Quotes about wonder
page 13

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Thomas Aquinas photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Suzanne Collins photo

“No wonder I won the games. No decent person ever does.”

Katniss, p. 117
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Eoin Colfer photo
Thich Nhat Hanh photo
Sherman Alexie photo
Carl Sagan photo

“Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Carl Sagan, author interview
PT Staff
Psychology Today
1996
January
01
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/carl-sagan?page=3

“Though life seems painful, at the same time it is wonderful”

Ritsuko Okazaki (1959–2004) Japanese singer

空色(Sorairo), Siki
Lyrics

Andrew Sullivan photo
Larry Holmes photo

“When you constantly hear people talking about going the distance, going the distance, you can't help but wonder about it. I learned a lesson: next time I will fight my fight without that doubt.”

Larry Holmes (1949) American boxer

After the Cooney fight, as quoted in "Sport: Larry Holmes: I Still Have It" by Tom Callahan in TIME (21 June 1982) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,925485-3,00.html.

Van Morrison photo
Dalton Trumbo photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Bea Arthur photo

“It was like the Beatles had arrived, you know. These four elderly ladies, and they were screaming for us-screaming for us. It was wonderful.”

Bea Arthur (1922–2009) actress, singer, comedian

Interview, TV Legends, August 6, 2005

Dido photo
Yehuda Ashlag photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Harriet Beecher Stowe photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Djuna Barnes photo

“We are beginning to wonder whether a servant girl hasn’t the best of it after all. She knows how the salad tastes without the dressing, and she knows how life’s lived before it gets to the parlor door.”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

The Home Club: For Servants Only, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (12 October 1913)

Edward Norris Kirk photo
Loreena McKennitt photo
Salma Hayek photo

“I'd hear, "Because they paid the man, there's no money for the woman." How many times do you think I heard this? Over and over. Then I became a sex symbol. Now, how the hell did that happen? I don't exactly know the moment when it happened, but all of a sudden I'm a bombshell. The way I discovered this was I did Desperado. I had a very hard time with the love scene. I cried throughout the love scene. That's why you never see long pieces of the love scene — it's little pieces cut together. I'm crying most of the time so they have to take little pieces. It took eight hours instead of an hour. I nearly got fired. … Because I didn't want to be naked in front of a camera. The whole time, I'm thinking of my father and my brother… And then when the movie comes out, I read the first review. What do they say about me. "Salma Hayek is a bombshell." I had heard that when a movie does badly here, they say it bombs. So I'm crying. Thinking they're saying, "That terrible actress! It's a bomb! Salma Hayek is the worst part of the movie!" I called my friend and said, "The critics are destroying me!" She says, "No, they're saying you're very sexy." And then I look at all the reviews, and everybody said I was very sexy. So I'm very confused. I said, "I wonder if that's good or bad." I hear, "Yes, that's good." Then I do Fools Rush In, and I'm a pregnant woman. And they say I'm sexy again! I go, "But I'm pregnant!"”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

I'm not even naked in this movie, and they still say I'm sexy. And then it became very depressing — I thought, I guess I'm reduced to that now. That's all I am in the perception of these people.
O interview (2003)

Bruce Palmer Jr. photo
Immortal Technique photo
Terrell Owens photo

“He's a coach's dream. He's been really wonderful for the other guys I coach. Why? His work ethic, he has a great passion for playing the game; he's made my job easier.”

Terrell Owens (1973) former American football wide receiver

David Culley — reported in Doug Lesmerises (February 2, 2005) "Receivers coach says Owens a gem - T.O. a role model for young players", The News Journal, p. C7.
About

Benjamin Franklin photo

“Franklin is a good type of our American manhood. Although not the wealthiest or the most powerful, he is undoubtedly, in the versatility of his genius and achievements, the greatest of our self-made men. The simple yet graphic story in the Autobiography of his steady rise from humble boyhood in a tallow-chandler shop, by industry, economy, and perseverance in self-improvement, to eminence, is the most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men. It is in itself a wonderful illustration of the results possible to be attained in a land of unequaled opportunity by following Franklin's maxims.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Written by Frank Woodworth Pine in his introduction to the 1916 publication of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm. Pine, F.W. (editor). Henry Holt and Company via Gutenberg Press. (1916). Introduction.
The Autobiography (1818), The Autobiography (1916)

“For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water.
No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water.
Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity.
Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response.”

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 6 (pp. 137-138)

“[Unnamed actress on the set of Grand Prix] never had eyes for me. Hell, she wouldn't even talk to me, after she'd found out that I was just an unimportant actor. Good grief! Then, this is what happened: We were sitting in the foyer of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. She, myself and Antonio. Then an assistant director crossed our path. That actress was trying to get him to take us to the theatre where they were showing the rushes of the day before. After some discussion, she persuaded him. He said: `Be quiet, I'm gonna lose my job…' So we hid in the balcony, looking down, where that wonderful director Frankenheimer was sitting. After some minutes of racing cars, finally her scene came, and she was doing a phone call - she was playing a sophisticated magazine editor -, and suddenly you could hear the director, who had this loud, resonant voice, howling in rage, because he didn't like her at all. `Oh my God, she's awful! She can't walk, she can't talk, look at her hair!' So he turned to that faggot hairdresser, who was like Katherine the Great, and this guy said: `Well, usually she plays this peasant types. I don't know why you cast her for this role in the first place!”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

And remember, this actress was sitting there with us, and she nearly went crazy! She was squirming with embarrassment. This is an actor's nightmare, you know. The next day she was fired.
Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Viktor Schauberger photo

“It leaves me wanting to rejoice – isn’t language wonderful, that we can do all these different things with it!”

Adam Kilgarriff (1960–2015) linguist from England

in 'Odd one out' on his blog (31 January 2015) https://blog.kilgarriff.co.uk/?p=24

James Hamilton photo

“The word of God is solid; it will stand a thousand readings; and the man who has gone over it the most frequently and the most carefully is the surest of finding new wonders there.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 36.

Evelyn Underhill photo
Steve Jobs photo

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful… that's what matters to me.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

On the success of Bill Gates and Microsoft, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal (Summer 1993)
1990s
Variant: Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me… Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful… that's what matters to me.

John Calvin photo
Joe Satriani photo

“I've always done "the wrong thing" and had a pretty wonderful time doing it.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

In response to a question about whether he thinks fans would be shocked by "Enigines of Creation", as quoted in Guitar World (May 2000).

Leigh Snowden photo

“You know, I'm still in awe of movie stars-to me they're just not human. Guess it's because I'm from a small town. I wonder if I'll ever get over it?”

Leigh Snowden (1929–1982) American actress

How Leigh Snowden Broke into Movies http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1956/06/03/page/328/article/how-leigh-snowden-broke-into-movies#text (June 3, 1956)

Slavoj Žižek photo

“I found there, on the central square (Václavské náměstí), a café that miraculously worked through this emergency. I remember they had wonderful strawberry cakes, and I was sitting there eating strawberry cakes and watching Russian tanks against demonstrators. It was perfect.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Anecdote about the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, quoted in The New Yorker (5 May 2003), p. 39 http://books.google.com/books?id=AZQeAQAAMAAJ&q=%22cakes+and+watching+Russian+tanks+against+demonstrators.+It+was+perfect%22&dq=%22cakes+and+watching+Russian+tanks+against+demonstrators.+It+was+perfect%22&hl=en&ei=3HRhTpzzPIrv0gGwiazpDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA

Alice Walker photo
Donald Barthelme photo

“What makes The Joker tick I wonder?” Fredric said. “I mean what are his real motivations?”
“Consider him at any level of conduct,” Bruce said slowly, “in the home, on the street, in interpersonal relations, in jail—always there is an extraordinary contradiction. He is dirty and compulsively neat, aloof and desperately gregarious, enthusiastic and sullen, generous and stingy, a snappy dresser and a scarecrow, a gentleman and a boor, given to extremes of happiness and despair, singularly well able to apply himself and capable of frittering away a lifetime in trivial pursuits, decorous and unseemly, kind and cruel, tolerant yet open to the most outrageous varieties of bigotry, a great friend and an implacable enemy, a lover and abominator of women, sweet-spoken and foul-mouthed, a rake and a puritan, swelling with hubris and haunted by inferiority, outcast and social climber, felon and philanthropist, barbarian and patron of the arts, enamored of novelty and solidly conservative, philosopher and fool, Republican and Democrat, large of soul and unbearably petty, distant and brimming with friendly impulses, an inveterate liar and astonishingly strict with petty cash, adventurous and timid, imaginative and stolid, malignly destructive and a planter of trees on Arbor Day—I tell you frankly, the man is a mess.”
“That’s extremely well said Bruce,” Fredric stated. “I think you’ve given a very thoughtful analysis.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“I was paraphrasing what Mark Schorer said about Sinclair Lewis,” Bruce replied.
“The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”.
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Julie Newmar photo
David Icke photo

“Have you ever wondered what your subconscious mind looks like? Well today, I can show you.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source: You want to change your life? Then change the way you think! in Bridge of love magazine

Phil Hartman photo
Arthur Rubinstein photo

“Rubinstein was wonderful. For three days he spent hours playing the piano in my room, and then asking me what I thought of this and that. After a while he told my mother that I had talent and he thought I should be a musician.”

Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) Polish-American classical pianist

Antonio de Almeida — reported in Paul Hume (July 28, 1981) "Odyssey Of a Conductor", The Washington Post, p. C4.
About

Heinrich Böll photo

“He avoids the official "heroes'" cemetery, done in such impeccable taste. Why, he wonders, do the Germans do so much for their dead and so little for the living?”

Heinrich Böll (1917–1985) German author, novelist, and short story writer

You Enter Germany (1967); cited from Aufsätze, Kritiken, Reden (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1967) p. 278. Translation: "You are Now Entering Germany", in Leila Vennewitz (trans.) Missing Persons and Other Essays (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994) p. 48.

Norodom Ranariddh photo
Nicholas of Cusa photo
Woody Allen photo

“What a world. It could be so wonderful if it wasn't for certain people.”

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

Radio Days (1987).

Leo Tolstoy photo

“God gives us intelligence to uncover the wonders of nature. Without the gift, nothing is possible.”

James Clavell (1921–1994) American novelist

André Delambre
The Fly (1958)

The Mother photo

“For four years, from an artistic point of view, I lived from wonder to wonder.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

On her four years stay in Japan from March 1916, quoted in Japan (1916- 1920) http://www.searchforlight.org/TheMother_lifeSketchpart5.htm

Vangelis photo
Stephenie Meyer photo
Kris Roe photo

“In heaven so wonderful
Why are we oh so afraid of dying young
We are dying young”

Kris Roe (1978) American composer and singer

Welcome the Night
Song lyrics, Welcome the Night (2007)

Dave Matthews photo
Jason Biggs photo

“The American Pie success has been so wonderful for me, but it's also locked me into a certain type of role. It's limited my options.”

Jason Biggs (1978) American actor

On debut in show Orange Is the New Black, interviewed in: — [December 4, 2014, http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/q-a-jason-biggs-changes-stripes-in-orange-is-the-new-black-20130710, Rolling Stone, Q&A: Jason Biggs Changes Stripes in 'Orange Is the New Black', July 10, 2013, James Sullivan]

“I wonder if a single thought that has helped forward the human spirit has ever been conceived or written down in an enormous room.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 7: Grandeur and Obedience

L. Frank Baum photo
Bob Seger photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Charlotte Salomon photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo

“The noble lord who moved the address had, in the course of his speech, warned the House not to let an anxiety for liberty lead to a compromise of the safety of the state. He, for his part, could not separate those things. The safety of the state could only be found in the protection of the liberties of the people. Whatever was destructive of the latter also destroyed the former…The discontent existing in the country had been insisted on as a ground for the adoption of some measures…But there was another axiom no less true—that there never was an extensive discontent without great misgovernment…When no attention was paid to the calls of the people for relief, when their petitions were rejected and their sufferings aggravated, was it wonderful that at last public discontents should assume a formidable aspect?”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Lords (23 November 1819). The Speech from the Throne at the opening of the session of 1819-20 called for strong measures against the seditious spirit shown in the manufacturing districts. Grey moved an amendment in the Lords, calling for an enquiry into the Peterloo Massacre of 16 August, in order to maintain ‘that confidence in the public institutions of the country, which constitutes the best safeguard of all law and government.’ His amendment was defeated by 159 votes to 34. Parliamentary Debates, vol. xli, pp. 7-19, quoted in Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock (ed.), The Liberal Tradition from Fox to Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 5-6.
1810s

Murray Leinster photo
Ridley Scott photo

“How could that have happened? … Even if it was a hand of God … I’d read – and I don’t know how they know this – but in approximately 3000 BC there was a massive undersea volcano and earthquake, which created a tsunami wave that had to have been a couple of hundred feet high. Just off the heel of Italy. Diagonally across you’re staring right up the mouth of the Nile, so I’m wondering if that had anything to do with that.”

Ridley Scott (1937) English film director and film producer

On the parting of the Red Sea in the tales of Moses, as quoted in "Exodus: Gods And Kings - How Ridley Scott And Christian Bale Are Rebooting The Biblical Epic" at Yahoo Movies (16 September 2014) https://uk.yahoo.com/movies/exodus-gods-and-kings-set-visit-97667462271.html

Donald J. Trump photo
Henry Miller photo
Milton Friedman photo
John Steinbeck photo
Fritz Leiber photo
Han-shan photo

“The Arab world has seen elections before. However, virtually all of them were artificial affairs, their outcomes never in doubt. They were in the end celebrations of one version or another of autocracy, never a repudiation of them. That kind of state-management is not what has just taken place in Iraq. Millions of people actually made choices, and placed claims on those who will lead them in the future. To act upon one's own world like this, and on such a scale, is what politics in the purest sense is all about. It is why we all, once upon a time, became activists. And it is infectious. The taste of freedom is a hard memory to rub out. No wonder the political and intellectual elites of the Arab world are so worried, and no wonder they were so hostile to everything that happened in Iraq since the overthrow of the Saddam regime. They had longed for failure. They trotted out the tired old formulas of anti-Americanism to impart legitimacy to the so-called Iraqi "resistance to American occupation." But the people of Iraq have put an end to all that. En masse, ordinary people took to the streets in the second great Iraqi revolt against the politics of barbarism exemplified by Abu Musab al Zarqawi's immortal words: "We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it."”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"The Shiite Obligation", Wall Street Journal (February 7, 2005)

John Clare photo

“And what's more wonderful, when big loads foil
One ant or two to carry, quickly then
A swarm flock round to help their fellow-men.”

John Clare (1793–1864) English poet

"The Ants"
Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

“What I am saying is that it is not so much what man is that counts as it is what he ventures to make of himself. To make the leap he must do more than disclose himself; he must risk a certain amount of confusion. Then, as soon as he does catch a glimpse of a different kind of life, he needs to find some way of overcoming the paralyzing moment of threat, for this is the instant when he wonders who he really is - whether he is what he just was or is what he is about to be. Adam must have experienced such a moment.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Variant: What I am saying is that it is not so much what man is that counts as it is what he ventures to make of himself. To make the leap he must do more than disclose himself; he must risk a certain amount of confusion. Then, as soon as he does catch a glimpse of a different kind of life, he needs to find some way of overcoming the paralyzing moment of threat, for this is the instant when he wonders who he really is - whether he is what he just was or is what he is about to be. Adam must have experienced such a moment.
Source: The Language of Hypothesis, 1964, p. 158

Libba Bray photo
William Shatner photo

“My being Jewish does not inform the things I do, necessarily. 'Exodus' is a wonderful piece, no matter what religion you are. 'The Shiva Club,' which is a movie I am attempting to make sometime soon, is about crashing a shiva, if you will. A couple of comics crash a shiva. I could have, I suppose, made it an Irish wake, but the shiva I was more familiar with.”

William Shatner (1931) Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director

Of his album telling the story of the Exodus, "Beam Me Up Moses William Shatner Album Tells Exodus Story In Spoken Word, Song https://archive.is/20130103131701/www.jweekly.com/article/full/34780/beam-me-up-moses-william-shatner-album-tells-exodus-story-in-spoken-word-so/, Jweekly 18 April 2008.

José Ortega Y Gasset photo

“Chan’s heart knew only greed, but there was within him enough intelligence to wonder before a man who could see all the uselessness of life, and still exult in the possessing of it.”

Lin Carter (1930–1988) American fantasy writer, editor, critic

Source: Tower at the Edge of Time (1968), Chapter 13, “The Scarlet Tower” (p. 125)

Shelley Winters photo
Paul Cézanne photo
Michael Shermer photo

“We're all talking about the same thing, whether it's religious people or New Age spiritual people or Buddhists or scientists. We're all talking about having a sense of awe and wonder at something grander than ourselves.”

Michael Shermer (1954) American science writer

quoted in [Berger, Kevin, August 23, 2006, http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/08/23/shermer/print.html, "The joys of life without God", Salon.com, 2006-08-26]

Orson Scott Card photo

“We all choose our own teachers, don't we? I wonder if our choice of teacher shows anything about what our lives will be.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Dana Gioia photo
Billy Joel photo
Torquato Tasso photo

“O love, o wonder; love new born, new bred,
Now groan, now armed, this champion captive led.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Oh meraviglia! Amor, ch'appena è nato,
Già grande vola, e già trionfa armato.
Canto I, stanza 47 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

A.A. Milne photo
John Adams photo

“This book is a long conference of God, the angels, and Mahomet, which that false prophet very grossly invented; sometimes he introduceth God, who speaketh to him, and teacheth him his law, then an angel, among the prophets, and frequently maketh God to speak in the plural. … Thou wilt wonder that such absurdities have infected the best part of the world, and wilt avouch, that the knowledge of what is contained in this book, will render that law contemptible …”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

John Adams: John Adams Library (Boston Public Library) BRL; Du Ryer, André, ca. 1580-ca. 1660, tr; Adams, John, 1735-1826, former owner, "[ 2013-05-01 http://ia700200.us.archive.org/4/items/korancommonlycal00john/korancommonlycal00john.pdf, The Koran : commonly called the Alcoran of Mahomet (1806)]," Springfield [Mass.] : Printed by Henry Brewer, for Isaiah Thomas, Jun.
1770s

Ani DiFranco photo