The Sphinx is the riddle, not the riddler.

"And the Sphinx broke its long silence:
"Don't expect too much.

That is as far from the truth as I am from the Secret of the Sphinx.

The Sphinx is missing a nose. Someone shot it off in a moment of idle desecration — some say it was Mameluke Turks, others, Napoleonic soldiers.

The artist is not the transcriber of the world, he is its rival.

Your story is a symphony, not a note.

It is the tale, not he who tells it.

Je ne suis pas le Styx pour t'embrasser neuf fois.

The real is not given to us, but put to us by way of a riddle.

The Phoenix riddle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it. So to one neutral thing both sexes fit, We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.

Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion

I'm not the messenger at all.
I'm the message.

COBWEBS. The spider as an artist Has never been employed Though his surpassing merit Is freely certified By every broom and Bridget Throughout a Christian land. Neglected son of genius, I take thee by the hand.

She was a riddle, who mysteriously possessed her own solution, a secret, and what are all diplomats' secrets compared with this, an enigma, and what in all the world is so beautiful as the word that solves it?