The Lifted Veil Quotes & Sayings

I remember walking into the Bible study. I had a knot in my stomach. In my mind, only weirdoes and zealots went to Bible studies. I don't remember what was said that day. All I know is that when I left, everything had changed. I'll never forget standing outside that apartment on the Upper East Side and saying to myself, "It's true. It's completely true." The world looked entirely different, like a veil had been lifted off it. I had not an iota of doubt. I was filled with indescribable joy. — Kirsten Powers

On the endive show, she offered a Yogi Berra-style malaprop: "Now don't wash endive-that is, unless it's dirty." And during an episode of forgetfulness: "I did not have my glasses on when I was thinking." Once, she sorted through a jungle of seaweed in search of a twenty-pound lobster lurking in its folds; another time, she lifted the veil over a platter hunting for the "big, bad artichoke" lying furtively underneath. — Bob Spitz

Those who sit at the feast will continue to enjoy themselves even though the veil that separates them from the world of toiling reality below has been lifted by mass revolts and critics. — Mary Ritter Beard

[Montesquieu] lifted the veil from the venerable errors which enslaved opinion, and pointed the way to those luminous truths of which he had but a glimpse himself. — James Madison

Humans were temporal. They aged and, eventually, died. And while she could have dwelled on her tendency to morbidly fixate on this quality, she chose instead, in that moment, to let it go . . . To let it rise like the sun. A dancing veil of light being lifted off the water. — Marilyn Brant

His eyes kindled and a slight flush sprang into his thin cheeks. For an instant the veil had lifted upon his keen, intense nature, but for an instant only. When I glanced again his face had resumed that red-Indian composure which had made so many regard him as a machine rather than a man. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I have lifted the veil. I have created life, wrested the secret of life from life. Now do you understand? From the lives of those who have gone before, I have created life. — Edward T. Lowe Jr.

There is a secret earth gyrm, a place where the unbelievable, the unthinkable, the terrible, takes place every day. A place hidden by the veils of ignorance and cowardice and fear. On occasions we glimpse it, when its hidden terrors fall through that veil into plain sight, but mostly we just dismiss it as something else, somewhere else, to be dealt with by someone else. Long ago I found the veil and lifted it. And knowing as I do what is behind, what those behind it get away with, with impunity ... I cannot grow old basking on the bank of some safe-haven, no. — Shaun Hick

Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. — Oscar Wilde

What! your wisdom thinks I must love the man I'm going to marry? The most unpleasant thing in the world. I should quarrel with him; I should be jealous of him; our menage would be conducted in a very ill-bred manner. A little quiet contempt contributes greatly to the elegance of life. ("The Lifted Veil") — George Eliot

He fills my head with tales from the ancient forests, tales so old that the trees themselves call them legends. It is as if a veil has been lifted from my eyes, and the world I have lived in all my sixteen years is revealed to be something else entirely, something so marvelous I could never have imagined it. — Maryrose Wood

The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it, — Kahlil Gibran

Lift Not The Painted Veil
Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,
behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it
he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I squeezed her hand. "He's not coming back, Carlee"
When I said her name, her whole body stiffened, her eyes opening wide and clearing, as though a veil over them had lifted. "Carlee," she whispered.
I nodded and waited for her to freak out, to start screaming or crying, bracing myself and getting ready to hug her or carry her back to the village, whatever it took. For a few impossibly long moments she didn't say anything, didn't move, and I wondered if the shock had broken her brain. Then her brown eyes locked on mine again, narrowing into slits.
"I'm gonna kill that effing creep."
I laughed, relief flooding through me, and threw my arms around her neck.
"No, seriously. I'm going to kill him! I can't believe I bought his stupid lines! I don't care how pretty he was, I mean, have you seen what I'm wearing?"
Laughing, I nodded into her shoulder. "So not the style."
"I know, right? I look like an extra in some fantasy movie. Some stupid fantasy movie. — Kiersten White

One knew nothing. One lived and walked about on the earth or rode through the forests, and so many things looked at one with such challenge and promise, rousing such longing: an evening star, a bluebell, a lake green with reeds, the eye of a human being or of a cow, and at times it seemed as if the very next moment something never seen but long yearned for must happen, as if a veil must drop from everything. But then it passed, and nothing happened, and the riddle was not solved, nor was the secret spell lifted, and finally one became old ... and perhaps one still knew nothing, would still be waiting and listening. — Hermann Hesse

[Jesus] is, at the moment, present with us, but hidden behind that invisible veil which keeps heaven and earth apart, and which we pierce in those moments, such as prayer, the sacraments, the reading of scripture, and our work with the poor, when the veil seems particularly thin. But one day the veil will be lifted; earth and heaven will be one; Jesus will be personally present, and every knee shall bow at his name; creation will be renewed; the dead will be raised; and God's new world will at last be in place, full of new prospects and possibilities. — N. T. Wright

There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another's eyes. You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan. — Arthur Machen

There is nothing thrilling about a laboring person's work, but it is the laboring person who makes the ideas of the genius possible. And it is the laboring saint who makes the ideas of his Master possible. When you labor at prayer, from God's perspective there are always results. What an astonishment it will be to see, once the veil is finally lifted, all the souls that have been reaped by you, simply because you have been in the habit of taking your orders from Jesus Christ. — Oswald Chambers

When will the veil be lifted that casts so black a night over the universe? God of Israel, lift at last the gloom: For how long will you be hidden? — Jean Racine

Had Allah lifted the veil for his slave and shown him how He handles his affairs for him, and how Allah is more keen for the benefit of the slave than his own self, his heart would have melted out of the love for Allah and would have been torn to pieces out of thankfulness to Allah. Therefore if the pains of this world tire you, do not grieve. For it may be that Allah wishes to hear your voice by way of Dua'a. So pour out your desires in prostration and forget about it and know; that verily Allah does not forget it. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

Women, it is said, possess corresponding power. Through consciousness-raising, women found that women's so-called power was the other side of female powerlessness. A women's supposed power to deny sex is the underside of her actual lack of power to stop it. Women's supposed power to get men to do things for them by nagging or manipulating is the other side of the power they lack to have their every need anticipated, to carry out the task themselves, or to invoke physical fear to gain compliance with their desires without even having to mention it. Once the veil is lifted, once relations between the sexes are seen as power relations, it becomes impossible to see as simply unintented, well-intentioned, or innocent the actions through which women are told every day what is expected and when they have crossed some line. — Catharine A. MacKinnon

You lifted the veil when you admitted you had no memory of that day - it was so special and your lack of recall so monstrous ... — John Geddes

(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes - the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me: to the utterly miserable - the unloving and the unloved - there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death - the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain. ("The Lifted Veil") — George Eliot

Nature-the word that stands for the baffling mysteries of the Universe. Steadily, unflinchingly, we strive to pierce the inmost heart of Nature, from what she is to reconstruct what she has been, and to prophesy what she yet shall be. Veil after veil we have lifted, and her face grows more beautiful, august, and wonderful, with every barrier that is withdrawn. — William Crookes

Then in my mind's eye I see the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding. — Ralph Ellison

Photographing these flowers has made me see the world differently. It was as if I had lifted a secret veil from a subject I had loved and appreciated my whole life. I offer these photographs with the hope that they will open a new visual or meditative universe for you as well. — Joyce Tenneson

My prayer is that the good news of Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, would flood Jewish communities around the world, that the veil would be lifted, and that we would see a massive turning of Israel to the Lord Jesus. — John Piper

Every veil secretly desires to be lifted, except the veil of Hypocrisy. — Richard B. Garnett

Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

This is what differentiates sympathy from empathy. No matter how much I care for you, it's not until I recognize me in you and you in me that the veil of gauze is lifted on the world. — Jackson Galaxy

If the veil of the world's machinery were lifted off, how much we would find is done in answer to the prayers of God's children. — Robert E. Murray

In the early days of her pupilage with Maurice, he had told Maisie of his teachers, the wise men who spoke of the veil that was lifted in the early hours, of the all-seeing eye that was open before the day was awake. The hours before dawn were the sacred time, before the intellect rose from slumber. At this time one's inner voice could be heard. — Jacqueline Winspear

And, suddenly, the bitterness in his heart was swept away by a flood of peace, while new and incredible sources of power were thrown open within him. Again the veil was lifted and he saw, more clearly now, those unknown reaches of his art, trailing eternally in tranquil, sovereign certitude toward the ever unfolding bosom of the Infinite. Could he ever reach them? Came the answer - he would try! And he saw his path fixed forever in the wake of the workers, great and humble, who had seen that vision and held it always in their hearts, having learned in the anguish of renunciation, the inner meaning of the saying: 'Whoso loseth his life shall find it. — Maria Cristina Mena

He'd been about to turn away when she lifted her face to the moon and sang.
It was not in any language that he knew. Not in the common tongue, or in Eyllwe, or in the languages of Fenharrow or Melisande, or anywhere else on the continent
This language was ancient, each word full of power and rage and agony.
She did not have a beautiful voice. And many of the words sounded like half sobs, the vowels stretched by the pangs of sorrow, the consonants hardened by anger. She beat her breast in time, so full of savage grace, so at odds with the black gown and veil she wore. The hair on the back of his neck stood as the lament poured from her mouth, unearthly and foreign, a song of grief so old that it predated the stone castle itself.
And the the song finished, its end as butal and sudden as Nehemia's death had been.
She stood there a few moments, silent and unmoving. — Sarah J. Maas

Tears rolled down my face. When did this happen? Then I realized, they didn't changed, I changed. It happened when I lifted the veil clouding my mind and saw the truth surrounding me. — L.M. Fields

In the twinkling of an eye a veil is lifted; and you see with other eyes and hear with other ears and are given another understanding. — G.B. Edwards

Mystical insight and enlightenment occur when the veil between the worlds is lifted, the worlds are bridged, the gap closes, and we cross over. — Tom Cowan

Official history is merely a veil to hide the truth of what really happened. When the veil is lifted, again and again we see that not only is the official version not true, it is often 100% wrong. — David Icke

Carved over the portal of the Temple of Isis: 'I am whatever has been, is, or ever will be; and my veil no man hath yet lifted. — Anonymous

RUSTY watched the dawn blossom into light. At first everything was dark, then gradually objects began to take shape - the desk and chair, the walls of the room - and the darkness lifted like the raising of a veil, and over the tree-tops the sky was streaked with crimson. It was like this for some time, while everything became clearer and more distinguishable; and then, when nature was ready, the sun reached up over the trees and hills, and sent one tentative beam of warm light through the window. Along the wall crept the sun, across to the bed, and up the boy's bare legs, until it was caressing his entire body and whispering to him to get up, get up, it is time to get up ... — Ruskin Bond