Mystery

Note: Last Updated 7/25/2025.

William Shakespeare: (Hamlet)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

(William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene V; In: Hamlet, and As You Like It: A Specimen of a New Edition of Shakespeare, ed. Thomas Caldecott, [London: John Murray, 1820], p. 35.)

Miguel de Cervantes:

Thou hast seen nothing yet…

(Miguel de Cervantes, The History of the Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote of la Mancha: In Four Volumes: Vol. II, trans. Motteux, [Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1854], p. 14.)

Alt. Trans. Miguel de Cervantes:

How little you know!

(Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Edith Grossman, [New York: Ecco, 2003], Part I, Chapter XXV, p. 197.)

Original. Miguel de Cervantes:

Bien estas en el cuento…

(Miguel de Ceruantes Saauedra, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Qvixote de la Mancha, [Madrid: Iuan de la Cuesta, 1605], Primera Parte, Cap. XXV, p. 125b.)

R. C. Sproul:

We take comfort, however, that mystery is not a synonym of contradiction.

(R. C. Sproul, The Consequences of Ideas, [Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2000], p. 23.)

Flannery O’Connor:

     Whatever you do anyway, remember that these things are mysteries and that if they were such that we could understand them, they wouldn’t be worth understanding. A God you understood would be less than yourself.

(Flannery O’Connor, “Letter To Louise Abbot,” [undated] Sat. 1959; In: Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being, ed. Sally Fitzgerald, [New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979], p. 354.)

A. W. Tozer:

At the contemplation and utterance of His majesty, all eloquence is rightly dumb, all mental effort is feeble. For God is greater than mind itself. His greatness cannot be conceived. Nay, if we could conceive of His greatness, He would be less than the human mind which could form the conception. He is greater than all language, and no statement can express Him. Indeed, if any statement could express Him, He would be less than human speech, which could by such statement comprehend and gather up all that He is. Up to a certain point, of course, we can have experience of Him, without language, but no man can express in words all that He is in Himself.

(A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of Man, [Camp Hill: Christian Publications, 1978], p. 97.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria