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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #myster
I prayed to a mystery. Sometimes I was simply aware of the mystery. I saw a flash of it during a trip to New York that David and I took before we were married. We were walking on a busy sidewalk in Manhattan. I don't remember if it was day or night. A man with a wound on his forehead came toward us. His damp, ragged hair might have been clotted with blood, or maybe it was only dirt. He wore deeply dirty clothes. His red, swollen hands, cupped in half-fists, swung loosely at his sides. His eyes were focused somewhere past my right shoulder. He staggered while he walked. The sidewalk traffic flowed around him and with him. He was strange and frightening, and at the same time he belonged on the Manhattan sidewalk as much as any of us. It was that paradox -- that he could be both alien and resident, both brutalized and human, that he could stand out in the moving mass of people like a sea monster in a school of tuna and at the same time be as much at home as any of us -- that stayed with me. I never saw him again, but I remember him often, and when I do, I am aware of the mystery. Years later, I was out on our property on the Olympic Peninsula, cutting a path through the woods. This was before our house was built. After chopping through dense salal and hacking off ironwood bushes for an hour or so, I stopped, exhausted. I found myself standing motionless, intensely aware of all of the life around me, the breathing moss, the chattering birds, the living earth. I was as much a part of the woods as any millipede or cedar tree. At that moment, too, I was aware of the mystery. Sometimes I wanted to speak to this mystery directly. Out of habit, I began with "Dear God" and ended with "Amen". But I thought to myself, I'm not praying to that old man in the sky. Rather, I'm praying to this thing I can't define. It was sort of like talking into a foggy valley. Praying into a bank of fog requires alot of effort. I wanted an image to focus on when I prayed. I wanted something to pray *to*. but I couldn't go back to that old man. He was too closely associated with all I'd left behind. ↗
A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. “I didn’t. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could not do so himself.” “Very kind of you.” “Yes. I have been looking forward to it for quite some time.” Daddy’s lemonade is almost gone, he sips it carefully, turning his eyes back to the water. “Looking forward to seeing the lad or to conducting your business?” Daddy is toying with him. “Both. You see, I had never actually met his son.” The glass rests against Daddy’s lips, unmoving. Mr. Geyer watches him closely. “But now I have, so I can get on with my,” he fixes his own gaze on the water, as though trying to see whatever it is that has transfixed my father, “business. ↗
#detective #geyer #gwenn-wright #historical-fiction #mystery
Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman -- Tell us about the film you're going to make. Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story. Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London? Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing. Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it? Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you. Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it. ↗
#detective-stories #film-industry #humor #movie-business #movies
What is the mystery of life that science is trying to unravel? Is the mystery of life raveled? What is the reason we don’t see clearly the mystery of life? Why is it a mystery? What is preventing us from understanding life? If we are to remove our ignorance we should study the cause of ignorance. If we fail to perceive life for what it is we should study what limits our perception. Our understanding is limited by our presuppositions. Faulty presuppositions result in faulty interpretation of data and other handicaps. Experiments are designed to reinforce presuppositions not to challenge them. In other words, we do science to reinforce our ignorance, not to gain enlightenment. We don’t ask science to change us so we can penetrate the mystery of life, we ask it to give us something that will make us more comfortable in our delusion. ↗
There was never anybody before you," she said. "I just wanted to say that. And when I did what I do, and it opened a crack in me like it did last night, there was nobody there to hold on to me. I didn't want anyone to hold on to me. Until you. And I got through and I got by, and it was okay. But I think, maybe, if I'd just kept getting through and getting by, I'd have come to a point where I couldn't do it anymore. And if I couldn't do it anymore, it'd be the end of me, Roarke. So when you hold on to me, You're helping me stand up, one more time. And the dead, you're standing for them, too. I just wanted to say that." She went out quickly, and left him staring at her. ↗
The basements of the churches I've loved reveal the foundation of the spiritual life to be not belief so much as engagement with the mystery lurking at the base of all things. We build a framework on top of mystery because we need someplace to live, some manner of surviving nature's fury and our mundane daily needs. ↗
And you never even reported it. You should have reported it. I could have took fingerprints. I'd love to lock up them skinheads." "What I'm reporting is the gun, my Sig Sauer." Dave said. "Hetzel will have it. I want it back." "What did it cost you?" Rose said. "That's not the point," Dave said. "It's the only gun I ever owned. I'm against guns. They give too many people power who have no right to it. Guns cancel out intelligence, reason, decency, civility, and put terror in their place. I got along without a gun most of my working life. But a man can't buck the odds forever. About five years back I bought the Sig Sauer. I'm used to it. And I don't know that I'm morally prepared to buy another one. ↗
Holy men tell us life is a mystery. They embrace that concept happily. But some mysteries bite and bark and come to get you in the dark. ↗
