Mystery

The Mysterious

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental
emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a
stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-
out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that
our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is
religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.