Riddle Quotes - Page 5

• It wasn’t like in the storybooks. No witches lurked at crossroads disguised as crones, waiting to reward travelers who shared their bread. Genies didn’t burst from lamps, and talking fish didn’t bargain for their lives. In all the world, there was only one place humans could get wishes: Brimstone’s shop. And there was only one currency he accepted. It wasn’t gold, or riddles, or kindness, or any other fairy-tale nonsense, and no, it wasn’t souls, either. It was weirder than any of that. It was teeth.

  Laini Taylor

  Kindness, Talking, Waiting

  7 Copy quote

• There!" Mars finished writing and threw the scroll at Octavian. "A prophecy. You can add it to your books, engrave it on the floor, whatever." Octavian read the scroll. "This says, 'Go to Alaska. Find Thanatos and free him. Come back by sundown on June twenty-fourth or die'." "Yes," Mars said. "Is that not clear?" "Well, my lord...usually prophecies are unclear. They're wrapped in riddles. They rhyme, and..." Mars casually popped another grenade off his belt. "Yes?" "The prophecy is clear!" Octavian announced. "A quest!

  Rick Riordan

  Book, Writing, Alaska

  6 Copy quote

• And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hands, staring down at his enemy's shell.

  J. K. Rowling

  Eye, Hands, Skills

  4 Copy quote

• These corporations run our culture, and they riddle it with bullshit.

  Ben Goldacre

  Running, Bullshit, Culture

  4 Copy quote

• The blood of Heaven binds you," said the Queen. "Blood calls to blood, under the skin. But love and blood are not the same." "Riddles," Clary said angrily. "Do you even mean anything when you talk like that?" "He is bound to you," said the Queen. "But does he love you?

  Cassandra Clare

  Queens, Love You, Mean

  Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.1461, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The answer to this riddle has a hole in the middle, And some have been known to fall in it. In tennis it's nothing, but it can be received, And sometimes a person may win it. Though not seen or heard it may be perceived, Like princes or bees it's in clover. The answer to this riddle has a hole in the middle, And without it one cannot start over.

  Trenton Lee Stewart

  Fall, Winning, Starting Over

  5 Copy quote

• Animals! the object of insatiable interest, examples of the riddle of life, created, as it were, to reveal the human being to man himself, displaying his richness and complexity in a thousand kaleidoscopic possibilities, each of them brought to some curious end, to some characteristic exuberance.

  Bruno Schulz

  Animal, Men, Example

  Bruno Schulz, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Goldfarb (2008). “The street of crocodiles and other stories”, Penguin Classics

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• What have I got in my pocket?" he said aloud. He was talking to himself, but Gollum thought it was a riddle, and he was frightfully upset. "Not fair! not fair!" he hissed. "It isn't fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it's got in it's nassty little pocketsess?

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Talking, Upset, Pockets

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Hobbit”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• See the BEAR of fearsome size! All the WORLD'S within his eyes. TIME grows thin, the past is a riddle; The TOWER awaits you in the middle.

  Stephen King

  Eye, Past, Towers

  Stephen King (2016). “The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass”, p.139, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence.

  Carl Jung

  Thinking, Differences, People

  Carl Gustav Jung, Gerhard Adler (1976). “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung”, Bollingen

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Truly, nothing in the world has so occupied my thoughts as this I, this riddle, the fact I am alive, that I am separated and isolated from all others, that I am Siddhartha! And about nothing in the world do I know less about than me, about Siddhartha!

  Hermann Hesse

  Siddhartha, Alive, World

  6 Copy quote

• A certain person wondered why a big strong girl like me wouldn't keep a job which paid a normal salary. I took my time to lead her and to read her every page. Even minimal people can't survive on minimal wage. A certain person wondered why I wait all week for you. I didn't have the words to describe just what you do. I said you had the motion of the ocean in your walk, and when you solve my riddles you don't even have to talk.

  Maya Angelou

  Girl, Strong, Jobs

  Maya Angelou (2011). “I Shall Not Be Moved: Poems”, p.46, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What a haunting, inescapable riddle life was.

  Walter de La Mare

  Haunting

  Walter De la Mare (1997). “The Return”, p.121, Courier Corporation

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anyone who realises what Love is, the dedication of the heart, so profound, so absorbing, so mysterious, so imperative, and always just in the noblest natures so strong, cannot fail to see how difficult, how tragic even, must often be the fate of those whose deepest feelings are destined from the earliest days to be a riddle and a stumbling-block, unexplained to themselves, passed over in silence by others.

  Edward Carpenter

  Strong, Block, Heart

  Edward Carpenter “The Intermediate Sex”, Routledge

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modern literature seduces with insults, riddles, and inside stories.

  Mason Cooley

  Stories, Literature, Insult

  6 Copy quote

• Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Art, Young Friends, Joy

  7 Copy quote

• Soviet Union foreign policy is a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma, and the key is Russian nationalism.

  Winston Churchill

  Keys, Unions, Foreign Policy

  6 Copy quote

• Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That's why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that's why they write symphonies.

  Jon Krakauer

  Writing, Views, Symphony

  Jon Krakauer (2011). “Into the Wild”, p.186, Pan Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The whole [of religion] is a riddle, an ænigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the onlyresult of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject.

  David Hume

  Doubt, Religion, Mystery

  6 Copy quote

• And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.

  Khalil Gibran

  Children, Rain, Flower

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved.

  Heinrich Heine

  Sphinx, Periods, Abyss

  9 Copy quote

• Religious leaders and men of science have the same ideals; they want to understand and explain the universe of which they are part; they both earnestly desire to solve, if a solution be ever possible, that great riddle: Why are we here?

  Arthur Keith

  Religious, Science, Men

  Sir Arthur Keith (1927). “Concerning man's origin: being the presidential address given at the meeting of the British association held in Leeds on August 31, 1927, and recent essays on Darwinian subjects”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• At no period of [Michael Faraday's] unmatched career was he interested in utility. He was absorbed in disentangling the riddles of the universe, at first chemical riddles, in later periods, physical riddles. As far as he cared, the question of utility was never raised. Any suspicion of utility would have restricted his restless curiosity. In the end, utility resulted, but it was never a criterion to which his ceaseless experimentation could be subjected.

  Abraham Flexner

  Science, Careers, Curiosity

  11 Copy quote

• My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together? Bread, of course.

  Jodi Picoult

  Father, Grandmother, Order

  Jodi Picoult (2013). “The Storyteller”, p.179, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am any man's suitor,
  If any will be my tutor:
  Some say this life is pleasant,
  Some think it speedeth fast,
  In time there is no present,
  In eternity no future,
  In eternity no past.
  We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die.
  Who will riddle me the how and the why?

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Time, Past, Men

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Illustrated)”, p.178, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source