Mystifying Quotes & Sayings

There is hardly an aspect of contemporary history more irritating and mystifying than the fact that of all the great unsolved political questions of our century, it should have been this seemingly small and unimportant Jewish problem that had the dubious honor of setting the whole infernal machine in motion. — Hannah

About that mystifying enthusiasm a million years ago for turning over as many human activities as possible to machinery: What could that have been but yet another acknowledgment by people that their brains were no damn good? — Kurt Vonnegut

God does not exist, as neither does our hereafter, that second bogey being as easily disposed of as the first. Indeed, imagine yourself just dead - and suddenly wide awake in Paradise where, wreathed in smiles, your dear dead welcome you.
Now tell me, please, what guarantee do you possess that those beloved ghosts are genuine; that it is really your dear dead mother and not some petty demon mystifying you, masked as your mother and impersonating her with consummate art and naturalness? There is the rub, there is the horror; the more so as the acting will go on and on, endlessly; never, never, never, never, never will your soul in that other world be quite sure that the sweet gentle spirits crowding about it are not fiends in disguise, and forever, and forever, and forever shall your soul remain in doubt, expecting every moment some awful change, some diabolical sneer to disfigure the dear face bending over you. — Vladimir Nabokov

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born. — Tom Waits

Liesl & Po is the embodiment of what writing has always been for me at its purest and most basic - not a paycheck, certainly; not an idea, even; and not an escape. Actually, it is the opposite of an escape; it is a way back in, a way to enter and make sense of a world that occasionally seems harsh and terrible and mystifying,
And, of course, it is a way of finding a happy ending - even, or especially, when the happy ending is denied me in real life. Let it be an escape for its readers. For me, it is a way of not letting go. — Lauren Oliver

This put me very close to Jay and it was as uncomfortable as it was mystifying. It was uncomfortable because I still wasn't sure I liked him all that much.
It was mystifying because his intense stares were unlike anything I'd ever experienced; they were hard but soft at the same time, commanding but beautiful. — Amanda Kelly

We live today amid ritualized anithumanisms. Among those intelligent enough to feel despair, some seek salvation in the literary artist. Artists love flattery; and the scam doesn't work without mystifying the process.

The weather is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Wall Street is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Writing is unpredictable, (like street and sky, there are too many variables.) Its mystery vanishes, like a shadow, the moment the light aimed at your characters turns back upon yourself. — Doran Larson

What I find most mystifying in the arguments of the authors I have mentioned, and of others like them, is the strange presupposition that a truly secular society would of its nature be more tolerant and less prone to violence than any society shaped by any form of faith. Given that the modern age of secular governance has been the most savagely and sublimely violent period in human history, by a factor (or body count) of incalculable magnitude, it is hard to identify the grounds for their confidence. — David Bentley Hart

Guild doesn't like me."
"That's true."
"He doesn't like you, ether."
"That is mystifying. — Derek Landy

Whether it's a professional, academic keeping people out by using certain mystifying language, or technologists presenting their work as incredibly complicated, no one can understand it (especially not "moms," who are always invoked as the ultimate know-nothings, which is incredibly insulting to a whole lot of people). — Astra Taylor

Insight roams the sea of the unconscious like the Loch Ness monster, a rumor whose wake occasionally becomes visible, but even then it's mystifying and scarcely believed. — Diane Ackerman

What is magical and mystifying to me about style is not that by seeing we can believe. It is that eventually, we can believe, because we can see ... we can embrace change the more we can make it tangible. — Stacy London

Valkyrie: Guild doesn't like me
Skulduggery: That's true
Valkyrie: He doesn't like you either
Skulduggery: Now that is mystifying. — Derek Landy

We could talk, act, and dress funny. We were excused for socially inappropriate behavior: 'Oh, he's a programmer'. It was all because we knew this technology stuff that other people found completely mystifying. — Kent Beck

Let the girl be thoroughly developed in body and soul, not modeled, like a piece of clay, after some artificial specimen of humanity, with a body like some plate in Godey's book of fashion, and a mind after the type of Father Gregory's pattern daughters, loaded down with the traditions, proprieties, and sentimentalities of generations of silly mothers and grandmothers, but left free to be, to grow, to feel, to think, to act. Development is one thing, that system of cramping, restraining, torturing, perverting, and mystifying, called education, is quite another. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A controlling relationship can start with over-the-top romantic gestures and gifts, and great protestations of you 'being the only one' and their love being a special kind of 'you and me against the world', often disconcertingly early in a relationship. There may be a charm campaign aimed at you and even friends and family, your other potential allies and 'protectors'. Suddenly or gradually there are rules, or flashes of mystifying rage or sulking designed to modify your behaviour to what they want you to do. Then the 'nice' person reappears, and all is well, he's romantic and doting again, before the next flashpoints of anger or rage or sullen tension. This is not a 'return to the good times'. It's the classic cycle of abuse, recognised — Kaz Cooke

The rampant, totally mystifying force of contradiction. I understand now that each fact is nullified by the next fact, that each thought engenders an equal and opposite thought. Impossible to say anything without reservation. — Paul Auster

Roland of Gilead responded as he ever had and ever would when such useless, mystifying questions were raised: 'Ka. — Stephen King

A mystifying sensation of loneliness shook him. Arthur had been alone before, to be sure, but to be alone while surrounded by people, the one sane man in a mad place - that was loneliness. — Graham Moore

Darker thoughts crowded in during the deepest hours of the night when he woke listening to the secret mystifying sounds of the sleeping palace. Many nights, the king was there. Pleasant, irrelevant, and distracting, he eased Relius past nightmares and self-recrimination. Some nights he said nothing at all, just comforted with his presence. Other nights he related the events of his day, spewing out his insights and analyses of the Attolian court in a devastatingly funny critique. — Megan Whalen Turner

My work is to love my body, all of it. Whole and entire. The whole aging mortal troublesome failing miraculous intricate breathing doomed cancerous warm mortifying unreliable hard-working imperfect beautiful appalling living struggling tender frightened frightening living dying living breathing temporary wondrous mystifying afflicted mortally-ill assemblage of the atoms of the universe that is my self, is me, for this space of time. — Irvin D. Yalom

It's important for a parent to learn to take delight in a child whose behavior might seem mystifying. In the case of an extroverted parent with an introverted child, it can be learning to see the inner riches of your child that may not always be expressed on the surface - but are there. — Susan Cain

I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths. — Bram Stoker

And, worst of all, she was trapped with their marriage, their mystifying union, which had evidently passed out of whatever affectionate phase it had recently enjoyed and was already mired in some new quarrel . . . She didn't care about the details. — Sarah Waters

For those whose exclusive norm of constitutional judging is merely fair reading of language applied to facts objectively viewed, 'Brown' must either be flat-out wrong or a very mystifying decision. — David Souter

China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world. — Lin Yutang

Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. — Arthur Schopenhauer

For a God that created everything, it is mystifying why he created so much competition. — Trevor Treharne

Men are mystifying creatures. For instance why do all men think their penis is a panacea for all the world's problems? — Tyne O'Connell

Cancer has enormous diversity and behaves differently: it's highly mutable, the evolutionary principles are very complicated and often its capacity to be constantly mystifying comes as a big challenge. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Evolutionists ... have a prior commitment, a commitment to naturalism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door — Richard Lewontin

In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained the case in most well-heeled homes up until at least the time of the First World War. — Bill Bryson

Golf is assuredly a mystifying game. It would seem that if a person has hit a golf ball correctly a thousand times, he should be able to duplicate the performance at will. But such is certainly not the case. — Bobby Jones

Additionally, Liesl and Po is the embodiment of what writing has always been for me at its purest and most basic
not a paycheck, certainly; not an idea, even; and not an escape. Actually, it is the opposite of an escape; it is a way back in, a way to enter and make sense of a world that occasionally seems harsh and terrible and mystifying. (From the "Author's Note" at the end). — Lauren Oliver

To many of us now, computers, silicon chips, data processing, cybernetics, and all the other innovations of the dawning high technology age are as mystifying as the workings of the combustion engine must have been when that first Model T rattled down Main Street, U.S.A. But as surely as America's pioneer spirit made us the industrial giant of the 20th century, the same pioneer spirit today is opening up on another vast front of opportunity, the frontier of high technology. — Ronald Reagan

Ultimately, the idea of acting is to understand the people you're playing, and then where they're coming from is not so mystifying. You've got to detox a bit after, though. — Joseph Mawle

There's truths there that spiral out of what appears to be just a word game. That's what I find mystifying about the meanings of things: they kind of unscrew themselves from the practical words. — Tom Waits

One began by finding mental illness mystifying, and ended by being still more mystified by health. — Pat Barker

It was true that the city could still throw shadows filled with mystifying figures from its past, whose grip on the present could be felt on certain strange days, when the streets were dark with rain and harmful ideas. — Christopher Fowler

The idea of "common oppression" was a false and corrupt platform disguising and mystifying the true nature of women's varied and complex social reality. Women are divided by sexist attitudes, racism, class privilege, and a host of other prejudices. Sustained woman bonding can occur only when these divisions are confronted and the necessary steps are taken to eliminate them. — Bell Hooks

The Collectorship of Madna is the seventh post that he has held in eight years. He is quite philosophic about the law that governs the transfer of civil servants; he sees it as a sort of corollary to the law of karma, namely, that the whole of life passes through innumerable and fundamentally mystifying changes, and these changes are sought to be determined by our conduct, our deeds (otherwise, we would quite simply lose our marbles); only thus can we even pretend to satisfactorily explain the mystery of suffering, which is a subject that has troubled thoughtful souls all over the world since time immemorial. It is also a hypothesis that justifies the manifest social inequalities of the Hindu community. — Upamanyu Chatterjee

Dance is simply the refinement of human movement - walking, running, and jumping. We are all experts. There should be no art form more accessible than dance, yet no art is more mystifying in the public imagination. — Twyla Tharp

One of the few ways in which I feel I've actually matured is that as I've grown older I do find the concept of 'men' mystifying, whereas when I was a feisty young thing I was forever saying 'The most fun part of being a feminist is frightening men!' — Julie Burchill

Look closer and you'll see something extraordinary, mystifying, something real and true. We have never been what we seemed. — Zelda Fitzgerald

Directing is mystifying. It's a long, long, skid on an icy road, and you do the best you can trying to stay on the road ... If you're still here when you come out of the spin, it's a relief. But you've got to have the terror if you're going to do anything worthwhile. — Mike Nichols

The failure to take seriously what the Nazis themselves said is comprehensible enough. There is hardly an aspect of contemporary history more irritating and mystifying than the fact that of all the great unsolved political questions of our century, it should have been this seemingly small and unimportant Jewish problem that had the dubious honor of setting the whole infernal machine in motion. Such discrepancies between cause and effect outrage our common sense, to say nothing of the historian's sense of balance and harmony. Compared with the events themselves, all explanations of antisemitism look as if they had been hastily and hazardously contrived, to cover up an issue which so gravely threatens our sense of proportion and our hope for sanity. — Hannah Arendt

There seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting and was always at least a long-distance phone call from the frankly interesting. — Bill Bryson

I studied classics, and I find it mystifying that we had Medea and Electra and Antigone and all these amazing characters, and they don't really exist in cinema now. The only person who's really doing it, and he gets loads of criticism for it, is Lars Von Trier. — Alice Lowe

The men in my life have always been the folks who are wary of using the word 'love' lightly. They are wary because they believe women make too much of love. And they know that what we think love means is not always what they believe it means. Our confusion about what we mean when we use the word 'love' is the source of our difficulty in loving. If our society had a commonly held understanding of the meaning of love, the act of loving would not be so mystifying. — Bell Hooks

[T]he rare earth elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams. They stretch like an unknown sea before us mocking, mystifying and murmuring strange revelations and possibilities. — William Crookes

I don't have any authority to talk about the domestic policies of America. But as an outsider, I am mystified by the fact that you are encouraged to buy a gun, but if you use it for the purpose that it is expressly designed for, you get the death penalty. That aspect of America is kind of mystifying. — Nick Cave

I want my life to be mystifying, she declared, although she didn't know what she meant. — Sonya Hartnett