Quotes About Wonder

My God, it's full of stars," I heard a disembodied voice say. I recognized it as a sound bite from the film 2010.

It looks just like Rivendell," Aech said, taking the words right out of my mouth.

I have always loved the Brownies so much, and so earnestly wished to believe in them, that I have taught myself to do so, and I want other to have that same pleasure.

Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears.

What a strange journey we embarked upon that afternoon, full of anguish and desire and wonder.

El bohío de la loma, bajo sus alas de paja, siente el frescor mañanero y abre sus ojos al alba. Vuela el pájara del nido. Brinca el gallo de la rama. A los becerros, aislados de las tetas de las vacas, les corre por el hocico leche de la madrugada. Las mariposas pululan —rubí, zafir, oro, plata...—: flores huérfanas que rondan buscando a las madres ramas...

The world is full of marvels, if you're willing to travel far enough to see them.

In the green escape of my palace, over a bridge, under a canopy of opalescent light, through there, between dark branches and their shivering leaves, I'm lost in the scent of yellow roses, arrested by the range's filtering light.

The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us. When the world seems familiar, when one has got used to existence, one has become an adult.

The Natural History Museum is open to the public on Tuesdays and Fridays. Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; extraordinary animals! Rubens rendered them marvelously. I had a feeling of happiness as soon as I entered the place and the further I went the stronger it grew. I felt my whole being rise above commonplaces and trivialities and the petty worries of my daily life. What an immense variety of animals and species of different shapes and functions!

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one nightSailed off in a wooden shoe—Sailed on a river of crystal lightInto a sea of dew.

Impersonal things that dominate our time and imagination offer extravagant promises of control and knowledge. But they also squeeze all sense of mystery and wonder and reverence out of our lives.

Gabriel Marcel wrote that life is not so much a problem to be solved as a mystery to be explored.

Theologian Karl Rahner was once asked if he believed in miracles. His reply? 'I live on miracles—I couldn't make it through a day without them.' Still another name for it is mystery.

It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It's the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can't be packaged, and it can't be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.

Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.

Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed.

Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.

re: Matthew 8) "[Jesus'] almost refusal to allow the complications of men to interfere with the loving work of God." [for the leper} "...this is not a media event, it is a personal experience...he is in effect, to minimize the wonder by returning to the ordinary rituals." "One wonders still at the cleanness of the incident...God's spirit hovers now as it always has over simpler scenes; He is found directly more often in truthful human exchanges than in convoluted efforts to escape humanity.

The more we learn about the planet, the stranger it becomes to us.

Around you this night a thousand million firefly anatomies breathe in and out in their slow-burning liturgical glow.

E andando nel sole che abbaglia sentire con triste meraviglia com'è tutta la vita e il suo travaglio in questo seguitare una muraglia che ha in cima cocci aguzzi di bottiglia.

This is the year that everyone is trying to fly around the world in a balloon. I don't know why.

Wonder is the sense, which comes in a flash but won't go away, that things are not as straightforward as they seem, that the ordinary way, or explanation and argument leaves you with unbearable contradictions and impossibilities.