Inexplicable Quotes - Page 4

Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Fate, May, Fool

4 Copy quote
In all Gabriel’s life he could not remember his brother giving even the prettiest of Shadowhunter girls a second glance. Yet he looked at this scarred mundane servant as if she were the sun rising. It was inexplicable, but it was also undeniable. He could see the horror on his brother’s face as Sophie’s good opinion of him shattered before his eyes.

Cassandra Clare

Girl, Brother, Eye

4 Copy quote
I definitely believe that you are drawn to certain things for inexplicable reasons, but in a very powerful way. I don't know what it is exactly, but I know that things happen kind of miraculously sometimes, and so I'm willing to believe that there's something pretty magical out there.

Rachel McAdams

Powerful, Believe, Way

20 Copy quote
As wonders, miracles are always astonishing, but as signs they are never wholly inexplicable.

Kenneth L. Woodward

Miracle, Wonder, Astonishing

Kenneth L. Woodward (2001). “The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam”, p.383, Simon and Schuster

5 Copy quote

Show source
Before I met No I thought that violence meant shouting and hitting and war and blood. Now I know that there can also be violence in silence and that it’s sometimes invisible to the naked eye. There’s violence in the time that conceals wounds, the relentless succession of days, the impossibility of turning back the clock. Violence is what escapes us. It’s silent and hidden. Violence is what remains inexplicable, what stays forever opaque.

Delphine de Vigan

War, Eye, Blood

Delphine de Vigan (2010). “No and Me”, p.156, A&C Black

7 Copy quote

Show source
The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.

Baron de Montesquieu

Heart, Hands, Might

4 Copy quote
From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Lonely, Rose, Sphinx

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2009). “The Crack-Up”, p.32, New Directions Publishing

16 Copy quote

Show source
The path to knowledge is a forced one. In order to learn, we must be pushed. On the path of knowledge we are always fighting something, avoiding something, preparing for something; and that something is always inexplicable, greater and more powerful than us.

Carlos Castaneda

Powerful, Fighting, Order

69 Copy quote
A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Phenomenon, Remains

4 Copy quote
Unhappy love freezes all our affections: our own souls grow inexplicable to us. More than we gained while we were happy we lose by the reverse.

Madame de Stael

Heartbreak, Soul, Unhappy

6 Copy quote
Synchronicity is an inexplicable and profoundly meaningful coincidence that stirs the soul and offers a glimpse of one's destiny.

Phil Cousineau

Meaningful, Destiny, Soul

9 Copy quote
Tension is an interesting quality - and architecture must have it. There should be elements of the inexplicable, the mysterious, and the poetic in something that is perfectly rational.

Annabelle Selldorf

Interesting, Quality, Elements

"Women in Design: Annabelle Selldorf". Interview with Vicky Lowry, www.elledecor.com. November 10, 2008.

4 Copy quote

Show source
Creativity is something which proceeds from within, out of immeasurable and inexplicable depths, not from without, not from the world's necessity. The very desire to make the creative act understandable, to find a basis for it, is failure to comprehend it. To comprehend the creative act means to recognize that it is inexplicable and without foundation.

Nikolai Berdyaev

Creativity, Mean, Creative

11 Copy quote
The fact is that gardening, more than most of our other activities except sometimes love-making, confronts us with the inexplicable.

Mary McCarthy

Gardening, Facts, Sometimes

4 Copy quote
An inexplicable fact is infinitely preferable to an incomprehensible mystery.

Frederick Soddy

Facts, Mystery

4 Copy quote
Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute - and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? The nature of your actions - and of your ambition - will be different, according to which set of answers you come to accept.

Ayn Rand

Ambition, Law, Miracle

Ayn Rand (1984). “Philosophy: Who Needs It”, p.11, Penguin

8 Copy quote

Show source
It consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language.

Isaac Barrow

Roving, Fancy, Way

Isaac Barrow (1818). “The Theological Works of Isaac Barrow”, p.306

7 Copy quote

Show source
Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

World, Matter, Immensity

7 Copy quote
Boxing is an American sport - a 'so-called sport' to many - in which images of incalculable beauty and violence, desperation and ingenuity, are routinely entwined; the sport that evokes the most extreme reactions - loathing, revulsion, righteous indigation; a fierce and often inexplicable loyalty.

Joyce Carol Oates

Loyalty, Sports, Boxing

Joyce Carol Oates (1989). “(Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities”, Plume

4 Copy quote

Show source
I have never seen an adequate description anywhere of the amazement, the uncomprehending horror of the bulk of the American people which preceded the firing of that gun at Sumter. Politicians or far-sighted leaders on both sides knew what was coming. And it is they who have written histories of the war. But to the easy-going millions, busied with their farms or shops, the onrushing disaster was as inexplicable as an earthquake. Their protest arose from sea to sea like the clamor of a gigantic hive of frightened bees.

Rebecca Harding Davis

War, Gun, Sea

14 Copy quote
I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!

Charles Lamb

Music, Pain, Italian

Charles Lamb (2008). “The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.193, Cosimo, Inc.

4 Copy quote

Show source
All evil, in fact the very existence of evil, is inexplicable until we refer to the paternity of God. It hangs a huge blot in the universe until the orb of divine love rises behind it. In that apposition we detect its meaning. It appears to us but a finite shadow as it passes across the disk of infinite light.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Light, Evil, Shadow

7 Copy quote
Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness.

Honore de Balzac

Paris, Pretty Woman, Whim

13 Copy quote
The nature of Christ's existence is mysterious, I admit; but this mystery meets the wants of man. Reject it, and the world is an inexplicable riddle; believe it, and the history of our race is satisfactorily explained.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Believe, Men, Race

12 Copy quote
Religions are not proved, are not demonstrated, are not established, are not overthrown by logic! They are of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable; they are of instinct and not of reason.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Mind, Religion, Logic

Alphonse de Lamartine (1850). “Travels in the East: Including a Journey in the Holy Land”, p.171

8 Copy quote

Show source