50 Mysterious Quotes That Will Make You Want to Think Deeper

By Stephanie Kirby | Published July 17, 2023

If you love mysteries, check out these mysterious quotes that will leave you thinking deeper.

According to dictionary.cambridge.org, mysterious means “strange, not known, or not understood.”

A mysterious quote will often leave you looking for more information as it may be cryptic, may invite research, or the quote may be incomplete.

You may find mysterious quotes in the following:

Books or movies based on mysteries
Horror movies or books
People that are guarded and don’t open up easily
Crime movies or books
Unsolved mysteries
Urban legends or rumors

Mysterious quotes are fun as they provide you with a ready-made mystery to solve.

Take a look at these mysterious quotes and see if you are the next Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys detective!

Popular Mysterious Quotes

The mysterious and unknown draws people in, as shown by the following quotes.

1. “Everything unknown seems magnificent.” — Tacitus

2. “Mystery is not profoundness.” — Charles Caleb Colton

3. “It’s the unknown that draws people.” — E.A. Buccianeri

4. “You have only seen the least of what I can do.” — Holly Black

5. “It’s mysterious what attracts you to a person.” — Jeff Goldblum

6. “So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

7. “Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.” — Ray Bradbury

8. “No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.” — Elizabeth Bowen

9. “You always admire what you really don’t understand.” — Blaise Pascal

10. “The mystery of man is that woman can love him.” — Henry de Montherlant

Mysterious Quotes to Make You Think

The following quotes will get you thinking about the mysterious.

11. “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” — Francis Bacon

12. “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” — Oscar Wilde

13. “Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.” — Julia Cameron

14. “The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life by size.” — Stephen King

15. “I am as mysterious to myself as I am mysterious to others.” — Leonora Carrington

16. “I never tell anyone exactly how clever I am. They would be too scared.” — Eoin Colfer

17. “Life is just a bowl of cherries, don’t take it serious, its mysterious.” — Bob Fosse

18. “The pleasure which we most rarely experience gives us greatest delight.” — Epictetus

19. “The mysterious is always attractive. People will always follow a vail.” — Bede Jarrett

20. “Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.” — Lord Byron

You will also enjoy our article on cringe quotes.

Quotes About the Mysterious Things of Life

These quotes show that many mysterious things make us think and reflect.

21. “I find the family the most mysterious and fascinating institution in the world.” — Amos Oz

22. “Be discreet in all things, and so render it unnecessary to be mysterious.” — Duke of Wellington

23. “Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.” — Neil Armstrong

24. “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.” — Albert Einstein

25. “Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.” — Thomas Carlyle

26. “Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.” — William Blake

27. “The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

28. “Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.” — Carl Gustav Jung

29. “A garden must combine the poetic and the mysterious with a feeling of serenity and joy.” — Luis Barragan

30. “The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” — Eden Phillpotts

Mysterious Quotes About Life

There are many perspectives on the mysterious things of life, shown in these quotes.

31. “Inspiration is some mysterious blessing which happens when the wheels are turning smoothly.” — Quentin Blake

32. “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.” — William Cowper

33. “As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.” — Albert Schweitzer

34. “There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.” — Seneca

35. “The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” ― Anaïs Nin

36. “Understanding can overcome any situation, however mysterious or insurmountable it may appear to be.” — Norman Vincent Peale

37. “In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between there are doors.” — William Blake

38. “Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?” — Charles de Lint

39. “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science.” — Albert Einstein

40. “It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all to feel.” — Salman Rushdie

More Mysterious Quotes

Here are a few more mysterious quotes from life.

41. “Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.” — Jim Rohn

42. “It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws.” — Vladimir Lenin

43. “There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations, much is given. Of other generations much is expected.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

44. “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not, and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

45. “Art as a whole is a riddle. Another way of putting this is to say that art expresses something while at the same time hiding it.” — Theodore Adorno

46. “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.” — Charles Dickens

47. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” — Helen Keller

48. “To see yourself, and for others to see you, is a form of validation. I’m interested in that very mysterious and mystical way we relate to each other in the world.” — Mickalene Thomas

49. “Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.” — Sun Tzu

50. “The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.” — Charles Baudelaire