#sphinx

The pyramid once passed there was still a short way to go before we confronted the Sphinx, in the middle of what our contemporaries have left him of his desert. ↗

— Pierre Loti

#confronted #contemporaries #desert #go #him

It's like the riddle of the Sphinx... why are there so many great unmarried women, and no great unmarried men? ↗

— Sarah Jessica Parker

#like #many #married men #men #riddle

It is of first-class importance that our answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx should be in step with how we conduct our civilisation, and this should in turn be in step with the actual workings of living systems. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#answer #civilisation #conduct #first-class #how

The sphinx will always have to be looked after. ↗

— Zahi Hawass

#always #looked #sphinx #will

...the truth holds the greatest magic, the greatest beauty, and sometimes the greatest danger. ↗

— Esther M. Friesner

#beauty

Yea, she hath passed hereby, and blessed the sheaves, And the great garths, and stacks, and quiet farms, And all the tawny, and the crimson leaves. Yea, she hath passed with poppies in her arms, Under the star of dusk, through stealing mist, And blessed the earth, and gone, while no man wist. With slow, reluctant feet, and weary eyes, And eye-lids heavy with the coming sleep, With small breasts lifted up in stress of sighs, She passed, as shadows pass, among the sheep; While the earth dreamed, and only I was ware Of that faint fragrance blown from her soft hair. The land lay steeped in peace of silent dreams; There was no sound amid the sacred boughs. Nor any mournful music in her streams: Only I saw the shadow on her brows, Only I knew her for the yearly slain, And wept, and weep until she come again. ↗

— Frederic Manning

#cassandra #earth #path #samhain #sphinx

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. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#answer #answers #difficulty #forms #given

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

— Gregory Bateson

#devoted #fifty #i #life #professional

A beautiful woman can be painted as a totem only; not as a woman, but as a Madonna, a queen, a sphinx. ↗

— Saul Steinberg

#beautiful woman #madonna #only #painted #queen

It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon. ↗

— H.P. Lovecraft

#sphinx #dreams