Life & Wisdom Quote by Bede Jarrett

Mystery, Jarrett suggests, is less a puzzle to be solved than a social technology: it recruits. The line’s blunt certainty - “always” twice in two short sentences - reads like a practiced observation from someone who’s watched crowds form around half-seen objects and half-known figures. Attraction here isn’t romance; it’s gravity. What we can’t fully access pulls harder precisely because it keeps our imagination employed, filling in blanks with desire, fear, or admiration.

The misspelled “vail” (for “veil”) almost works in the quote’s favor: it hints at medieval texture, at something draped and ceremonial rather than merely concealed. A veil implies intention. Someone is arranging the scene, controlling what’s revealed and when. That’s the subtext: mystery isn’t just a natural condition; it’s a managed performance. People don’t merely stumble into the unknown; they’re led there, willingly, because partial knowledge feels like proximity to power.

Jarrett, a Catholic writer and Dominican (and a deft popularizer of faith), is operating in a context where the hidden can be holy. Religious tradition often treats the “mysterious” as a legitimate mode of truth: not everything is transparent, and insisting on total clarity can be its own kind of arrogance. Read that way, the quote defends reverence against the modern itch to demystify everything.

But the cynicism hums underneath: “follow” is a crowd verb. Veils can sanctify, and they can manipulate. Jarrett captures the uneasy fact that secrecy, ambiguity, and curated distance are among the most reliable engines of loyalty - in churches, politics, and celebrity culture alike.