him to his father. Once he decides to hit the road and find this mystery man, nothing can stop him - not hunger, not cops, not vampires, not even Herman E. Calloway himself. A crackerjack read-aloud. — Christopher Paul Curtis

You know, my brother won't walk out of a restaurant with me anymore because he doesn't want to be linked to me as my new 'mystery man.' Same with my close guy friends. — Ashley Greene

Thou shalt understand that it is a science most profitable, and passing all other sciences, for to learn to die. For a man to know that he shall die, that is common to all men; as much as there is no man that may ever live or he hath hope or trust thereof; but thou shalt find full few that hath this cunning to learn to die. I shall give thee the mystery of this doctrine; the which shall profit thee greatly to the beginning of ghostly health, and to a stable fundamental of all virtues. — Henry Suso

Am I sure that there is no mind behind our existence and no mystery anywhere in the universe? I think I am. What joy, what relief there would be, if we could declare so with complete conviction. If that were so I could wish to live for ever. How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own rituals the meaning for his existence and write the rules whereby he lives. — Thornton Wilder

Though everyone in the bar knew who he was, no one asked him about the death, though one old man did rustle his newspaper suggestively. — Donna Leon

We have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover "the secret of God" that our difficulties disappear. — Mark Twain

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do. — Mahatma Gandhi

The mystery of one man is too immense and too profound to be explained by another man. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Some day I would like to write a textbook on how to be a female detective in a man's world. Rule Number One: try not to let your animosity show. Your career as an investigator will be short lived if you cannot hide your feelings when you dislike, distrust, or despise your interviewee. — Frances Brody

The wiry man scratched his head, looked the two inquisitors up and down and cleared his throat softly. "We must be quick." He turned to go, pulling his cloak over his head and shuffling through the door into the moonlight. The two inquisitors moved with impossible silence behind, floating across the straw-covered floor like the cats on the walls outside the hut. The cats froze at the disturbance before scurrying noiselessly into the shadows as the three silhouettes crossed the ten yards of grass before the blackness of the forest swallowed them. No fires flickered at this time, when the full moon was highest in the cloudless summer sky, and the three were the only waking souls in the hamlet. — Gregory Figg

There is nothing more important than being a man, just a plain, ordinary, human man. I know you think Spartacus is something more than a man. He isn't. If he were, then he wouldn't be any good at all.
There is no great mystery about Spartacus. — Howard Fast

I try to be a man of mystery. I try to keep the various projects I'm up to as close to the vest as possible until it's time to reveal them. — Alex Hirsch

The mystery of creativeness is surrounded with awe. A special reverence does envelop the power to be co-creators with God in the making of human life. It is this hidden element that in a special way belongs to God, as does the grace of God in the sacraments. Those who speak of sex alone concentrate on the physical or visible element, forgetting the spiritual or invisible mystery of creativeness. Humans in the sacraments supply the act, the bread, the water, and the words; God supplies the grace, the mystery. In the sacred act of creating life, man and woman supply the unity of the flesh; God supplies the soul and the mystery. Such is the mystery of sex. — Fulton J. Sheen

Woman knows man well enough where he is weak, but she is quite unable to fathom him where he is strong. The fact is that man is as much a mystery to woman as woman is to man. If that were not so, the separation of the sexes would only have been a waste of Nature's energy. — Rabindranath Tagore

Modern man's narrow-mindedness is best shown in his belief that there is no riddle before him. His wisdom is the sum of his knowledge and his ignorance, of which he is not aware, he accepts it as knowledge. Even in the face of the greatest mystery, he behaves self-consciously and conceitedly. He does not even see the problem. It is in this that the true measure of his ignorance and prejudice is manifested. — Alija Izetbegovic

There was a natural resource in the affective devotion to the saints and to Jesus, and a similar intensity of devotion inevitably became directed to the ordinary human.7 Eleanor of Aquitaine, the paragon of courtly love at the courts of Angers and Poitiers, was a grandchild of Guillaume, duke of Aquitaine, the first known troubadour. In many of Guillaume's love songs 'the vocabulary and emotional fervor hitherto ordinarily used to express man's love for God are transferred to the liturgical worship of woman, and vice versa.'8 The layering of Christian feeling and the new romantic spirit is also witnessed in the roman courtois, the epic stories filled with legendary material and hinged on figures of woman, mystery and quest. — Anthony Bartlett

That was close,"he said, helping himself to coffee.
Yeah, you almost opened the door to Morelli."
I wasn't talking about Morelli. I was talking about us."
That too," I said.
Ranger sliced a bagel and looked for the toaster.
It's broken,"I told him.
He truned the boiler on and slid the bagel into the oven.
That's surprisingly domestic for a man of mystery," I said to him.
He looked at me over the rim of his coffee mug. "I like things hot. — Janet Evanovich

The will, I believe, is the mystery of mysteries. Who can say beforehand that his will is strong? There are all kinds of indefinable currents moving to and fro between one's will and one's inclinations. People talk as if the two things were essentially distinct; on different sides of one's organism, like the heart and the liver. I believe there is a certain group of circumstances possible for every man, in which his will is destined to snap like a dry twig. — Henry James

I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent. — Henry David Thoreau

It was said that its existence protected decent women. An unmarried man could go to one of these houses and evacuate the sexual energy which was making him uneasy and at the same time maintain the popular attitudes about the purity and loveliness of women. It was a mystery, but then there are many mysterious things in our social thinking. — John Steinbeck

Pam (from The Office) is not intimidating, like one of those women who wears makeup and tailored clothes, and has a good job that she enjoys, and confidence, and an adult woman's sexuality. There's nothing scary about Pam, because there's no mystery; she's just like the boys who like her; mousy and shy. The ultimate emo-boy fantasy is to meet a nerdy, cute girl just like him, and nobody else will realize she's pretty. And she'll melt when she sees his record collection because it's just like hers ... and she'll never want to go out to a party for which he'll be forced to comb his hair, or buy grown-up shoes or tie a tie, or demonstrate a hearty handshake, or make eye contact, or relate to people who work in different fields, or to basically act like a man. — Julie Klausner

We were on Barrow Street now.
"Who is the man with the scar?" I said.
She shot me a glance, and her face hardened. "You saw him?"
"How could I miss? He was the real center of attention. Didn't you go to the opening at all?"
"No" She said. "And just because you saw him doesn't mean he was there. — Nicholas Christopher

Me?" he said in some surprise. "I won't be dancing! It's the bridal dance. The bride and groom dance alone!"
For one circuit of the room," she told him. "After which they are joined by the best man and first bridesmaid, then by the groomsman and the second bridesmaid."
Will reacted as he had been stung. He leaned over to speak across Jenny on his left, to Gilan.
Gil! Did you know we have to dance?" he asked. Gilan nodded enthusiastically.
Oh yes indeed. Jenny and I have been practicing for the past three days, haven't we, Jen?"
Jenny looked up at him adoringly and nodded. Jenny was in love. Gilan was tall, dashing, good-looking, charming and very ammusing. Plus he was cloaked in the mystery and romance tat came with being a Ranger. Jenny had only ever known one ranger and that had been grim-faced, gray-bearded Halt. — John Flanagan

The gospel comprises indeed, and unfolds, the whole mystery of man's redemption, as far forth as it is necessary to be known for our salvation. — Robert Boyle

Lifting their heads, and with no signal given as far as Ransom could see, they began to sing. To every man, in his acquaintance with a new art, there comes a moment when that which before was meaningless first lifts, as it were, one corner of the curtain that hides its mystery, and reveals, in a burst of delight which later and fuller understanding can hardly ever equal, one glimpse of the indefinite possibilities within. — C.S. Lewis

Everyone works in the service of man. We doctors work directly on man himself ... The great mystery of man is Jesus: 'He who visits a sick person, helps me,' Jesus said ... Just as the priest can touch Jesus, so do we touch Jesus in the bodies of our patients ... We have opportunities to do good that the priest doesn't have. Our mission is not finished when medicines are no longer of use. We must bring the soul to God; our word has some authority ... Catholic doctors are so necessary! — Gianna Beretta Molla

A mystery, in Christian theology, is what God knows and man cannot, and must instead believe. — Jill Lepore

In the end, science as we know it has two basic types of practitioners. One is the educated man who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery, whether it hides in a snail's eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ. The second kind of observer is the extreme reductionist who is so busy stripping things apart that the tremendous mystery has been reduced to a trifle, to intangibles not worth troubling one's head about. — Loren Eiseley

Why Brownlee left, and where he went,
Is a mystery even now.
For if a man should have been content
It was him; two acres of barley,
One of potatoes, four bullocks,
A milker, a slated farmhouse.
He was last seen going out to plough
On a March morning, bright and early.

By noon Brownlee was famous;
They had found all abandoned, with
The last rig unbroken, his pair of black
Horses, like man and wife,
Shifting their weight from foot to
Foot, and gazing into the future. — Paul Muldoon

But the false serpent persuaded Adam that he must still do something to become like God: he must achieve that likeness by deciding and acting for himself ... He wanted instead to unravel the mystery of his being for himself, to make himself what God had already made him. That was the Fall of man. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Mystery is the wine of this universe. It makes us dizzy and makes us feel happy! Man needs enigma so that he can get rid of the dullness of the reality! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

In Paris, the dance was everything. The dance of romance was what a man could remember in his old age. Didn't all young Americans come to Europe in search of that kind of romance? — Peggy Kopman-Owens

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky