“When we accept small wonders, we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders.”

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Idiot Wind
Context: Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats, blowing through the letters that we wrote.
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves,
We're idiots, babe. It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves.

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Feminine Eye (1970), p. 169

Generation of Greatness (1957)
Context: In thinking about what the human animal might have gone through in the evolutionary process, have you wondered how some of the small changes which must have occurred could have had survival value? Haven't you wondered how they could have survived, when, in all of our experimental work every small change we make dies? … How many changes must have occurred in the human eye, occurred and died, before one change came along — an apparently trivial change … that gave the whole animal a significant increase in its power to perceive and hunt down its enemies and find its food. This is the kind of change that survives.

Source: Dracula

Music and Moonlight (1874), Ode
Context: With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

Source: Change of Heart

A Brave and Startling Truth (1995)
Context: p>When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
And without crippling fear When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.</p