Thomas Carlyle Quotes

Science may eventually explain the world of How. The ultimate world of Why may remain for contemplation, philosophy, religion.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

A tree is an incomprehensible mystery.

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God

Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

It's probably an intellectual weakness, but I look at the stars, and I say, 'There's something bigger than us out there.'

I mean I think that when you've got a big brain, when you find yourself planted in a world with a brain big enough to understand quite a lot of what you see around you, but not everything, you naturally fall to thinking about the deep mysteries. Where do we come from? Where does the world come from? Where does the universe come from?

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.

To be existing at all is beautiful simply because of how complicated and unexplainable being alive really is.

I'm still amazed at how the universe works.

I think there is more to this world than we can possibly fathom. There's got to be.

The greatest miracle of all time, without any close seconds, is the universe. It is the miracle of all miracles, one that ineluctably points with the combined brightness of every star to something - or Someone - beyond itself.

The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence?

God: personified incomprehensibility.

In mysteries what we know, and our realization of what we do not know, proceed together; the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. It is like the quantum world, where the more we understand its formalism, the stranger that world becomes.

I wouldn't even like to begin to define God - I have absolutely no idea. But what I feel, and what touches me, is a great spiritual power, which I don't even want to name. If I had to, I would say God, because I don't know any other.

Anyone who has had an experience of mystery knows that there is a dimension of the universe that is not that which is available to his senses. There is a pertinent saying in one of the Upanishads: When before the beauty of a sunset or of a mountain you pause and exclaim, ‘Ah,’ you are participating in divinity. Such a moment of participation involves a realization of the wonder and sheer beauty of existence. People living in the world of nature experience such moments every day. They live in the recognition of something there that is much greater than the human dimension.

I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of the miracle is here, among us. The eternal as an idea is much less preposterous than time, and this very fact should seize our attention.

For the infinite glorious Creator of all things, to become a creature, is a mystery exceeding all human understanding.

Life's something we already understand. Death is a mystery.

Einstein said that he never could understand it all, the planets spinning in space, the smile upon your face.

It comforts me to think that if we are created beings, the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality, and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality that it would contradict reason. But reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater than reality, or it would not be reasonable.

To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.

A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.