mystery Quotes

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

“Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore...”

“What further inferences may we draw?” “Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!”

“We seek him here, we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven?—Is he in hell? That demmed, elusive Pimpernel?”

“Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.”

“I accepted the assignment because I was in the grip of the Everest mystique. In truth, I wanted to climb the mountain as badly as I’d ever wanted anything in my life.”

“It’s a great huge game of chess that’s being played—all over the world—if this is the world at all, you know.”

“Though he is powerfully drawn to the woman, he does not know how to fight for her or even that he is to fight for her. Rather, he he finds her mostly a mystery that he knows he cannot solve and so at a soul level he keeps his distance. And privately, secretly, he turns to the imitation.”

“It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. ”

“The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don’t know.”

“The production of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of humanity.”

“There’s a reason for everything, you said, and though it’s a mystery to me now, I know it won’t always be so.”

“Life, he realized, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it’s in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.”

“There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, an exquisite mystical experience.”

“You’d think solving mysteries would bring you closure, that closing the loop would comfort and quiet your mind. But it never does. The truth always disappoints.”

“Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players,* to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

“Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was.”

“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.”

“Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”

“Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”

“The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness.”

“In fact, you have no knowledge of where anything is or of what anything is or how it came to be. Life is a mystery. ”

“I want to enjoy the mystery of not knowing you. Take in every exciting opportunity to learn you. Then, fall in love with the anticipation of one day truly understanding you, so that I can become totally obsessed with the beauty of doing all the things that make you smile.”

“Darwin’s theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudians and Marxism into the Nether regions, and I’m quite sure that Freud, Marx and Darwin are commiserating one with the other in the dark dungeon where discarded gods gather.”

“The evil genius of darkness presided at its birth, it came forth under the veil of mystery, its true features being carefully concealed, and every deceptive art has been and is practicing to have this spurious brat received as the genuine offspring of heaven-born liberty.”

“The traditional gender ideals of the strong-silent man who plays his cards close to his chest and the mysterious woman who disguises her feelings with coyness go so far as to make a virtue of being unavailable and secretive.”

″ And don’t ask me to solve it because I am the worst. ”

This books has a touch of mystery, a healthy dose of coming of age and a surprising amount of introspection.

“Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.”

“How could I doubt such a miracle? Isn’t it a miracle that the sun rises every day in the east and sets in the west? Isn’t there mystery in all of nature’s wonders? In the movements of the moon or the stillness of the stars?”

“Time was mathematically explicable; it was the heart-the part of the brain represented by the heart- that was the mystery.”

“Two cars, an old red one and a non descript grey one, are smashed into each other at a right angle. We all stare at them in silence until Mr. Avery lets out an exasperated sigh. ‘I’d better make sure no one is hurt.”

″ Calling themselves the ‘Five Find-Outers and Dog’ they set out to solve the mystery and discover the culprit. ”

“It is about 5 children who would like to find the truth about the person who burn the cottage. I enjoyed to read this book and want to be one of the find-outers too.”

“So they waited, and grumbled, and watched the macaroni cheese congeal between them on the table. But MCC Berkshire never came for his supper. Not that night or any night.”

“I think he would have stayed with her forever, trying to figure out the mystery. He was a puzzle solver, the kind of person who likes theorems, theories. X always had to equal something. It couldn’t just be X.”

“Amos, a little speck of a living thing in the vast living universe, felt thoroughly akin to it all. Overwhelmed by the beauty and mystery of everything, he rolled over and over and right off the deck of his boat and into the sea.

“She flew clumsily at first, with the child now held tightly in her arms. Then she felt the magic, the African mystery.”

“The whole point of a spectacular tag is not the artwork; it’s the mystery of how it was done.”

“The mystery was gone and that was the worst part of getting caught.”

“The mystery. That’s the point. And there isn’t enough of it, in my opinion.”

“But where did he come from? Has he been sent to her for a reason? Who will explain his mystery to her? ”

“Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.

“The people around you are generally mysterious. You are never quite sure about their intentions. They present an appearance that is often deceptive—their manipulative actions don’t match their lofty words or promises. All of this can prove confusing. Seeing people as they are, instead of what you think they should be, would mean having a greater sense of their motives.”

″...he had to admit to himself that as time passed, his memories of that night grew less vivid, and he could no longer recall his mystery woman’s voice with perfect clarity. Besides, Sophie’s accent, while exceptionally refined for a housemaid, was not as uppercrust as hers had been.′

“Sometimes you start thinking about death... and you might think death is a big mystery. It is hard to understand what death is... not only when you’re little, but when you’re big, too....”

″ ‘Dear little swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and women. There is no mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little swallow, and tell me what you see.’ ”

“There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak. The sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.”

When Cass and his mother move to the upper floor in an old house, a great curiosity develops about Mr. Magnus, who lives on the ground floor.

The old man stands before his creation. Silently he tends the fires that feed it...waiting for the right moment to unleash its power upon the world.

He stood motionless before the stove, wearing a tattered dressing gown trimmed with satin, his thin white hair hanging over the collar. A single bare bulb in the ceiling behind him cast his weedy shadow on the wall.

“Now he moved to one side, and Cass gaped in astonishment...It was unlike anything he had ever seen. He instinctively drew back from the hole and something sharp bit deeply into his leg.”

“For the past week his mother, Alison, and he had been hunting them in earnest, setting out the traps around the apartment at night, shaking out the catch come morning, like a pair of trappers tending their line.”

“Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain.”

“But now the police have found Johnny’s bicycle abandoned along with others belongings he would never let out of his sight. They want to know what Chris and Johnny did together, where they went and why.”

The only person who saw her leave the house was the younger brother - which is why he feels particularly guilty about her disappearance.

“When they are together Chris lives a different, more exciting life than when he’s at home or at his strict and traditional grammar school.”

He offers to take Annie to town. Before she can protest, Annie finds herself lifted on to his saddle and off they set on an intense, dream-like journey.

“By now the force of the storm was spent and the wind had died, but the sea was still seething and angry. The waves rolled into the bay from Samson, gathering and rearing as they neared the shore before they curled over to hurl themselves into the hissing sand.”

″‘The whole affair is a mystery to me,’ he said. ‘Who would want to steal anything from me?’ ‘Perhaps a thief...?’ ventured Julius.”

“Well, when I picked up the top plate, I came over all queer. A sort of tingling in my hands, and everything went muzzy -you know how at the pictures goes out of focus on the screen and then comes back? It was like that: only when I could see straight again, it was different somehow. Something had changed.”

“Alison and Roger were playing with three flimsy cut out paper models of birds. One was on the candlestick and the other two were side by side on a chair back. The play Gwyn had brought from the loft was next to Alison’s pillow and covered with scraps of paper.”

“Aunt Tissie, I opened a door and saw some ladies sitting in a room. Who were they?”

“Nancy, I just know you’re going to solve this mystery!”

“I wish we could solve a mystery on our own, though.”

“Somehow she holds the key to different times, different eras - including the Blackbury Blitz in 1941. ”

“A terrible monster pulled itself over the top of the cart and spat at Johnny. It was white, but with bits of brown and black as well. It was scrawny. It had three and a half legs but only one ear.”

“But will catching the thief solve all of the problems that this fishy mystery has created?”

“Bert and Nan and younger brother and sister Freddie and Flossie and their parents are travelling home on the train, discussing the next school term, when a circus train in front of them hits trouble.”

“Together they meet more adventure than they ever imagined, solve a mystery, catch the culprits, and find Rasmus a home.”

“So,” Jeffrey said, “where do you want me to look?” Elizabeth sighed. She was trying very hard not to yell. Jeffrey had come when she’d called, and he’d nodded while she’d described her early morning search along the stream and up the hill behind the house. But he had yet to look anywhere himself.”

The Count’s mysterious warning frightened me at the time; it frightens me more now when I think of it, for in future he has a fearful hold upon me. I shall fear to doubt what he may say!

“What reasons?” said Audrey lightly. “Never mind what reasons. Being in the place of a mother to you, since your poor mother died, I say this, Audrey—when a gentleman goes to Australia, he has his reasons.”

“All I knew was that one didn’t ask questions about him.”

Antony couldn’t help feeling a thrill of excitement as he followed Cayley’s example, and put his face close up to the glass. For the first time he wondered if there really had been a revolver shot in this mysterious room. It had all seemed so absurd and melodramatic from the other side of the door.

It would have interested Antony to know that, just at the time when he was feeling rather superior to the prejudiced inspector, the Inspector himself was letting his mind dwell lovingly upon the possibilities in connection with Mr. Gillingham. Was it only a coincidence that Mr. Gillingham had turned up just when he did? And Mr. Beverley’s curious answers when asked for some account of his friend. An assistant in a tobacconist’s, a waiter! An odd man, Mr. Gillingham, evidently. It might be as well to keep an eye on him.

Bill looked at him eagerly. “I say, are you being the complete detective?” “Well, I wanted a new profession,” smiled the other. “What fun! I mean,” he corrected himself apologetically, “one oughtn’t to say that, when there’s a man dead in the house, and one’s host—” He broke off a little uncertainly, and then rounded off his period by saying again, “By Jove, what a rum show it is. Good Lord!”

Bill continued his breakfast with a slightly bewildered air. He did not know that Cayley was smoking a cigarette outside the windows behind him; not listening, perhaps; possibly not even overhearing; but within sight of Antony, who was not going to take any risks. So he went on with his breakfast, reflecting that Antony was a rum fellow, and wondering if he had dreamed only of the amazing things which had happened the day before.

“By Jove! You mean that as soon as the pond has been dragged, Cayley will hide something there?” “Yes, I’m afraid so.” “But why afraid?” “Because I think that it must be something very important, something which couldn’t easily be hidden anywhere else.”

“What did he want to shut the door for?” said Bill. “That’s what I don’t understand. You couldn’t have seen him, anyhow.” “No. So it follows that I might have heard him. He was going to do something which he didn’t want me to hear.” “By Jove, that’s it!” said Bill eagerly. “Yes; but what?” Bill frowned hopefully to himself, but no inspiration came.

Even if you found nothing, you couldn’t get away from the fact that a secret passage was a secret passage, and anything might happen in it.

He saw so much, and yet somehow it was all out of focus. It was like looking at an opal, and discovering with every movement of it some new colour, some new gleam of light reflected, and yet never really seeing the opal as a whole.

What was it which Cayley was going to hide in that pond that night? Antony thought that he knew now. It was Mark’s body.

“Yes, but you were so dashed mysterious about that. I asked you what the point of it was, and you wouldn’t say anything.”

“Well, it’s rather useful, that’s all.” “Said Sherlock Holmes enigmatically,” added Bill. “A moment later, his friend Watson had hurled him into the pond.”

“I love being Sherlocky,” he said. “It’s very unfair of you not to play up to me.”

The pond was waiting for them, more solemn in the moonlight. The trees which crowned the sloping bank on the far side of it were mysteriously silent. It seemed that they had the world very much to themselves.

For a long time, as it seemed to the watchers, he stood there, very big, very silent, in the moonlight. At last he seemed satisfied. Whatever his secret was, he had hidden it; and so with a gentle sigh, as unmistakable to Antony as if he had heard it, Cayley turned away and vanished again as quietly as he had come.

“Perhaps they had a secret process for making chickens chemically—who knows?”

“Yet some men bury their secrets thus,”

“How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him,—a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood. And then he sets his mark on their bosoms!

“I was then almost assured that the inheritance had neither profited the Borgias nor the family, but had remained unpossessed like the treasures of the Arabian Nights, which slept in the bosom of the earth under the eyes of the genie.”

Seated with folded arms in a corner of the carriage, he continued to ponder over the singular history he had so lately listened to, and to ask himself an interminable number of questions touching its various circumstances without, however, arriving at a satisfactory reply to any of them.

Slumber refused to visit his eyelids and the night was passed in feverish contemplation of the chain of circumstances tending to prove the identity of the mysterious visitant to the Colosseum with the inhabitant of the grotto of Monte Cristo; and the more he thought, the firmer grew his opinion on the subject.

The occupant of the box in which the Greek girl sat appeared to share the universal admiration that prevailed; for he left his seat to stand up in front, so that, his countenance being fully revealed, Franz had no difficulty in recognizing him as the mysterious inhabitant of Monte Cristo, and the very same person he had encountered the preceding evening in the ruins of the Colosseum, and whose voice and figure had seemed so familiar to him.

“Franz went in with his eyes blindfolded, and was waited on by mutes and by women to whom Cleopatra was a painted strumpet. Only he is not quite sure about the women, for they did not come in until after he had taken hashish, so that what he took for women might have been simply a row of statues.”

“Why, you must see, your excellency,” cried the steward, “that this is not natural; that, having a house to purchase, you purchase it exactly at Auteuil, and that, purchasing it at Auteuil, this house should be No. 28, Rue de la Fontaine. Oh, why did I not tell you all? I am sure you would not have forced me to come. I hoped your house would have been some other one than this; as if there was not another house at Auteuil than that of the assassination!”

It was evident that one sentiment affected all the guests on entering the dining-room. Each one asked what strange influence had brought them to this house, and yet astonished, even uneasy though they were, they still felt that they would not like to be absent.

Monte Cristo pressed his hands to his forehead. What was passing in that brain, so loaded with dreadful secrets? What does the angel of light or the angel of darkness say to that mind, at once implacable and generous? God only knows.

“Are you superhuman? Are you an angel?” And the young man, who had never shrunk from danger, shrank before Monte Cristo with indescribable terror.

There was no more to do in the room, so the poisoner retired stealthily, as though fearing to hear the sound of her own footsteps; but as she withdrew she still held aside the curtain, absorbed in the irresistible attraction always exerted by the picture of death, so long as it is merely mysterious and does not excite disgust.

“Mademoiselle,” said the stranger, “one day you will receive a letter signed ‘Sinbad the Sailor.’ Do exactly what the letter bids you, however strange it may appear.”

Franz remained, in a manner, spellbound on his chair; for in the person of him who had just entered he recognized not only the mysterious visitant to the Colosseum, and the occupant of the box at the Teatro Argentina, but also his extraordinary host of Monte Cristo.

No one could have said what caused the count’s voice to vibrate so deeply, and what made his eye flash, which was in general so clear, lustrous, and limpid when he pleased.

“Stay,” said Monte Cristo, “here, in this very spot” (and he stamped upon the ground), “I had the earth dug up and fresh mould put in, to refresh these old trees; well, my man, digging, found a box, or rather, the iron-work of a box, in the midst of which was the skeleton of a newly born infant.”

“This child lives, and someone knows it lives—someone is in possession of our secret; and since Monte Cristo speaks before us of a child disinterred, when that child could not be found, it is he who is in possession of our secret.”

“The person called the Count of Monte Cristo is an intimate acquaintance of Lord Wilmore, a rich foreigner, who is sometimes seen in Paris and who is there at this moment; he is also known to the Abbé Busoni, a Sicilian priest, of high repute in the East, where he has done much good.”

The daring attempt to rob the count was the topic of conversation throughout Paris for the next fortnight. The dying man had signed a deposition declaring Benedetto to be the assassin. The police had orders to make the strictest search for the murderer. Caderousse’s knife, dark lantern, bunch of keys, and clothing, excepting the waistcoat, which could not be found, were deposited at the registry; the corpse was conveyed to the morgue. The count told everyone that this adventure had happened during his absence at Auteuil, and that he only knew what was related by the Abbé Busoni, who that evening, by mere chance, had requested to pass the night in his house, to examine some valuable books in his library. Bertuccio alone turned pale whenever Benedetto’s name was mentioned in his presence, but there was no reason why anyone should notice his doing so. Villefort, being called on to prove the crime, was preparing his brief with the same ardor that he was accustomed to exercise when required to speak in criminal cases. But three weeks had already passed, and the most diligent search had been unsuccessful; the attempted robbery and the murder of the robber by his comrade were almost forgotten in anticipation of the approaching marriage of Mademoiselle Danglars to the Count Andrea Cavalcanti.

The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.

As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers’s manner. “Tell him that, and he’ll take it as a compliment,” answered Wemmick; “he don’t mean that you should know what to make of it.”

I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail, and he came slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to shine upon a book, and its circle of light was very contracted; so that he was in it for a mere instant, and then out of it. In the instant, I had seen a face that was strange to me, looking up with an incomprehensible air of being touched and pleased by the sight of me.

“Mr. Pip, one of those two prisoners sat behind you tonight. I saw him over your shoulder.”

“If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes to-night or to-morrow night at nine, and to come to the little sluice-house by the limekiln, you had better come. If you want information regarding your uncle Provis, you had much better come and tell no one, and lose no time. You must come alone. Bring this with you.”

Seeing nothing save what I had seen already, I turned back into the house, and stood just within the shelter of the doorway, looking out into the night. While I was considering that some one must have been there lately and must soon be coming back, or the candle would not be burning, it came into my head to look if the wick were long. I turned round to do so, and had taken up the candle in my hand, when it was extinguished by some violent shock; and the next thing I comprehended was, that I had been caught in a strong running noose, thrown over my head from behind.

As the sparks fell thick and bright about him, I could see his hands, and touches of his face, and could make out that he was seated and bending over the table; but nothing more. Presently I saw his blue lips again, breathing on the tinder, and then a flare of light flashed up, and showed me Orlick.

But Nag and Nagaina had disappeared into the grass. When a snake misses its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to do next.

“I have buried my tracks! And who, who can think of looking under that stone? It has been lying there most likely ever since the house was built, and will lie as many years more. And if it were found, who would think of me? It is all over! No clue!”