A Quote by Tom Robbins

Well, I believe life is a Zen koan, that is, an unsolvable riddle. But the contemplation of that riddle - even though it cannot be solved - is, in itself, transformative. And if the contemplation is of high enough quality, you can merge with the divine.

Tom Robbins

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Tom Robbins
American - Novelist
Born: July 22, 1936

I could say I believe in every drop of rain that . . . Well, I believe life is a Zen koan, that is, an unsolvable riddle. But the contemplation of that riddle--even though it cannot be solved--is, in itself, transformative. And if the contemplation is of high enough quality, you can merge with the divine.

Tom Robbins

But the solution to the riddle of life and space and time lies outside space and time. For, as it should be abundantly clear by now, nothing inside a frame can state, or even ask, anything about that frame. The solution, then, is not the finding of an answer to the riddle of existence, but the realization that there is no riddle. This is the essence of the beautiful, almost Zen Buddhist closing sentences of the Tracticus: "For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist."

Paul Watzlawick

Just as we believe by faith that the greatest happiness of the next life consists simply in the contemplation of this divine majesty, likewise we experience that we derive the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life from the same contemplation, even though it is much less perfect.

Rene Descartes

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving forever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life?

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Happiness, then, is co-extensive with contemplation, and the more people contemplate, the happier they are; not incidentally, but in virtue of their contemplation, because it is in itself precious. Thus happiness is a form of contemplation.

Aristotle

Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.

Karl Marx

Before examining this more carefully and investigating its consequences, I want to dwell for a moment in the contemplation of God, to ponder His attributes in me, to see, admire, and adore the beauty of His boundless light, insofar as my clouded insight allows. Believing that the supreme happiness of the other life consists wholly of the contemplation of divine greatness, I now find that through less perfect contemplation of the same sort I can gain the greatest joy available in this life.

Rene Descartes

All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Heinrich Heine

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

Action should be founded on contemplation, and those of us who act don't put enough time, don't give enough emphasis, to contemplation.

Robert McNamara

Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man in his endowment with personal capacities.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Unwind my riddle.Cruel as hawks the hours fly;Wounded men seldom come home to die;The hard waves see an arm flung high;Scorn hits strong because of a lie;Yet there exists a mystic tie.Unwind my riddle.

Stephen Crane

A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms.

Gregory Bateson

A Quote by Tom Robbins

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