Only the people who have never contemplated the fundamental and essential questions of life can think and say that everything is accessible to human reason.
There are three kinds of people: some do not believe in anything that cannot be clearly expressed in words, others believe only those teachings in which they have been raised, and the third believe in the law which they recognize in their heart. The last kind are the most reasonable and steadfast. The people who believe the teachings in which they have been raised are less reasonable and less steadfast, but still they are not devoid of the primary human quality: the acknowledgement of something higher, something unfathomable, which demands that we lead a good life. A peasant woman who acknowledges God, or even Nicholas the Wonderworker, as something higher, something spiritual, which demands selflessness and good deeds, is closer to the truth than the people of the first kind, who acknowledge nothing that cannot be comprehended by reason.
All origins are mysteries; the cause of every individual or collective life is a mystery, i.e. something that cannot be grasped by reason, something inexplicable, indefinite. In a word, every individuality is an unsolvable enigma, and no beginning can be explained. To be sure, everything that happens can be explained retrospectively, but the beginning of everything had no prior cause. It remains forever the original miracle of creation because it is not a consequence of something else: that only occurs between the things of the past, the things that constitute its environment, occasion, setting, and which accompany its emergence. But the emergence itself remains unfathomable.
— Amiel
Thanks to your excellent education, you can measure circles and squares and all the distances between the stars. Your geometry can achieve everything now. So, if you are such a brilliant scientist, measure the human mind. Tell me how great or how small it is. You know what a straight line is. What good does it do you if you do not know the straight path in life? It turns out that all the sciences are wholly useless for teaching virtue. Even if they are useful for something else, they are worthless for virtue. They do not lead the mind to virtue, they merely clear the way.
— Seneca
The mystery of the life of plants is kindred with that of our own lives, and the physiologist must not presume to explain their growth according to mechanical laws, or as he might explain some machinery of his own making. We must not expect to probe with our fingers the sanctuary of any life, whether animal or vegetable. If we do, we shall discover nothing but surface still.
— Thoreau
A thing viewed through a microscope or a telescope becomes insignificant.
— Thoreau
A large library confuses the reader more than it teaches him. It is much better to limit yourself to a few authors rather than to thoughtlessly read many.
— Seneca
Better to remain ignorant of much that is knowable than to attempt to fathom the unfathomable.
There is nothing that corrupts and weakens mental strength and fuels conceitedness as much as the dwelling in the domain of the unfathomable. Worst of all is to pretend that you understand that which you do not.
