Dogen Zenji Quotes

I think I am intrigued by paradoxes. If something seems to be a paradox, it has something deeper, something worth exploring.

Behind every mystery lies another mystery.

Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.

Secrets are the blood of life. Every big thing is a secret, even when you know it, because you never know all of it. If you can know everything about anything, it is not worth knowing.

The more mysterious, the more imperfect; as darkness is, in comparison with light--so is mystery, in comparison with knowledge.

Those who know it do not speak about it. Those who speak about it do not know it.

We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

In any work you do, you can be profound one minute, and then you be superficial the next, and you can be smart and insightful and then insipid. There can be room for all that.

Why you do something is always kind of a mystery to me.

There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem. We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding.

I'm not just interested in fascinating faces or trees. I want to bore in deeper.

Life is weird and complex but very simple at the same time. It's all about perception.

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.

Life is never what it seems - and that’s the great thing about it

I guess in my own life, privacy, anonymity, and the mystery of being lost are important. I also feel that people are mysterious and complex no matter what they do, and no matter how hard they try to reveal their own mystery.

I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.

Nothing is wholly obvious without becoming enigmatic. Reality itself is too obvious to be true .

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery.

A woman I should like to think I know rather well and a woman I had always considered a mystery, are in fact the same person.

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.

Everything is simpler than one can imagine, and yet complicated and inter-twined beyond comprehension.

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

Eve is a twofold mystery.