Quotes about Wonder

Instead of expanding our capacity for life, joy, and mystery, religion often contracts it. As systematic theology advances, the sense of wonder declines. The paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities of life are codified, cabined, and confined within the pages of a leather-bound book. Instead of a love story the Bible is viewed as a detailed manual of directions.

This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.

We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world. Standing at the right angle, we are dazzled by the colors of the rainbow in colorless ice. From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow.

Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and extravagance of genius.

What are these pines & these birds about? What is this pond a-doing? I must know a little more.

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath...

I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though.

When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.

Cultivate Curiosity. If you really want to grow in your lifetime, learn to be as inquisitive as a child. Curious people are never bored, and for them life becomes an unending study of joy.

Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it.

Take the sweet poetry of life away, and what remains behind?