Quotes about wonder
page 11

“And now I understand something so frightening, and wonderful — how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Robert Schumann"
Dream Work (1986)
Source: Blue Pastures

Understanding

“He wondered whether growing up was learning that most stories turned out to be lies.”

Holly Black book Doll Bones

Source: Doll Bones

Learning

“The more I wonder, the more I love.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple

Love

“Say it, reader. Say the word "quest" out loud. It is an extraordinary word, isn't it? So small and yet so full of wonder, so full of hope. so trthen despererux died i n heaven and in peace”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux (2004)

Peace, Hope

“Percy looked at his friends. "I'm getting tired of this guy's shirt."
"Combat time?" Piper grabbed her horn of plenty.
"I hate wonder bread," Jason said.
Together, they charged.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Hate, Guy, Time

“I wondered if the person who really loves you is the person who knows all your stories, the person who WANTS to know all your stories.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Source: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Love, Personality

“I wonder if the conversations you've never had with someone count, if you've been over them a thousand times in your mind.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Time

“You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire. He had wondered once why love was always phrased in terms of burning. The conflagration in his own veins, now, gave the answer.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Love

“No wonder Sherlock Holmes did all that coke. Math is hard.”

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

“Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Life

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Beauty, Art, Science, Dead

“It's wonderful how, the moment you talk about God and love, your voice becomes hard, and your eyes fill with hatred. No, Margret, you certainly haven't the true faith.”

August Strindberg The Father

Source: The Father

Love, God, Faith

“Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Life, Fear, Hope, Forgetting

“The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Happiness, Bee

“She was afraid of these things that made her suddenly wonder who she was, and what she was going to be in the world, and why she was standing at that minute, seeing a light, or listening, or staring up into the sky: alone.”

Carson McCullers book The Member of the Wedding

Source: The Member of the Wedding

World, Light

“You know that passage in the Bible that says, “And the meek shall inherit the Earth”? Always wondered if that was mistranslated. Perhaps it actually says, “And the geek shall inherit the Earth.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Source: Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier

“I wonder if it's possible to start a new relationship without hurting someone else. I wonder if it's possible to have happiness without it being at someone else's expense”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Happiness, Hurt

“I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Men, Beauty, Feeling

“I wonder if I cry whether my tears would be gray.”

Susan Beth Pfeffer book Life As We Knew It

Source: Life As We Knew It

Tear, Cry

“Young people don't always do what they're told, but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape punishment.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

People

“I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.”

Kathleen Norris (1880–1966) American writer

Source: The Cloister Walk

Life, Children, Religion, Way

“I wonder: If you think of someone you love, do you become a little more like them? I would like to think so.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

Love, Thinking

“Wonder is the seed of knowledge”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Knowledge

“she is no longer
the beautiful woman
she was. she sends
photos of herself
sitting upon a rock
by the ocean
alone and damned.
I could have had
her once. I wonder
if she thinks I
could have
saved her?”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Beauty, Photo, Thinking

“… but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it…”

Frank O'Hara book Lunch Poems

Source: Lunch Poems

Decision, Night, Dead

“I was in love, and the feeling was even more wonderful than I ever imagined it could be.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Love, Feeling, Imagination, Romantic

“For an absurd moment, I wondered if Ammit devoured the hearts of wicked cows, and if he liked the beefy taste.

- Carter Kane”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

Heart

“Artemis: Holly, how did you find me?
Holly: Oh, I saw a huge explosion and wondered: now, who could that be?”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox (2008)

“I wondered if Olympus had gone to a commercial break, or if our ratings had been any good.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

“If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it's because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.”

Kathleen Norris (1880–1966) American writer

Failure, Change, Loss

“I wonder how she'll make up her mind."
"Oh, that I do know." I can just catch Gale's last words through the layer of fur. "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Thinking

“I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question.”

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

Question, Bird, Flying

“It was like discovering that some part of you wasn't yours at all. And it made me wonder what else I couldn't claim.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Parting

“I cannot help but wonder how many of us walk through our lives, day after day, feeling slightly broken and alone, surrounded all the time by others who feel exactly the same way.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Way, Feeling, Time, Help

“I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Hurt, Hurtful

“With each reunion (we) had to learn each other all over again. There was always that nervous moment at the airport when I would stand there waiting for him to arrive, wondering, Will I still know him? Will he still know me?”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Learning, Waiting

“The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.”

John Cage book Silence: Lectures and Writings

Source: Silence: Lectures and Writings

Love, Fear, Anger

“We’ve died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still care.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Time

“And for just a fleeting moment, a tiny wisp of time that hung in the air like fireflies
in summer skies, she wondered if she was in love with him again.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Love, Time, Summer

“I think fantasy is best described as a kind of fiction that evokes wonder, mystery or magic, a sense of possibility beyond the ordinary world in which we live, and yet which reflects and comments upon that known world.”

Kate Forsyth (1966) Australian writer

World, Thinking, Sense

“I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Source: Giovanni's Room

Books, World

“Money to me had always been merely something the sheep used to show each other how wonderful they were.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dexter Is Delicious

Source: Dexter Is Delicious

Money

“Someone once told the Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor that it is more open-minded to think that the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is a great, wonderful, powerful symbol.

Her response was, “If it’s only a symbol, to hell with it.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Hell, Thinking

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

7 July 1838
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Source: The Journals of Kierkegaard

God

“No wonder he was so good with horses, I thought blearily, feeling his fingers rubbing gently behind my ears, listening to the soothing, incomprehensible speech. If I were a horse, I’d let him ride me anywhere.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Feeling, Horse

“Adeline had come to Christianity the same way she had come to sex and smoking:through peer pressure. Thinking about her six kids and her smoker's hack, she wondered if perhaps peer pressure didn't always lead to the best habits.”

Christopher Moore book Coyote Blue

Source: Coyote Blue

Sex, Way, Thinking

“When in situations of stress we wonder if there is any more in us to give, we can be comforted to know that God, who knows our capacity perfectly, placed us here to succeed”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

God

“Don’t spend your time on and give your heart to any guy who makes you wonder about anything
related to his feelings for you”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Guy, Feeling, Time, Heart

“He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.”

Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

Author’s Warning
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Heart

“He felt his heart, which no longer beat, contract, and he wondered if there was anything in the world as painful as not being able to protect the people you loved.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Love, Pain, People, World

“You look wonderful", Jason said.
"No compliments, Jason. I'm uncomfortable enough in the lingerie."
"Then by all means take it off.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

People, Books, Disappointment, Nature

“I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventure of the Dying Detective

Source: The Adventure of the Dying Detective

Feeling

“God sings, we hum along, and there are many melodies, but it's all one song - one same, wonderful, human song.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: Have a Little Faith: a True Story

God, Singing

“That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Problem, Science

“I'm wondering what to read next." Matilda said. "I've finished all the children's books.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Children, Books, Reading

“I was walking through the woods, thinking about Christ. If He was a carpenter, I wondered what He charged for bookshelves.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Love and Death (1975)

Thinking, Christ

“What does my smile look like now? Vivi wondered. Can you reclaim that free-girl smile, or is it like virginity- once you loose it, that's it?”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Smile, Girl

“It’s a lifelong failing: she has never been prepared. But how can you have a sense of wonder if you’re prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be.”

Margaret Atwood book Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

Source: Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

Sense

“We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Dog Songs

Love, People, Dogs

“She nodded, wondering why couldn't she have been named Mary. Or Sue.
But no, she had to be nine-letter Elizabeth.”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

“You ever wonder when god's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

God

“Hoo! You're like a giant mood ring! I wonder if I can make different colors show up depending on where i touch you
- Nell Harris”

Katie MacAlister (1964) Author

Color, Mood, Dependency

“Disappear Here.
The syringe fills with blood.
You're a beautiful boy and that's all that matters.
Wonder if he's for sale.
People are afraid to merge. To merge.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Less Than Zero

Source: Less Than Zero

People, Beauty, Boy

“No wonder men got impervious to superficial pain, I thought. It came from this habit of hammering each other incessantly.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Men, Pain

“Why? What is so wonderful about mass murder that nobody in the history of the world has ever fond any smarter solution to problems than killing everybody who doesn’t agree? Is that the limit of human intelligence?”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

World, History, Intelligence, Problem

“In case you're wondering, the underside of a sheep doesn't smell that great. Imagine a winter sweater that's been dragged through the mud and left in the laundry hamper for a week. Something like that.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Imagination, Winter

“The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution - this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Life, Soul, Time

“love being such, or such,
the normal corners of your heart
will never guess how much
my wonderful jealousy is dark”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Source: Complete Poems, 1904-1962

Love, Jealousy, Heart

“I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Source: Keeping Faith

Children, People, Feeling

“I wonder what ants do on rainy days?”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“Marry me. Marry me, my wonderful, darling friend.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

“Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK.”

Tana French book Faithful Place

Source: Faithful Place

“I wondered if kicking him in the head would make the whole explanation pop out of his mouth in one chunk.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

“You realize that there's no point in doing anything if nobody's watching.
You wonder, if there had been a low turnout at the crucifixion, would they have rescheduled?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

“Part of me could do it. Run off and get married. But another part… Another part of me wondered if I could really trust anyone. If all relationships were all doomed.”

Sarah Mlynowski (1977) Novelist

Source: Ten Things We Did

Parting

“Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Women, Night

“Want me to warm up the sauce?”
“Do we do that? I mean, it’s in a jar, right? Can’t you just dump it over the pasta?”
“Well, you can, but it tastes better if you warm it up.”
“Oh.” Eve sighed. “This is complicated. No wonder I never cook.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

Cooking

“I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Money, Pleasure

“His right ear still held both studs, and I wondered who had the missing earring. I would have asked, but was afraid he’d tell me Ivy had it.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: A Fistful of Charms

“And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Way

“I wonder how you're supposed to know the exact moment when there's no more hope.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: Once Was Lost

Hope

“I wonder can I carry on with the speed of the world without you in it.”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach―ブリーチ― 49 [Burīchi 49]

World, Speed

“We need to be together."
"Why?" I asked softly. The word was carried away on the wind, but he heard.
"Because I want you."
I gave him a sad smile, wondering if we'd meet again in the land of the dead. "Wrong answer," I told him.
I let go”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Sadness, Smile, Dead

“When I look back on the stuff I used to wear, I wonder why somebody didn't try to stop me. Just a friendly warning, "You may regret this," would have been fine.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: The Funny Thing Is...

“This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

People, Thinking, Heart, Personality

“I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Children, World

“Do you know how to pick a lock?"
"Not in the least, I'm afraid."
"I often wonder what we go to school for," said Wimsey.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Strong Poison

Source: Strong Poison

School

“Man wonders but God decides
When to kill the Prince of Tides.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

God

“All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and contours. You feel the inspiration of its possibilities and the wonder of its mysteries.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Color, Feeling, Soul, Sense

“I understand that love and tragedy go hand in hand, for there can’t be one without the other, but nonetheless I find myself wondering whether the trade-off is fair.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride

Ira Levinson, Chapter 17, p. 237
Source: 2009, The Longest Ride (2013)
Context: My marriage brought great happiness into my life, but lately there's been nothing but sadness. I understand that love and tragedy go hand in hand, for there can't be one without the other, but nonetheless I find myself wondering whether the tradeoff is fair. A man should die as he had lived, I think; in his final moments, he should be surrounded and comforted by those he's always loved.

Love, Understanding

“Smile… it makes people wonder what you're up to.”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Simply Irresistible

People, Smile

“This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Beauty

“I wondered if I should start a small fire in Percy Jackson's sink, perhaps burn some bandages in thanks, but I decided that might strain that Jackson's hospitality.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

“Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

"The Absolute Collective", an essay first published in The Criterion on The Absolute Collective : A Philosophical Attempt to Overcome Our Broken State by Erich Gutkind, as translated by Marjorie Gabain
The Wisdom of the Heart (1941)
Context: All about us we see a world in revolt; but revolt is negative, a mere finishing-off process. In the midst of destruction we carry with us also our creation, our hopes, our strength, our urge to be fulfilled. The climate changes as the wheel turns, and what is true for the sidereal world is true for man. The last two thousand years have brought about a duality in man such as he never experienced before, and yet the man who dominates this whole period was one who stood for wholeness, one who proclaimed the Holy Ghost. No life in the whole history of man has been so misinterpreted, so woefully misunderstood as Christ's. If not a single Man has shown himself capable of following the example of Christ, and doubtless none ever will for we shall no longer have need of Christs, nevertheless this one profound example has altered our climate. Unconsciously we are moving into a new realm of being; what we have brought to perfection, in our zeal to escape the true reality, is a complete arsenal of destruction; when we have rid ourselves of the suicidal mania for a beyond we shall begin the life of here and now which is reality and which is sufficient unto itself. We shall have no need for art or religion because we shall be in ourselves a work of art. This is how I interpret realistically what Gutkind has set forth philosophically; this is the way in which man will overcome his broken state. If my statements are not precisely in accord with the text of Gutkind's thesis, I nevertheless am thoroughly in accord with Gutkind and his view of things. I have felt it my duty not only to set forth his doctrine, but to launch it, and in launching it to augment it, activate it. Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery. I am one man who can truly say that he has understood and acted upon this profound thought of Gutkind's —“the stupendous fact that we stand in the midst of reality will always be something far more wonderful than anything we do."

“Life is wonderful, so revel in its beauty. Be all you can be, and let go of the past. It is nothing but shadows.”

David Clement-Davies book Fell

Source: Fell

Life, Beauty, Past

“Relationships always sounded so physically painful: you fell in love, you broke a heart, you lost your head. Was it any wonder that people came through the experience with battle scars?”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Love, Pain, People, Heart