“A thing seems a great marvel but then is despised.”
Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere
Tal par gran meraviglia, et poi si sprezza.
Canzone 105, st. 4
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life
“Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.”
Source: The Happy Prince and Other Tales
Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffer…" by Oscar Wilde?
Oscar Wilde812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900Related quotes
“A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace.”
Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States
US Senator William Edgar Borah, writing in The Reader's Digest, Vol. 8, Issue 2 (1929), p. 776; this has only rarely begun to be attributed to Washington, since about 2010.
Misattributed
Martin Luther book Table Talk
752 http://books.google.com/books?id=ZUAuAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+reproduction+of+mankind+is+a+great+marvel+and+mystery+Had+God+consulted+me+in+the+matter+I+should+have+advised+him+to+continue+the+generation+of+the+species+by+fashioning+them+of+clay+in+the+way+Adam+was+fashioned%22&pg=PA307#v=onepage <br class="br">Table Talk (1569)
John Joseph Gerry (1927–2017) Australian priest
Holy Spirit takes care of early ‘wobbly knees’ https://catholicleader.com.au/news/holy-spirit-takes-care-of-early-wobbly-knees/ (9 July 2015)
Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer
Source: Magids Series, The Merlin Conspiracy (2003), p. 150.
“I don't promise to forget the mystery, but I know I'll have a marvelous time.”
Carolyn Keene book Nancy's Mysterious Letter
Source: Nancy's Mysterious Letter
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist
Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi
Context: It terrifies one to think for how short a time science has been methodical and of useful industry; and after all, is there anything on earth more marvelously easy than destruction? Who knows the new mediums it has laid in store? Who knows the limit of cruelty to which the art of poisoning may go? Who knows if they will not subject and impress epidemic disease as they do the living armies — or that it will not emerge, meticulous, invincible, from the armies of the dead? Who knows by what dread means they will sink in oblivion this war, which only struck to the ground twenty thousand men a day, which has invented guns of only seventy-five miles' range, bombs of only one ton's weight, aeroplanes of only a hundred and fifty miles an hour, tanks, and submarines which cross the Atlantic? Their costs have not yet reached in any country the sum total of private fortunes.