Riddle Quotes - Page 2

• Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

  Pope Francis

  Fall, Errors, Judging

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• As a working hypothesis to explain the riddle of our existence, I propose that our universe is the most interesting of all possible universes, and our fate as human beings is to make it so

  Freeman Dyson

  Fate, Interesting, Hypothesis

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• Understanding a metaphor is like deciphering a code or unraveling a riddle.

  Max Black

  Understanding, Unraveling, Metaphor

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• Alive without breath, As cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, All in mail never clinking.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Drinking, Alive, Mail

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Hobbit”, p.47, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Time, Kings, Flower

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Hobbit: 75th Anniversary Edition”, p.107, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Some cities, like wrapped boxes under Christmas trees, conceal unexpected gifts, secret delights. Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or, for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travelers.

  Truman Capote

  Cities, Unexpected Gifts, Tree

  Truman Capote (2012). “Music For Chameleons”, p.205, Vintage

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• All I wanted, even when I hated you most, was some poor, barren, parched excuse to love you. But you only gave me riddles.

  Patricia A. McKillip

  Love You, Excuse, Poor

  "Riddle of Stars (The Quest of the Riddle-Master Trilogy)". Book by Patricia A. McKillip, October 1, 1979.

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• You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea: you can not put an idea up against a barracks-square wall and riddle it with bullets: you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build.

  Sean O'Casey

  Wall, Cells, Ideas

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• Isn't it a riddle . . . and awe-inspiring, that everything is so beautiful? Despite the horror. Lately I've noticed something grand and mysterious peering through my sheer joy in all that is beautiful, a sense of its creator . . . Only man can be truly ugly, because he has the free will to estrange himself from this song of praise. It often seems that he'll manage to drown out this hymn with his cannon thunder, curses and blasphemy. But during this past spring it has dawned upon me that he won't be able to do this. And so I want to try and throw myself on the side of the victor.

  Sophie Scholl

  Beautiful, Song, Spring

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• That the sum of a man's life was not where he wound up but in the details that brought him there. That we made mistakes. I closed my eyes, sick of the riddles, and to my surprise all I could see were dandelions-as if they had been painted on the fields of my imagination, a hundred thousand suns. And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.

  Jodi Picoult

  Mistake, Eye, Men

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #4: Change of Heart, Handle with Care, and House Rules”, p.107, Simon and Schuster

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• The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Views

  'Four Dissertations' (1757) 'The Natural History of Religion' sect. 15

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• Did you know— then?” asked Harry. “Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time? No.

  J. K. Rowling

  Dark, Wizards, Lord

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• How did reason come into the world? As is fitting, in an irrational manner, by accident. One will have to guess at it as at a riddle.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  World, Reason, Fitting

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.57, Penguin

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• Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled: / The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

  Alexander Pope

  Errors, Judging, World

  An Essay on Man Epistle 2, l. 15 (1733)

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• Did you ever think, Clarice, why the Philistines don't understand you? It's because you are the answer to Samson's riddle. You are the honey in the lion.

  Thomas Harris

  Thinking, Answers, Lions

  Thomas Harris (1999). “Hannibal”

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• The riddle of the age has for each a private solution.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Age, Individual, Solutions

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2254, Delphi Classics

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• here, there, and everywhere"-an opinionated riddle.

  Mary Downing Hahn

  Opinionated

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• Some people have an unconquerable love of riddles. They may have the chance of listening to plain sense, or to such wisdom that explains life; but no, they must go and work their brains over a riddle, just because they do not understand what it means.

  Isak Dinesen

  Mean, People, Brain

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Seven Gothic Tales”, p.19, Vintage

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• Out yonder there was this huge world...which stands before us like a great eternal riddle.

  Albert Einstein

  World, Eternal, Huge

  Albert Einstein, Stephen W. Hawking (2007). “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein”, p.340, Running Press

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• Life is essentially a series of events to be lived through rather than intellectual riddles to be played with and solved.

  George Arthur Buttrick

  Intellectual, Events, Life Is

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• For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist.

  Paul Watzlawick

  Doe, Answers, Positive Atheism

  Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas, Don D. Jackson, Bill O'Hanlon (2011). “Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes”, p.255, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The riddle of Mozart is precisely that "the man" refuses to be a key for solving it. In death, as in life, he conceals himself behind his work.

  Wolfgang Hildesheimer

  Men, Keys, He Man

  Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1982). “Mozart”, Vintage

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• The scientist is not much given to talking of the riddle of the universe. "Riddle" is not a scientific term. The conception of a riddle is "something which can he solved." And hence the scientist does not use that popular phrase. We don't know the why of anything. On that matter we are no further advanced than was the cavedweller. The scientist is contented if he can contribute something toward the knowledge of what is and how it is.

  Charles Proteus Steinmetz

  Knowledge, Science, Talking

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• The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world.

  Daniel Handler

  Sadness, World, Way

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• The greatest puzzle in the world, young man, the greatest challenge a man can face, a solving the riddle of a women's heart.

  Steve Hamilton

  Heart, Men, Challenges

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