#incomprehensible

I accept that there may be things far grander and more incomprehensible than we can possibly imagine. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#far #grander #i #imagine #incomprehensible

I hadn't accepted he was seriously ill. The idea that someone so close to you couldn't wake up was utterly incomprehensible. Then the doctor came in... Maurice had no brain left. There wasn't any activity at all. ↗

— Robin Gibb

#activity #any #brain #came #close

Today we often think that before we start living a religious life we have first to accept the creedal doctrines and that before one can have any comprehension of the loyalty and trust of faith, one must first force one's mind to accept a host of incomprehensible doctrines. But this is to put the cart before the horse. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#any #before #cart #comprehension #doctrines

All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar's teeth. ↗

— Antonin Artaud

#chatter #incomprehensible #language #like #teeth

The consequence of a world full of nuclear powers to me is so incomprehensible in terms of the dangers that that implies. ↗

— Lawrence Eagleburger

#dangers #full #implies #incomprehensible #me

Having refuted, then, as well as we could, every notion which might suggest that we were to think of God as in any degree corporeal, we go on to say that, according to strict truth, God is incomprehensible, and incapable of being measured. ↗

— Origen

#any #being #could #degree #every

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist. ↗

— Blaise Pascal

#god #incomprehensible #should

That's the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous. ↗

— Galway Kinnell

#only #poetry #profound #ridiculous #seems

... While much recent historicist criticism has assumed early nineteenth-century readers attuned to subtle ideological nuances in poetry, actual responses from readers often come closer to clulessness. ... It is no surprise that no one understood Blake, but other poets fared not much better. ... Coleridge's 'Christabel' was 'the standing enigma which puzzles the curiosity of literary circles. What is it all about?', while another reviewer asked about Shelley, 'What, in the name of wonder on one side, and of common sense on the other, is the meaning of this metaphysical rhapsody about the unbinding of Prometheus?'. Even Keats was condemned for 'his frequent obscurity and confusion of language' and his 'unintelligible quaintness'. Byron, never to be outdone, boasted in 'Don Juan' that not only did he not understand many of his fellow poets, he did not understand himself either: 'I don't pretend that I quite understand / My own meaning when I would be very fine.' ... ↗

— Andrew Elfenbein

#incomprehensible #poetry #romantic-poets #romantic

Not longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#beauty #become #exposes #face #features