Wonder Quotes - page 84
One thing that cannot be denied to the realists: a constant and intense desire to write well, to write artistically. When I think of what they have done in the matter of the use of words, of the myriad verbal effects they have discovered, of the thousand forms of composition they have created, how they have remodelled and refashioned the language in their untiring striving for intensity of expression for the very osmazome of art, I am lost in ultimate wonder and admiration.
George Moore (novelist)
O, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.
Phillips Brooks
It was not the visible sun, but its invisible Creator who consecrated this day for us, when the Virgin Mother, fertile of womb and integral in her virginity, brought him forth, made visible for us, by whom, when he was invisible, she too was created. A Virgin conceiving, a Virgin bearing, a Virgin pregnant, a Virgin bringing forth, a Virgin perpetual. Why do you wonder at this, O man?
Augustine of Hippo
I clearly remember that in the days before Hiroshima I used to wonder whether nature-nature in the broadest context of the word-actually needed protection from man. Surely the sea was inviolate and forever beyond man's power to change it. Surely the vast cycles by which water is drawn up into the clouds to return again to the earth could never be touched. And just as surely the vast tides of life-the migrating birds-would continue to ebb and flow over the continents, marking the passage of the seasons. But I was wrong. Even these things, that seemed to belong to the eternal verities, are not only threatened but have already felt the destroying hand of man.
Rachel Carson
The last time the self-described Arizona "maverick" tried to shake up the election, he melodramatically suspended his campaign to return to Washington to do virtually nothing to ease the financial crisis. This may, in hindsight, be remembered as the 48 hours in which McCain lost the White House, since the whole thing (down to the brinksmanship over participating in the first debate) struck many voters as a political stunt. McCain's prior desperation gambit -- the selection of a "you betcha" Alaska governor as his running mate -- also does not look like the stuff of lasting political genius. But McCain still has a few gambits that he might try, especially if the alternative were a stinging defeat. Some Republicans wonder if the 72-year-old McCain should make an "I will serve only one term" pledge, so that as president he would be free of all political pressure (yeah, sure) in his effort to reform Washington and confront the deadly earmark crisis.
John McCain
One of the reasons I'm a musician is because music isn't divisive. It's a medium where you don't have to abide by divisions. The whole idea is anarchy and the best music just doesn't give a fuck. And too much music is just so conservative these days. So I really don't want to be careful about anything. And there's so much music that's trying to be offensive these days, trying to be aggressive and abrasive. But it's just cheap and manipulative. So if I can offend someone in a good way and challenge their belief system, then I think that's positive. I mean, I wonder what their problem with it is? I don't have a problem. Wanda Coleman doesn't have a problem with me singing like that.
Beck
What animals and man have in common is, first of all, sensorial and instinctual intelligence, then the faculties of the senses, and finally basic feelings. What is proper to man alone is the intellect open to the Absolute; and also, owing to that very fact, reason, which extends the Intellect in the direction of relativity; and consequently it is the capacity for integral knowledge, for sacralization, and for ascension. Man shares with animals the wonder of subjectivity − but strangely a wonder that is not understood by the evolutionists; however, the subjectivity of animals is only partial, whereas that of man is total; the sense of the Absolute coincides with totality of intelligence.
Frithjof Schuon
Well, if I were thus rationed in this article and could have but one adjective for George Gershwin, that adjective would be "ingenuous." Ingenuous at and about his piano. Once an occasional composer named Oscar Levant stood beside that piano while those sure, sinewy, catlike Gershwin fingers beat their brilliant drum-fire-the tumultuous cascade of the "Rhapsody In Blue," the amorous languor of "The Man I Love," the impish glee of "Fascinating Rhythm," the fine, jaunty, dust-spurning scorn of "Strike Up the Band." If the performer was familiar with the work of any other composer, he gave no evidence of it. Levant (who, by the way, makes a fleeting appearance in the new Dashlell Hammett book, under the guise of Levi Oscant) could be heard mutterIng under his breath, "An evening with Gershwin Is a Gershwln evening." "I wonder," said our young composer dreamily, "if my music will be played a hundred years from now." "It certainly will be," said the bitter Levant,"if you are still around."
George Gershwin
Your book is going to be such a bestseller because it's a colourful, astonishing story. It's absolutely unbelievable. The publishers don't have to worry about whether this thing is going to sell. The only question they're going to have to wonder about is whether they've got enough paper in the forest to print the fucking books. That's all they have to worry about. I'll tell you this, if there ain't a good book in this, there's not a good book in Canadian history. So there you go. I don't know about other books, but boy this one's going to sell. I mean the others, you've done okay, but I'll tell you, you're going to be able to retire for sure. If this thing holds, it's going to be quite remarkable. I'd be very surprised, Peter, if by the time it's all over if there weren't two books in this thing for you. Let's let the books go out first, and then do the television.
Brian Mulroney
My misery has enjoyed company,
And although I have ached, I don't threaten anybody.
Sometimes I feel more bigness than I've shared with you.
Sometimes I wonder why I quell
When I'm not required to.
I've tried to be small,
I've tried to be stunted,
I've tried roadblocks and all
My happy endings prevented.
Sometimes I feel it's all just too big
To be true.
I sabotage myself for fear of what
My bigness could do.
Alanis Morissette
Part of a team,” Ann said dully.
"Well, you are.”
"I know.” She sighed. "We'll all say that. We'll all go on and make the place safe. Roads, cities. New sky, new soil. Until it's all some kind of Siberia or Northwest Territories, and Mars will be gone and we'll be here, and we'll wonder why we feel so empty. Why when we look at the land we can never see anything but our own faces.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Being with Hemingway meant joining in his elaborate game playing as a necessary mark of respect. Tennessee asked only that you be colorful and that you be honest.
Looking back I still find the 50s the most exhilarating decade I've lived through. The only mistake I made then was in thinking it would go on forever. I keep reading it was all Dull Conformity and I wonder where those people were living. Not on my planet. The fact that we had won World War 2 and that we were alive led to a post-war cultural explosion.
Elaine Dundy
I look back in wonder at The Dud Avocado: in wonder at its initial reception and at the many times it's been reissued - for years it was even republished alongside of every new book of mine that came out. I look back in wonder at the 1950s. The dull conformity of those years as they are generally imagined is something I don't recognize. I look back in wonder at London in particular, where whole areas destroyed during the Second World War still lay in rubble. But London was in the midst of a renaissance for artists. In literature and playwriting the Angry Young Men were making their splash and new young actors like Richard Burton, Peter O Toole, Albert Finney, and Peter Finch were coming into their own. London was an orderly place where it was safe to take risks. Optimism was the rule of the day and I was there.
Elaine Dundy
It's okay in the day, I'm staying busy
Tied up enough so I don't have to wonder, "Where is he?"
Got so sick of crying
So just lately
When I catch myself I do a 180
I stay up, clean the house
At least I'm not drinking
Run around just so I don't have to think about thinking
That silent sense of content
That everyone gets
Just disappears soon as the sun sets
His face in my dreams, seizing my guts
He floods me with dread
Soaked to the soul
He swims in my eyes by the bed
Pour myself over him
Moon spilling in
And I wake up alone.
Amy Winehouse
