A Quote by George Oppen

The self is no mystery, the mystery is / That there is something for us to stand on

George Oppen

Quote Topics

Mystery Self Something Stand Us

Quote Author

George Oppen
American - Poet
April 24, 1908 - July 7, 1984

The first mystery is simply that there is a mystery, a mystery that can never be explained or understood, only encountered from time to time. Nothing is obvious. Everything conceals something else.

Lawrence Kushner

I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig--or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery.

Jostein Gaarder

I have been using the word 'other' as though it were self-explanatory, yet who the 'other' is must always be something of a mystery. It is a mystery at an immediate level in the sense that no person is entirely knowable.

Stephanie Dowrick

Whatever may be the mysteries of life and death, there is one mystery which the cross of Christ reveals to us, and that is the infinite and absolute goodness of God. Let all the rest remain a mystery so long as the mystery of the cross of Christ gives us faith for all the rest.

Charles Kingsley

Good sex is a mystery. Perhaps humping and pumping is not a mystery, but good sex is a mystery, and how human beings become truly intimate remains a mystery.

Erica Jong

With the word creative we stand under a mystery. And from time to time that mystery, as if it were a sun, sends down upon one head or another, a sudden shaft of light - by grace, one feels, rather than deserving, for it always is something given, free, unsought, unexpected.

P. L. Travers

What the word God means is the mystery really. It's the mystery that we face as humans the mystery of existence, of suffering and of death.

Ram Dass

Life is a mystery - mystery of beauty, bliss and divinity. Meditation is the art of unfolding that mystery.

Amit Ray

I believe in one secret and ineffable Lord; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name Chaos, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes. And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name Babalon.

Aleister Crowley

Mystery is in the morning, and mystery in the night, and the beauty of mystery is everywhere; but still the plain truth remains, that mouth and purse must be filled.

Herman Melville

What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.

Nadine Gordimer

Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.

Cormac McCarthy

Poetry never loses its appeal. Sometimes its audience wanes and sometimes it swells like a wave. But the essential mystery of being human is always going to engage and compel us. We're involved in a mystery. Poetry uses words to put us in touch with that mystery. We're always going to need it.

Edward Hirsch

Give me a mystery - just a plain and simple one - a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery - just one!