#incomprehensible

I hadn't accepted he was seriously ill. The idea that someone so close to you couldn't wake up was utterly incomprehensible. Then the doctor came in... Maurice had no brain left. There wasn't any activity at all. ↗

— Robin Gibb

#activity #any #brain #came #close

Today we often think that before we start living a religious life we have first to accept the creedal doctrines and that before one can have any comprehension of the loyalty and trust of faith, one must first force one's mind to accept a host of incomprehensible doctrines. But this is to put the cart before the horse. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#any #before #cart #comprehension #doctrines

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist. ↗

— Blaise Pascal

#god #incomprehensible #should

There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible. ↗

— Alec Douglas-Home

#incomprehensible #insoluble #life #my life #ones

That's the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous. ↗

— Galway Kinnell

#only #poetry #profound #ridiculous #seems

A tree is an incomprehensible mystery. ↗

— Jim Woodring

#mystery #tree

... While much recent historicist criticism has assumed early nineteenth-century readers attuned to subtle ideological nuances in poetry, actual responses from readers often come closer to clulessness. ... It is no surprise that no one understood Blake, but other poets fared not much better. ... Coleridge's 'Christabel' was 'the standing enigma which puzzles the curiosity of literary circles. What is it all about?', while another reviewer asked about Shelley, 'What, in the name of wonder on one side, and of common sense on the other, is the meaning of this metaphysical rhapsody about the unbinding of Prometheus?'. Even Keats was condemned for 'his frequent obscurity and confusion of language' and his 'unintelligible quaintness'. Byron, never to be outdone, boasted in 'Don Juan' that not only did he not understand many of his fellow poets, he did not understand himself either: 'I don't pretend that I quite understand / My own meaning when I would be very fine.' ... ↗

— Andrew Elfenbein

#incomprehensible #poetry #romantic-poets #romantic

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. ↗

— Jane Austen

#ever #incomprehensible #man #marriage #offer

Not longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#beauty #become #exposes #face #features

All human language draws its nature and value from the fact that it both comes from the Word of God and is chosen by God to manifest himself. But this relationship is secret and incomprehensible, beyond the bounds of reason and analysis. ↗

— Jacques Ellul

#beyond #both #bounds #chosen #comes