Quotes About Wonder

All else seemed sterile compared to what she witnessed in the woods.

There is necessary beauty in the world, I understand this. Beauty to attract mates, to attract prey, to attract pollinators. But so much of beauty seems to be bycatch, "unnecessary beauty," waste products of essential processes. The opalescence of the inside of an oyster shell, a rainbow around the moon, a baby's dreaming smile. Profligate beauty is a mystery to me. Sing praises.

Listen to. To hear with thoughtful attention. To hold something close, to attend to it, to be astonished by it, to devote your life to its mysteries, to name it precisely, to wonder how it comes to be. To stay awake to it. To move closer to the wild and twittering night. To let it cover you and keep you safe. To me, listening is starting to sound a lot like love.

How can we live as if we were in the wilderness, with that same respect and care for what is beautiful and beyond us?

Maybe this is why the Earth has the power over time to wash sorrow into a deeper pool, cold and shadowed. And maybe this is why, even though sorrow never disappears, it can make a deeper connection to the currents of life and so connect, somehow, to sources of wonder and solace. I don't know. And I don't know what gladness is or where it comes from that feels like a splitting open of the self. It takes me by surprise.

There's mystery in my own back green - especially in my own back green!

For me, walking in a hard Dakota wind can be like staring at the ocean: humbled before its immensity, I also have a sense of being at home on this planet, my blood so like the sea in chemical composition, my every cell partaking of air. I live about as far from the sea as is possible in North America, yet I walk in a turbulent ocean. Maybe that child was right when he told me that the world is upside-down here, and this is where angels drown.

I've read all the books but One only remains sacred: this volume of wonders, open always before my eyes

What could be more beautiful than the fact that love exists in a random universe?

To believe all you have to do is look at the sky.

Something odd was going on here. They were led through the dim hallway into a back bedroom, where they found a sight Casey would never forget.

I think sometimes that God's favorite word is surprise!

I watched, baffled, as Will Speckman floated like an angel, drifting down to the marina dock a hundred yards away. My mind suggested all kinds of crazy answers. The Trinity can fly. Will Speckman is actually a bird. Gravity has taken the night off.

stared at the little girl and suddenly she

I want to only imagine things, not know them.

I feel it, that expansiveness specific to childhood, the breath filling you all the way up to the puff of your cheeks, the feeling that each breath is good.

You think I don't understand curiosity? Lady, I am made of curiosity. I am a hundred dead cats.

And there came a small sound from the small person in my arms. My rib cage expanded with surprise and wonder, expanded with love, until I thought it would crack open and could not rightly be called a cage anymore.

Magic wasn't something I had to go in search of; it was here, within me, all the time. When hearts are open, when love is flowing, magic happens.

If there is no God, there can be no magic

A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.

Why, he wondered, was it so hard to see humankind as capable of creating miracles? Miracles were just second chances if you really thought about it-second chances when all hope was lost.

Seriously?" Spartacus looked amazed. "I thought this looked the same to everyone. We're in a massive library that stretches all the way to the sky. It's beautiful, with oak and teak shelves, gorgeous patterns in the wood, and beautiful books. There's endless amounts to read and look at.

Katsuya J?nouchi: I...I don't know what's gonna come in the future. For example, if I go down this street and I turn at the corner, I might be able to see the next town...Maybe there's a lady I don't know, carrying a baby and shopping...That's about as much as I can see into the future!