Mysterious Quotes - Page 15

• If we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Decisions We Make, Quality, Needs

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• Patrick White is a strongly individual, richly gifted, original and highly significant writer whose powers are remarkable and whose achievement is large. His art is dense, poetic, and image-ridden. It is always a substantial and genuine thing. At its finest it is one which goes beyond an art of mere appearances to one of mysterious actuality.

  William Walsh

  Art, White, Achievement

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• Reading Gypsy Boy, I felt invited into a secret society. I've always found Gypsies mysterious and even slightly dangerous, and Mikey Walsh does an excellent job describing the cloistered lifestyle and fascinating traditions of the Romani people. Moreover, Mikey's personal story of being a misfit among misfits is both compelling and universal. I cheered for him every step of the way.

  Julia Scheeres

  Jobs, Reading, Boys

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• Happiness is a mysterious thing, to be found somewhere between too little and too much.

  Ruskin Bond

  Mysterious Things, Littles, Too Much

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• For Fleur de Chine, I imagined the romantic and mysterious women from Asia's cinematic past-from the '30s femme fatale in a cheongsam and dark lipstick, to the'60s Hong Kong heroine of In the Mood for Love. I wanted to capture that fascinating, exquisite and slightly scandalous femininity.

  Tom Ford

  Dark, Past, Mysterious Woman

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• Much malice mingled with a little wit Perhaps may censure this mysterious writ.

  John Dryden

  May, Littles, Wit

  'The Hind and the Panther' (1687) pt. 3, l. 1

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• Egoism , which is the moving force of the world, and altruism , which is its morality , these two contradictory instincts , of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism.

  Joseph Conrad

  Moving, Two, World

  Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The world is a mysterious place and the very limitation of our senses in exploring it means we are sometimes aware of there being something beyond our ken.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Mean, World, Sometimes

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• I suppose my interest in looking for life elsewhere in the universe really dates back to my teens. What teenager doesn't look up at the sky at night and think am I alone in the universe? Well most people get over it, but I never did and though I made a career more in physics and cosmology than astrobiology I've always had a soft spot for the subject of life because it does seem so mysterious.

  Paul Davies

  Teenager, Night, Thinking

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The thing that you learn in directing is that when you're on the floor, no matter how complex the shooting is...you have to remain absolutely sensitive to every nuance of the behavior of the people around you. Because, ultimately, if you don't keep in mind the overall humanity, then the machine takes over and suddenly all you have are technically fine shots, technically good performances. The story's being told, but something's lacking, something mysterious, indefinable.

  Irvin Kershner

  People, Humanity, Mind

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• The human soul is like a bird that is born in a cage. Nothing can deprive it of its natural longings, or obliterate the mysterious remembrance of its heritage.

  Epes Sargent

  Bird, Remembrance, Soul

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 558, 1895.

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• The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.

  O. Henry

  Journey, Soul, Goes On

  O. Henry (1995). “100 Selected Stories”, p.182, Wordsworth Editions

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• Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process of breaking something down into subjects and predicates. What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word 'quality' cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Mean, Simple, Broken

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• What I am trying to do is something different - an effect of reality, but what some fools call Impressionism, a term that is usually misapplied, especially by the critics who don't hesitate to apply it to Turner, the greatest creator of mysterious effects in the whole world of art.

  Claude Debussy

  Art, Reality, Trying

  "The Lives of the Great Composers". Book by Harold C. Schonberg, 1970.

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• when night came on, the Macedonians and the barbarian crowd suddenly took fright in one of those mysterious panics to which great armies are liable

  Thucydides

  Army, Night, Crowds

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.291, Simon and Schuster

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• The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Years, Ideas, Humanity

  "A Distant Mirror". Book by Barbara Tuchman, p. 581, 1978.

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• Songwriting is a mysterious art. When I sit down to write a song, the end result should be mysterious and have this dark quality.

  Martin Gore

  Song, Art, Writing

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• The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves.

  Alain de Botton

  Hints, May, Matter

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

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• As in mysterious and transcendent union the Divine takes into itself the human in the person of Jesus, and eternity is blended with time; we, trusting Him, and yielding our hearts to Him, receive into our poor lives an incorruptible seed, and for us the soul-satisfying realities that abide forever mingle with and are reached through the shadows that pass away.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Jesus, Heart, Reality

  Alexander MacLaren “MacLaren's Commentary- Expositions of Holy Scripture”, Delmarva Publications, Inc.

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• Community is another such phenomenon. Like electricity, it is profoundly lawful. Yet there remains something about it that is inherently mysterious, miraculous, unfathomable. Thus there is no adequate one-sentence definition of genuine community. Community is something more than the sum of its parts, its individual members. What is this "something more?" Even to begin to answer that, we enter a realm that is not so much abstract as almost mystical. It is a realm where words are never fully suitable and language itself falls short.

  M. Scott Peck

  Fall, Community, Answers

  M. Scott Peck (2010). “The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace”, p.60, Simon and Schuster

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• The sight of a wedding always has a disturbing effect on young girls; at such moments a mysterious sense of solidarity with their own sex takes possession of them.

  Stefan Zweig

  Girl, Sex, Sight

  "Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

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• In some mysterious way, once one has gained an insight into human nature, that insight grows from day to day, and he to whom it has given to experience vicariously even one single form of earthly suffering acquires, by reason of this tragic lesson, an understanding of all its forms, even those most foreign to him, and apparently abnormal.

  Stefan Zweig

  Understanding, Suffering, Abnormal

  "Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

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• Names have a mysterious transforming power. Like a ring on a finger, a name may at first seem merely accidental, committing you to nothing; but before you realize its magical power, it's gotten under your skin, become part of you and your destiny.

  Stefan Zweig

  Destiny, Names, Skins

  Stefan Zweig (2008). “The Post-office Girl”, New York Review of Books

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• An artist, in my experience, is a man or woman of unusual talent and peculiar, highly individual sensibility, with an independent and probably contrary mind, driven by mysterious passions for which another word is neurosis. In getting from point A to point B, the neurotic goes via point Q. It's in that roundabout that people are either completely crippled and hopeless in life, or highly creative.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Passion, Independent, Artist

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• The waves Of the mysterious death-river moaned; The tramp, the shout, the fearful thunder-roar Of red-breathed cannon, and the wailing cry Of myriad victims, filled the air.

  George D. Prentice

  War, Rivers, Air

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