88 Intriguing Mystery Quotes

Mystery has a timeless allure, captivating our imaginations and inviting us to explore the unknown. Whether found in literature, film, or the whispers of unsolved puzzles, mystery stirs our curiosity and challenges our perception of reality. Our fascination often lies not just in the resolution, but in the journey of unraveling what lies beneath the surface. In this spirit of inquiry, we've curated a collection of the top 88 intriguing mystery quotes, each offering a glimpse into the enigma of the unknown. These quotes come from a diverse array of thinkers, writers, and storytellers, each one contributing a unique perspective on the art of mystery. Whether you're a lifelong enthusiast or a newcomer to the genre, these quotes are sure to inspire and provoke thought as you delve into the captivating realm of mysteries.

1. “Redemption, n. Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned. The doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy religions, and whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have everlasting life in which to try to understand it.” - Ambrose Bierce

2. “One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.” - Robertson Davies

3. “When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.” - Charles Baxter

4. “A pleasant morning. Saw my classmates Gardner, and Wheeler. Wheeler dined, spent the afternoon, and drank Tea with me. Supped at Major Gardiners, and engag'd to keep School at Bristol, provided Worcester People, at their ensuing March meeting, should change this into a moving School, not otherwise. Major Greene this Evening fell into some conversation with me about the Divinity and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ. All the Argument he advanced was, 'that a mere creature, or finite Being, could not make Satisfaction to infinite justice, for any Crimes,' and that 'these things are very mysterious.'(Thus mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity.)[Diary entry, February 13 1756]” - John Adams

5. “Oh, I'm not afraid of death! What have I got to live for after all? I suppose you believe it's very wrong to kill a person who has injured you-even if they've taken away everything you had in the world?” - Agatha Christie

6. “In fact-Dr. Sheppard!” - Agatha Christie

7. “You're driving me NORMAL!” - Jeff Lindsay

8. “He felt like home.” - JoAnne Kenrick

9. “That’s the last time I put you in charge of the tequila when we’re making margaritas” - JoAnne Kenrick

10. “Admire and adore the Author of the telescopic universe, love and esteem the work, do all in your power to lessen ill, and increase good, but never assume to comprehend.” - John Adams

11. “The trick to being smart is knowing when to play dumb.” - V. Alexander

12. “I just know that any time I undertake a case, I'm apt to run into some kind of a trap.” - Carolyn Keene

13. “It'll be a change," says Marcus. "Something different.""Not a mystery."Marcus laughs. "No. Not a mystery. Just a nice safe history."Ah, my darling. But there is no such thing.” - Kate Morton

14. “I am who I am and always shall be.” - Laura Elizabeth

15. “She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He'd read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: "Well, darling, we're going to be rich." Now he slaps shut the last of his books and announces, with equal assurance: "We're all going to die.” - Jacob Appel

16. “Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half an hour. I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines. Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper. ~ Sherlock Holmes” - Arthur Conan Doyle

17. “No sheep may leave the flock," he said to anyone who would listen, "unless he comes back again.” - Leonie Swann

18. “The concept of randomness and coincidence will be obsolete when people can finally define a formulation of patterned interaction between all things within the universe.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

19. “If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.” - Jodi Picoult

20. “Anyone who realises what Love is, the dedication of the heart, so profound, so absorbing, so mysterious, so imperative, and always just in the noblest natures so strong, cannot fail to see how difficult, how tragic even, must often be the fate of those whose deepest feelings are destined from the earliest days to be a riddle and a stumbling-block, unexplained to themselves, passed over in silence by others.” - Edward Carpenter

21. “Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion...but he set in its place the positivist doctrine of revelation which says in effect, 'Take it or leave it': Virgin Birth, Trinity or anything else, everything which is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which latter has to be swallowed as a whole or not at all. That is not in accordance with the Bible. There are degrees of perception and degrees of significance, i.e. a secret discipline must be re-established whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are preserved from profanation.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

22. “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.” - Carl Sagan

23. “Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public school education. Despite Parker's admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by "Raffles" and "Sherlock Holmes," or the sentiments for which they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox. 'I am an amateur,' said Lord Peter” - Dorothy L. Sayers

24. “So you want me to go to a human orgy, where I will not be welcome, and you want us to leave before I get to enjoy myself? ~Eric Northman” - Charlaine Harris

25. “I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.” - Richard P. Feynman

26. “It all depends on the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. - Daupin” - Edgar Allan Poe

27. “We—all of us—want to feel special. We want to feel the glory that shines on us when we reach beyond our boundaries to grab at something greater, to live a heroic life, if only for a day or a week or a moment. This simple yearning is in us all, hardly recognizable, often only the merest hint that there is something more to us. This is why we seek out new places...we want to remember a somewhere that gave us the space to expand ourselves, to become a little more of who we truly are.” - J.E. Leigh

28. “There's a large strain of irony in our human affairs... Interwoven with our affairs is this wonderful spirit of irony which prevents us from ever being utterly and irretrievably serious, from being unaware of the mysterious nature of our existence.” - Malcolm Muggeridge

29. “She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him to be intelligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, well-read, amusing and enamored, but he had not so far produced in her that crushing sense of inferiority which leads to prostration and hero-worship. But she now realized that there was, after all, something godlike about him. He could control a horse.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

30. “Let me tell you, you either have chemistry or you don't, and you better have it, or it's like kissing some relative. But chemistry, listen to me, you got to be careful. Chemistry is like those perfume ads, the ones that look so interesting and mysterious but you dont even know at first what they're even selling. Or those menues without the prices. Mystery and intrigue are gonna cost you. Great looking might mean something ve-ry expensive, and I don't mean money. What I'm saying is, chemistry is a place to start, not an end point.” - Deb Caletti

31. “Q: Why do I love thee, O Night?A: Because you know I will never answer.” - Vera Nazarian

32. “Time is a terrible thing because it can erase both joys and pains.” - Gosho Aoyama

33. “Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don't understand.” - Megan Chance

34. “All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end.” - Isaac Asimov

35. “Gay sex, one. Straight sex, zero” - Dani Alexander

36. “I was its skin, its movement, its shape, its god, its creator, its destroyer. And you thought Dexter was bad. The Bridgeman arrives soon.” - Catherine Astolfo

37. “He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it.” - Josephine Tey

38. “Alan Campbell opened one eye.From somewhere in remote distances, muffled beyond sight or sound, his soul crawled back painfully, through subterranean corridors, up into his body again. Toward the last it moved to a cacophony of hammers and lights. Then he was awake.The first eye was bad enough. But, when he opened his second eye, such as rush of anguish flowed through his brain that he hastily closed them again.” - John Dickson Carr

39. “The logic behind patriotism is a mystery. At least a man who believes that his own family or clan is superior to all others is familiar with more than 0.000003% of the people involved.” - Criss Jami

40. “Do you see this lantern? cried Syme in a terrible voice.'Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind, you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it.” - G.K. Chesterton

41. “Frankly, I wish I could make my heart quit doing an extra thump when Wolfe says satisfactory, Archie. It's childish.” - Rex Stout

42. “The northern star changes its position every ten thousand years, but friendships can last for all eternity.— RJPeters” - R.J. Peters

43. “People are mysterious, even to themselves.” - Frank Lentricchia

44. “What’s the hurry? From my experience, dead bodies don’t get any deader.” - David Harry

45. “I don't need shoes. I need a night scope. You think they sell night scopes someplace here?” - Janet Evanovich

46. “The mature fruit of mystagogy is an awareness that one's life is being progressively transformed by the holy mysteries being celebrated. The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a "new creation", capable of bearing witness in his surroundings to the Christian hope that inspires him.” - Pope Benedict-XVI

47. “In an English village, you turn over a stone and have no idea what will crawl out.Miss Marple” - Agatha Christie

48. “A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. “I didn’t. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could not do so himself.” “Very kind of you.” “Yes. I have been looking forward to it for quite some time.” Daddy’s lemonade is almost gone, he sips it carefully, turning his eyes back to the water. “Looking forward to seeing the lad or to conducting your business?” Daddy is toying with him. “Both. You see, I had never actually met his son.” The glass rests against Daddy’s lips, unmoving. Mr. Geyer watches him closely. “But now I have, so I can get on with my,” he fixes his own gaze on the water, as though trying to see whatever it is that has transfixed my father, “business.” - Gwenn Wright

49. “I couldn’t very well make a special delivery to the door of the constabulary now could I? And he’d have made the perfect scapegoat. That aura of misery he wraps himself in. So Byronesque. He’s too immersed in his own guilt to ever suspect it in another.” - Ella J. Fraser

50. “Life is the greatest of all mysteries, and though I seek to solve its many riddles, my deepest fear is that I will succeed.” - Brian Rathbone

51. “That’s where they found the skeletons. Right where you’re standing.” - Teresa Flavin

52. “On the Writing Process:"When in doubt, take it out.,” - Barbara DaCosta

53. “There are two rules for sucess:1. Never tell everything you know.” - Roger H. Lincoln

54. “(The Mona Lisa), that really is the ugliest portrait I’ve seen, the only thing that supposedly makes it famous is the mystery behind it,” Katherine admitted as she remembered her trips to the Louvre and how she shook her head at the poor tourists crowding around to see a jaundiced, eyebrow-less lady that reminded her of tight-lipped Washington on the dollar bill. Surely, they could have chosen a better portrait of the First President for their currency?” - E.A. Bucchianeri

55. “Oh, sometimes I like to put the sand of doubt into the oyster of my faith." (Br. Cadfael)” - Ellis Peters

56. “You may suppose that perhaps this Walter T. Wallace found his destiny in food and passed down to his progeny a legacy like that of the great Colonel Sanders. The folks here in Wallace County would love to be able to tell you this is so. But no, like their granddaddy, the Wallace men were thievin’ crooks, always with a scheme ready to separate the weak from their hard-earned money.” - Gwenn Wright

57. “Every mystery novel I ever read, the great detective was such an arrogant fuck you could replace 70% of his dialogue with 'Are you stupid?' and the conversation would still make sense.” - NisiOisiN

58. “Elegance is a glowing inner peace. Grace is an ability to give as well as to receive and be thankful. Mystery is a hidden laugh always ready to surface! Glamour only radiates if there is a sublime courage & bravery within: glamour is like the moon; it only shines because the sun is there.” - C. JoyBell C.

59. “Monsieur Bienvenu was simply a man who accepted these mysterious questions...and who had in his soul a deep respect for the mystery which enveloped them.” - Victor Hugo

60. “I was someone hungry for stories; more specifically, I was someone who craved after facts...I was, you see, at the start of this tale, a person with history. I had no story of my own. Lacking this, I developed a curiosity about other people's lives.” - Arlene J. Chai

61. “We were the creatures desired throughout the ages... foolish humans didn't even realize it, living in their own little world.” - Kaylynne Spauls

62. “This would become a lifelong pattern, sitting in my comfort zone high above the world in some sort of self-imposed exile.” - Peggy Kopman-Owens

63. “Total confusion, disconnected nothing, absolute bewilderment. It's an enigma wrapped in a mystery, stuffed in a burrito, and smothered in taco sauce.” - Russ Gregory

64. “...where your mind goes...energy flows” - Penny Reilly

65. “Life is a mystery- mystery of beauty, bliss and divinity. Meditation is the art of unfolding that mystery.” - Amit Ray

66. “Cattle... it called us cattle...We're hamburger, you mean.” - Peter Clines

67. “Tak ada yang lebih buruk daripada iri pada sahabat, atau mengharapka sesuatu yang menurut perasaanmu seharusnya menjadi milikmu.” - Heather Webber

68. “Mystery, why so attractive to me?You blind me with fear, place hope on my tongue, and with a cold kiss draw me forward. Wary and trembling, I follow.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

69. “To kiss then was the most natural thing in the world. To explore, to taste, to find out. Katie did find out. When they parted from each other, the world was that much more of a beautiful thing.” - Frederick Anderson

70. “And so back to Cassie: who was she? Part of the deception; just a friend or something else…perhaps it was time to find out.” - Melanie Cusick-Jones

71. “At the moment developing a nice little inoffensive cancer somewhere on dry land seemed infinitely preferable to what she was grimly convinced was soon to be her death by drowning way too far out at sea.” - Dana Stabenow

72. “So I find words I never thought to speakIn streets I never thought I should revisitWhen I left my body on a distant shore.” - T.S. Eliot

73. “Everything about the man spoke of virility--his quick reaction, his calm control now that danger had passed. And she'd never seen a man wield a gun in real life--it was kind of a turn-on to know that he'd protected her. Of course he had protected everyone, but he _had_ sort of singled her out by heaving her to the floor.” - Stephanie Bond

74. “But that’s the thing about dead people: they can’t warn you to keep your nose out of things that are going to put your ass in danger.” - LynDee Walker

75. “I never met a gal who represented a mystery to me in quite the fetchin' way you did. It'd be dull and dreary just to find out how a crook got in and out of a locked room to steal a gold-and-jewelled cup. But it's very rummy, and fascinates the old man a bit, to wonder why a crook didn't steal a gold-and-jewelled cup he should have stolen.” - Carter Dickson

76. “We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us.” - Os Guinness

77. “People give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of love. Anyone tries to possess a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower on a field, you will keep it forever, because the flower is part of the evening and the sunset and the smell of damp earth and the clouds on the horizon.” - Paulo Coelho

78. “The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.” - Flannery O'Connor

79. “If you don't like the path your life has taken, choose another.” - Robert G. DeMers

80. “Simon to die. Jace to live. Jonathon to retune. And you Valentine's daughter, to be the catalist of it all.” - Cassandra Clare

81. “LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women.” - Lauren Willig

82. “Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.” - Neil Armstrong

83. “The smell of dead fish lingered in the air, and excited flies darted from fish to fish lapping up the decay.” - S.W. Lothian

84. “For others, as for ourselves, we must trust him. If we could thoroughly understand anything, that would be enough to prove it undivine; and that which is but one step beyond our understanding must be in some of its relations as mysterious as if it were a hundred.” - George MacDonald

85. “He had learned Lesson One: Let French women tell you what they want.” - Peggy Kopman-Owens

86. “Authors were shy, unsociable creatures, atoning for their lack of social aptitude by inventing their own companions and conversations.” - Agatha Christie

87. “Indignation is often the best defense.” - Diane Capri

88. “Except for a roll of Harding's eyes, everyone ignored me, which is the way I liked it when I had to hang around with senior officers. They had a way of thinking up ideas that got you killed and them promoted.” - James R. Benn