Top 164 Riddle Quotes & Sayings

Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from giving up.

Un-dish-cover the fish, or dishcover the riddle.

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?

What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman's mind?

Ballet is a riddle of means and ends.

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.

Understanding a metaphor is like deciphering a code or unraveling a riddle.

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.

I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.

I was raised in a family where no one had a serious bone in their body and every answer was a riddle, a joke, or a prank.

Evil isn't a cosmological riddle, only just selfish human behavior.

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.

It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.

The riddle of Mozart is precisely that "the man" refuses to be a key for solving it. In death, as in life, he conceals himself behind his work.

How did reason come into the world? As is fitting, in an irrational manner, by accident. One will have to guess at it as at a riddle.

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.

Here's a riddle: When is a croquet mallet like a billy club? I'll tell you: Whenever you want it to be!

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

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.

He [Zampano] probably would of insisted on corrections and edits, he was his own harshest critic, but I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angels of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.

How to teach people to do what hasn't been done is a great riddle.

Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below?

Riddle me this, riddle me that. Who's afraid of the big black bat?

The population question is the real riddle of the sphinx, to which no political Oedipus has as yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of the terrible monster over-multiplication, all other riddle sink into insignificance.

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.

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

Richard was a riddle with no answer, and I was tired of playing a game I couldn't win.

here, there, and everywhere"-an opinionated riddle.

If then, your world be such a baffling riddle, it is because you are that baffling riddle. And if your speech be such a woeful maze, it is because you are that woeful maze.

The causes of life's history [cannot] resolve the riddle of life's meaning.

What a haunting, inescapable riddle life was.

The Sphinx-riddle. Solve it, or be torn to bits, is the decree.

I developed my very first game after reading "Riddle Master" by Patricia McKillip.

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

Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.

The Big Bang is our modern scientific creation myth. It comes from the same human need to solve the cosmological riddle [Where did the universe come from?]

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

We can't save the past or solve the riddle of love. But to me, it's worth trying.

There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.

Genius, the Pythian of the beautiful, leaves its large truths a riddle to the dull.

I'd once heard a spiritual "riddle" that went like this: "What's the only thingin heaven that's the same as it was on earth?"The answer: the wounds in Jesus' hands and feet.

We are caught inside a mystery, veiled in an enigma, locked inside a riddle

Gravity Falls' is a riddle wrapped in an enigma tucked in a mystery deep-fried in a conundrum slathered in hickory-smoked puzzle sauce.

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."

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.

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.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled: / The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Of course money buys happiness. You ever seen a homeless person skip? The answer to that riddle's no. They're not allowed.

For myself, I am interested in science and in philosophy only because I want to learn something about the riddle of the world in which we live, and the riddle of man's knowledge of that world. And I believe that only a revival of interest in these riddles can save the sciences and philosophy from an obscurantist faith in the expert's special skill and in his personal knowledge and authority.

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

Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

I think of action as a dance. It's a riddle; it should have emotion in it.

It is man's destiny to ponder on the riddle of existence and, as a byproduct of his wonderment, to create a new life on this earth.

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.

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.

Did you ever think, Clarice, why the Philistines don't understand you? It's because you are the answer to Samson's riddle. You are the honey in the lion.

The riddle of the age has for each a private solution.

Out yonder there was this huge world...which stands before us like a great eternal riddle.