Best 1487 quotes in «wonder quotes» category

Make life a wonder to behold.

Man stands on this diminutive earth, gazes at the myriad stars and upon billowing oceans and tossing trees—and wonders. What does it all mean? How did it come about?

Many scholars say that 'enlightenment' does not exist and it can never be achieved by meditation. In my eyes, meditation is the key to 'feel' or, as they popularly say, 'achieve' enlightenment. Since physical exercise helps to maintain a healthy body, similarly meditation helps to maintain a healthy mind. So, if the mind is healthy or sound, then it can surely do wonders!

Maybe it is a lottery, but the universe makes it all even out in the end. The universe takes care of its birds.

May you see the world with wonder. And may you imagine only good things.

Memory is the enemy of wonder

Might one not say that in the chance combination of nature's production, since only those endowed with certain relations of suitability could survive, it is no cause for wonder that this suitability is found in all species that exist today? Chance, one might say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number turned out to be constructed in such fashion that the parts of the animal could satisfy its needs; in another, infinitely greater number, there was neither suitability nor order: all of the later have perished; animals without a mouth could not live, others lacking organs for reproduction could not perpetuate themselves: the only ones to have remained are those in which were found order and suitability; and these species, which we see today, are only the smallest part of what blind fate produced.

Modern man has lost the sense of wonder about the unknown and he treats it as an enemy.

My feeling is that an observer needs to see four hundred and fifty stars to get that feeling of infinitude, and be swept away…and I didn’t make that number up arbitrarily, that’s the number of stars that are available once you get dimmer than third magnitude. So in the city, you see a dozen stars, a handful, and it’s attractive to no one. And if there’s a hundred stars in the sky it still doesn’t do it. There’s a certain tipping point where people will look and there will be that planetarium view. And now you’re touching that ancient core, whether it’s collective memories or genetic memories, or something else form way back before we were even human…astronomer Bob Berman quoted in The End of Night

Mortals: meet the empty air, arias carved out of rocks beyond our puny clock philosophy.

Most days I live awed by the world we have still, rather than mourning the worlds we have lost. The bandit mask of a cedar waxwing on a bare branch a few feet away; the clear bright sun of a frozen winter noon; the rise of Orion in the eastern evening sky-every day, every night, I give thanks for another chance to notice. I see beauty everywhere; so much beauty I often speak it aloud. So much beauty I often laugh, and my day is made. Still if you wanted to, I think, you could feel sadness without end. I’m not even talking about hungry children or domestic violence or endless wars between supposedly grown men…but ‘you mustn’t be frightened if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you even seen,' said Rilke, 'you must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in it hand and will not let you fall.

My foot slips on a narrow ledge; in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us…the present moment. The purpose of mediation practice is not enlightenment’ it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life.

My idea of "goodness" had to do with belonging in a small yet reciprocal way to something huge and beautiful beyond my understanding.

Nature has created countless number of wonders, we got a long way to go as man have created only seven wonders.

My love, you are always on my mind and heart.

Nothing shows the wit so poor, as wonder, nor birth so mean, as pride.

Never stop wandering into wonder.

Nothing like beautiful legs. 'Cause with beautiful legs, even if you've been there only once or twice, there might be something up there besides the cunt, there might be something really marvellous this time - it could be a cunt, but it could be - it's just something about looking at the legs just makes you - I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the cunt, I'm just saying, you always imagine - some extra magic when you're looking at the outside portion of the female.

Neither parents nor schools are very effective at teaching the young to find pleasure in the right things. Adults, themselves often deluded by infatuation with fatuous models, conspire in the deception. They make serious tasks seem dull and hard, and frivolous ones exciting and easy. Schools generally fial to teach how exciting, how mesmerizingly beautiful science or mathematics can be; they teach the routine of literature or history rather than the adventure.

No one can become and remain a theologian unless he is compelled again and again to be astonished at himself.

Now in the thriving season of love when the bud relents into flower, your love turned absence has turned once more, and if my comforts fall soft as rain on her flutters, it is because love grows by what it remembers of love

Now I sense the perfume of flowers like seeing a new thing. I know they smell just as well as I know I existed. They’re things known from the outside. But now I know with my breathing from the back of my head.

Now there were stars overhead, hanging like frozen spears of light, stabbing the night sky.

One can only wonder about a country that calls itself the greatest nation on Earth and silently radiation poisons its mass population.

Occasionally we glimpse the South Rim, four or five thousand feet above. From the rims the canyon seems oceanic; at the surface of the river the feeling is intimate. To someone up there with binoculars we seem utterly remote down here. It is this know dimension if distance and time and the perplexing question posed by the canyon itself- What is consequential? (in one’s life, in the life of human beings, in the life of a planet)- that reverberate constantly, and make the human inclination to judge (another person, another kind of thought) seem so eerie… Two kinds of time pass here: sitting at the edge of a sun-warmed pool watching blue dragonflies and black tadpoles. And the rapids: down the glassy-smooth tongue into a yawing trench, climb a ten-foot wall of standing water and fall into boiling, ferocious hydraulics…

Oh, do you understand what I mean? Have you ever felt that about the Moon? Have you ever ached with the sheer beauty of it?

Oh, Hank," Susan whispered, "their wings are furry." "Oh, James," Harriet whispered, "their hands are kind.

One can only wonder what the motivation is for Mauna Kea astronomers to subject their nighttime support staff to extremely long and fatiguing night shifts when they are easily avoidable.

Obviously, a lot of people involved with Volkswagen's emissions were aware of the diesel car software cheat. One has to wonder how many of them tried to stop it and perhaps were demoted or lost their jobs over trying to prevent the secret Volkswagen car emissions fraud?

olivia reminds me of a bird sometimes, how her feathers get all ruffled when she's mad. and when she's fragile like this, she's a little lost bird looking for its nest.

On bad days you wonder, ‘Why not just back off from the war and lead a quiet metalife?

On the first day of a college you will worry about how will you do inside the college? and at the last day of a college you will wonder what will you do outside the college?

One thing that creates difference between pilgrims of life as they journey along the various paths of life is their head. It makes some fall, others rest and some pursue to the farther. The reason for the difference is not the size, shape, hair color or the style of their head but what is within their head, what fills their mind, what enters their ears; what their eyes look and see, what their ears hear and listen to; make some champions of life and others wanders of life.

Open your eyes; you will see the greatness of God.

Our education system often teaches us how to conform more than how to wonder and venture.

Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake ... We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and -- since there is no other metaphor -- also the soul.

Our life today is a history of tomorrow.

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery. The surface of mystery is not smooth, any more than the planet is smooth; not even a single hydrogen atom is smooth, let alone a pine. Nor does it fit together; not even the chlorophyll and hemoglobin molecules are a perfect match, for, even after the atom of iron replaces the magnesium, long streamers of disparate atoms trail disjointedly from the rims of the molecule’s loops. Freedom cuts both ways. Mystery itself is as fringed and intricate at the shape of the air at times. Forays into mystery cut bays and fine fjords, but the forested mainland itself is implacable both in its bulk and in its most filigreed fringe of detail.

Our most precious resource now is wonder. What we wonder ignites our imagination, unleashes our empathy, fuels our ferocity.

Out of the void and vastness of the cosmos, life emerges; audacious, improbable. You and I are here. No other miracle is needed.

[...] Out of the cradle
 onto the dry land 
here it is 
standing: 
atoms with consciousness;
 matter with curiosity.

 Stands at the sea
 wonders at wondering: I 
a universe of atoms
 an atom in the universe.

Over time, wonder replaced fear of the Hawaiian visions.

Rather than torture ourselves and others about our shortcomings, we can approach life with an attitude of curious delight. And the delight part is just as important as the curious.

Philip Yancey sees our blasé attitude toward the faithfulness of God in the waitstaff At Yellowstone. Even when they are finished their chores, they don't look up and marvel at the geiser going off. After all, they see it so often.

Plant numbers are staggering: there are eighty billion trees just within the protected forests of the western United States. The ratio of trees to people in America is well over two hundred. As a rule, people live among plants but they don't really see them. Since I've discovered these numbers, I can see little else.

Poisoning puts you into a mental state of wondering if you are alive or dead, as you are trapped in an intermediate state of mind.

Push up some mountains. Cut them down. Drown the land under the sea. Push up some more mountains. Cut them down. Push up a third set of mountains, and let the river cut through them. “Unconformity” is the geologic term for an old, eroded land surface buried under younger rock layers. Put your outspread hand over the Carlin Canyon, Nevada unconformity and your fingers span roughly forty million years- the time that it took to bevel down the first set of mountains and deposit the younger layers on top. What is forty million years? Enough time for a small predatory dinosaur to evolve into a bird. Enough time for a four-legged, deer-like mammal to evolve into a whale. And far more than enough time to turn an ape-like creature in eastern Africa into a big-brained biped who can marvel at such things. The Grand Canyon’s Great Unconformity divides 1.7 billion-year-old rock from 550 million-year-old rock, a gap of more than one billion years. One billion years. I earn my salary studying the Earth and teaching its history, but I admit utter helplessness in comprehending such a span. A billion pages like those of this book would stack up more than forty miles. I had lived one bullion seconds a few days before my thirty-second birthday. A tape measure one billion inches long would stretch two-thirds of the way around the Earth. Such analogies hint at what deep time means- but they don’t get us there. “The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time," John McPhee once observed, “it may only be able to measure it.

Patience never wants Wonder to enter the house: because Wonder is a wretched guest. It uses all of you but is not careful with what is most fragile or irreplaceable. If it breaks you, it shrugs and moves on. Without asking, Wonder often brings along dubious friends: doubt, jealousy, greed. Together they take over; rearrange the furniture in every one of your rooms for their own comfort. They speak odd languages but make no attempt to translate for you. They cook strange meals in your heart that leave odd tastes and smells. When they finally go are you happy or miserable? Patience is always left holding the broom.

People and events of wonder and magic are the lifeblood of the world.

People wonder who is who, Everyone is different - even you!