“First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.”

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I felt that night, on the stage, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming? (p. 145)

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

Future on Fire (1991), introduction.

Source: As You Like It

Letter to James Clerk Maxwell (25 March 1857), commenting on Maxwell's paper titled "On Faraday's Lines of Force"; letter published in The Life of James Clerk Maxwell: With Selections from His Correspondence (1884), edited by Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, p. 200; also in Coming of Age in the Milky Way (2003) by Timothy Ferris, p. 186

if he does depart from his state of wonder, he has ceased to philosophize.
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 105–106

The Crisis No. I.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)