Quotes About Wonder

Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him off to sleep again.

6.44 : It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.

Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.

Even Ignatius Loyola wavered. That dark night of the soul, man. No one's immune. It would all be meaningless if you didn't wonder and doubt. That's what makes it real. That's what makes us people. God could have sent angels to flutter around like fairies, delivering rum punch and manna all day on a cosmic cruise ship. But what would that avail us?

We practice wonder by resisting the temptation to hurry past things worth seeing, but it can take work to transcend our preconceived standards for what that worth might be.

But the earth and its beings are extravagantly wild, full of unexpected wonders. It is time to turn from our textbooks and listen to the birds themselves.

Who wants an everyday path—paved and void of danger—when we can have beasts and shadows and secret flowers and unexpected visits from the feral wolf of our imaginations?

both confidence and consolation. E. O. Wilson wrote: "You start by loving a subject. Birds, probability theory, stars, differential equations, storm fronts, sign language, swallowtail butterflies.… The subject will be your lodestar and give sanctuary in the shifting mental universe.

But unlike most birds, crows also appear to fly for reasons that defy scientific explanation, though to us it seems obvious. They fly for fun. Any windy day will fling crows into the air like leaves, diving, wheeling, rising, tumbling. I see them, and think that if I were a bird, I would want to fly like a crow—with enough of a brain to love it. It might even make it worth it having to eat dead city rats if I could fly like that.

Drinking Shirley Temple with my Mary Janes on, let's say that every possibility waits

You know, the ocean is a very, very beautiful place. It is God's gift to us

With hands that shook, Omri probed into the depths of the chest till he found the box-within-a-box-within-a-box.

Some people choose to see Coincidences, others choose to see Miracles.

If there were but one thing I could hope for from the reader of the remainder of this book, it would be that he or she possesses the capacity to perceive the miraculous.

The mind, which sometimes presumes to believe that there is no such thing as a miracle, is itself a miracle.

He wondered if all camaraderie was actually dimly sensed psychic connection.

The business of living can steal away the wonder of life.

Aunt Grace had once told me that we can romanticize the unknown far too easily. It is much harder but more satisfying to assign wonder to what we were familiar with.

All you have to do is open yourself up to the cosmos as it lays itself before you. See it in all its mysterious dimensions. Without prejudice. Without assumption... All you ever needed was the key to open yourself to it. And that key is the wonder of the world. All the songs you could never remember but couldn't forget? You can find them now.

As estrelas são ainda menos lindas que os seus olhos, e afinal nem sei mesmo o que elas sejam; Deus, que as pôs tão alto, é porque não poderão ser vistas de perto, sem perder muito da formosura... Mas os seus olhos, não; estão aqui, ao pé de mim, grandes, luminosos, mais luminosos que o céu...

Aos quinze anos, tudo é infinito.

Que mulher será essa, perguntou a si mesmo, tão bela que mete medo, tão fantasiosa que causa lástima? 

It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible. Instead of rejoicing in this glorious impossible which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his might actions comprehensible to our finite minds.

Progo,' Meg asked. 'You memorized the names of all the stars - how many are there?' How many? Great heavens, earthling. I haven't the faintest idea.' But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them.' I did. All the stars in all the galaxies. And that's a great many.' But how many?' What difference does it make? I know their names. I don't know how many there are. It's their names that matter.