Wonder Quotes - page 87
Any writer, reading over the typescript of a book for the last time before sending it off to the publisher, must wonder what all the effort was for. An autobiography is specially in need of justification to its author. It is a work of self-justification which itself needs justifying. Why have I written this book? Why have I written it the way I have? What does it mean to me? What do I hope it will mean to others?
Each human being has at the final core of self a crystal from which the whole manifold of the personality develops, a secret molecular lattice which governs the unfolding of all the structures of the individuality, in time, in space, in memory, in action and contemplation. Asleep there were just these dreams and no others. Awake there were these actions only. Only these deeds came into being.
Kenneth Rexroth
They are alive, but they are not engaged in the project of their own lives. No one has ever taught them otherwise. Why aren't we offered any existential training? Because one of society's unacknowledged goals is to minimize existential thought. A company making widgets doesn't want you to wonder about the meaningfulness of its widget. It wants you to be attracted by the widget's design and to buy two of them.
Eric Maisel
M. Manet has never seen any Goya's, M. Manet has never seen any El Greco's.. ..that may seem unbelievable to you, but it's the truth. I myself have been filled with wonder and stupefaction at these mysterious coincidences.. .He's heard so much about his 'pastiches' of Goya, that he is now trying to see some of Goya's paintings.. .Every time you try to pay Manet a service, I'll be grateful.. ..quote my letter or at least several lines of it. What I'm telling you is the naked truth.
Francisco Goya
A sense of wonder is in itself a religious feeling. But in so many people the sense of wonder gets lost. It gets scarred over. It's as though a tortoise shell has grown over it. People reach a stage where they're never surprised, never delighted. They're never suddenly aware of glorious freedom or splendour in their lives. This is very unhappy, very unfortunate. The attitude is often self-induced. It is fear. People are afraid to be happy.
Robertson Davies
See, I'm a poet to some, a regular modern-day Shakespeare
Jesus Christ, the king of these Latter-day Saints here
To shatter the picture in which of that as they paint me as
A monger of hate, satanist, scatter-brained atheist
[...]
While I'm wavin' the pistol at sixty Christians against me
Go to war with the Mormons, take a bath with the Catholics
In holy water, no wonder they tried to hold me under longer.
Eminem
And where is now that palace gone,
All the magical skill'd stone,
All the dreaming towers wrought
By Love as if no more than thought
The unresisting marble was?
How could such a wonder pass?
Ah, it was but built in vain
Against the stupid horns of Rome,
That pusht down into the common loam
The loveliness that shone in Spain.
But we have raised it up again!
A loftier palace, fairer far,
Is ours, and one that fears no war.
Safe in marvellous walls we are;
Wondering sense like builded fires,
High amazement of desires,
Delight and certainty of love,
Closing around, roofing above
Our unapproacht and perfect hour
Within the splendours of love's power.
Lascelles Abercrombie
But now at thirty years my hair is gray––
(I wonder what it will be like at forty?
I thought of a peruke the other day)
My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I
Have squander'd my whole summer while 'twas May,
And feel no more the spirit to retort; I
Have spent my life, both interest and principal,
And deem not, what I deem'd my soul invincible.
Lord Byron
China is vague and immense where the nine rivers pour.
The horizon is a deep line threading north and south.
Blue haze and rain.
Hills like a snake or tortoise guard the river.The yellow crane is gone. Where?
Now this tower and region are for the wanderer.
1drink wine to the bubbling water - the heroes are gone.
Like a tidal wave a wonder rises in my heart.
Mao Zedong
Now, then. Landon Donovan for the United States. Twisting, turning. Can he find the right ball? Cesar hit it away; it's played back in by Bocanegra. Oh, and nearly Altidore getting under of it. A really good clearance by Jokić; just when it looked as if Jozy Altidore might be in. They really have to put Slovenia under pressure. If they can get one goal, I think, John. You just wonder, whether then Slovenia might start to look a little bit shaky and start to wonder. He's got in, behind. Donovan, Donovan goes alone and scores! Oh, what a goal! Landon Donovan, tremendous strike for the United States! It looked impossible, but Donovan did it! And the USA are back in business!
Ian Darke
He wanted Ukraine like he had wanted all the other things that rightfully did not belong to him. Time and again, he had probed the West's steel and found jelly. But this time, Ukraine, its president, its people and its army had other ideas. This time Mr Pleonexia found people who said, 'No, that's not yours. It's ours. Give it back'. No wonder he seems so surprised that Ukraine played hardball. That was not supposed to happen.
John Sweeney (journalist)
Karen's courage brings to mind the clarion call of Rabbi Abraham Heschel against the perpetrators of an earlier war - Vietnam. "Few are guilty,” he said, "but all are responsible. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself.” Karen would not be indifferent to evil... With all the gloom and doom enveloping us, we tend to wonder whether people with the conscience and courage of Ed [Snowden] or Karen still exist in and outside our national security establishment.
Karen Kwiatkowski
If I were to imagine a girl deeply in love and some man who wanted to use all his reasoning powers and knowledge to ridicule her passion, well, there's surely no question of the enamoured girl having to choose between keeping her wealth and being ridiculed. No, but if some extremely cool and calculating man calmly told the young girl, "I will explain to you what love is," and the girl admitted that everything he told her was quite correct, I wonder if she wouldn't choose his miserable common sense rather than her wealth?
Søren Kierkegaard
One fact about big league life came hard in my first game. The ball just seems to come at you faster on the infield, and especially on a steel-hard surface like they had at old Forbes Field. Roberto Clemente lashed a wicked hop-and-skip grounder to me that I played all right, but I stopped it with my shin. Man! Did that thing ever sting! It's a wonder I even made the play.
Roberto Clemente
When you come down to it, all depends on the final score whether you're a hero or a bum. Roberto Clemente, the toast of the town, disobeyed his manager's frantic signals Wednesday night to stop at third base. Instead, he kept on rock and rolling homeward for an inside-the-park grand-slam home run to beat the Chicago Cubs. Had he been cut down at the plate, the Puerto Rican flash would have been the roast of the town. Unquestionably, Bobby Bragan would have slapped him with one of his patented $25 fines. But Roberto got away with it. He scored the winning run in the face of an obvious skull. Fine him? Heck, no! You don't reprimand or fine a man who wins a ball game for you. No, sir. That's what Bragan said after the victory. We wonder what will happen to the next fellow who pulls the same stunt and costs the Pirates a ball game. Fine him? Heck, yes!
Roberto Clemente
I don't know what life would be like without music. In my lonely times, music has been my closest friend. It has also been my doctor-and my lover, in the sense that I sometimes listen to music and dream of a lover that doesn't exist. Late at night, when I don't feel sleepy, I'll play music-all types of music and lose myself in its mystery. I might decide to play Stevie Wonder, or Debussy, or Tchaikovsky. It depends on my mood.
Stevie Wonder
It's a tree, Lu. A chokecherry tree. See, here's the trunk - it's red and split wide open, full of sap, and this here's the parting for the branches. You got a mighty lot of branches. Leaves, too, look like, and dern if these ain't blossoms. Tiny little cherry blossoms, just as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom. What God have in mind, I wonder.
Toni Morrison
Resolve, he thought. That was all it took, and no motherless gal was going to break it up. No lazy, stray pup of a woman could turn him around, make him doubt himself, wonder, plead or confess. Convinced of it, that he could do it, he threw his arm around Sethe's shoulders and squeezed. She let her head touch his chest, and since the moment was valuable to both of them, they stopped and stood that way - not breathing, not even caring if a passerby passed them by. The winter light was low. Sethe closed her eyes. Paul D looked at the black trees lining the roadside, their defending arms raised against attack. Softly, suddenly, it began to snow, like a present come down from the sky. Sethe opened her eyes to it and said. "Mercy." And it seemed to Paul D that it was - a little mercy - something given to them on purpose to mark what they were feeling so they would remember it later on when they needed to.
Toni Morrison
The bass suit was actually one of the first cordless guitars in existence, and I invented it. It was built right into this silver bodysuit so it looked as though the bass was coming out of my body, and the volume and tone knobs were on the sleeve...When it worked it was great, but the tunings were a little strange, plus I can't tell you how many times I got shocked. It wound up being just one more thing that we had to worry about on tour: ‘Well, I wonder if this will work tonight.' After a while I couldn't stand wearing it anymore so I gave it up.
Dan Hartman
Mankind has lost its way, has strayed far from the path prepared for it by God. Many there are now in the world who know this, who search and pray, and work towards the light; but many more are blind and would rush towards disaster. My plan is to halt this headlong plunge and to turn the tide. My Presence, already, is effecting changes in men's thinking, in men's hearts, and causing them to wonder.
Benjamin Creme
Circumstances have been such, that I have lived almost entirely secluded for some time. Those who are much in earnest and with single minds devoted to any great object in life, must find this occasionally inevitable.... You will wonder at having heard nothing from me; but you have experience and candour enough to perceive and know that God has not given to us (in this state of existence) more than very limited powers of expression of one's ideas and feelings... I shall be very desirous of again seeing you. You know what that means from me, and that it is no form, but the simple expression and result of the respect and attraction I feel for a mind that ventures to read direct in God's own book, and not merely thro' man's translation of that same vast and mighty work.
Ada Lovelace
I have no perfect panacea for human ills. And even if I had I would not attempt to present a system of philosophy between the soup and fish, but this much I will say: The distinctively modern custom of marital bundling is the doom of chivalry and death of passion. It wears all tender sentiment to a napless warp, and no wonder is it that the novelist, without he has a seared and bitter heart, hesitates to follow the couple beyond the church door. There is no greater reproach to our civilization than the sight of men joking the boy whose heart is pierced by the first rays of a life-giving sun, or of our expecting a girl to blush because she is twice God's child today she was yesterday.
Elbert Hubbard
