Quotes about wonder
page 30

“He is Karna, whom the world has abandoned. Karna Alone. Condemned goods. A prince raised in poverty. Born to die unfairly, unarmed and alone at the hands of his brother. Majestic in his complete despair. Praying on the banks of the Ganga. Stoned out of his skull.
Then Kunti appeared. She too was a man, but a man grown soft and womanly, a man with breasts, from doing female parts for years. Her movements were fluid. Full of women. Kunti, too, was stoned. High on the same shared joints. She had come to tell Karna a story.
Karna inclined his beautiful head and listened.
Red-eyed, Kunti danced for him. She told him of a young woman who had been granted a boon. A secret mantra that she could use to choose a lover from among the gods. Of how, with the imprudence of youth, the woman decided to test it to see if it really worked. How she stood alone in an empty field, turned her face to the heavens and recited the mantra. The words had scarcely left her foolish lips, Kunti said, when Surya, the God of Day, appeared before her. The young woman, bewitched by the beauty of the shimmering young god, gave herself to him. Nine months later she bore him a son. The baby was born sheathed in light, with gold earrings in his ears and a gold breastplate on his chest, engraved with the emblem of the sun.
The young mother loved her first-born son deeply, Kunti said, but she was unmarried and couldn't keep him. She put him in a reed basket and cast him away in a river. The child was found downriver by Adhirata, a charioteer. And named Karna.
Karna looked up to Kunti. Who was she? Who was my mother? Tell me where she is. Take me to her.
Kunti bowed her head. She's here, she said. Standing before you.
Karna's elation and anger at the revelation. His dance of confusion and despair. Where were you, he asked her, when I needed you the most? Did you ever hold me in your arms? Did you feed me? Did you ever look for me? Did you wonder where I might be?
In reply Kunti took the regal face in her hands, green the face, red the eyes, and kissed him on his brow. Karna shuddered in delight. A warrior reduced to infancy. The ecstasy of that kiss. He dispatched it to the ends of his body. To his toes. His fingertips. His lovely mother's kiss. Did you know how much I missed you? Rahel could see it coursing through his veins, as clearly as an egg travelling down an ostrich's neck.
A travelling kiss whose journey was cut short by dismay when Karna realised that his mother had revealed herself to him only to secure the safety of her five other, more beloved sons - the Pandavas - poised on the brink of their epic battle with their one hundred cousins. It is them that Kunti sought to protect by announcing to Karna that she was his mother. She had a promise to extract.
She invoked the Love Laws.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

pages 232-233.
The God of Small Things (1997)

Love, Women, God, Secret

“Looking eastward from the summit of Pacheco Pass one shining morning, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most beautiful I have ever beheld. At my feet lay the Great Central Valley of California, level and flowery, like a lake of pure sunshine, forty or fifty miles wide, five hundred miles long, one rich furred garden of yellow Compositae. And from the eastern boundary of this vast golden flower-bed rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height, and so gloriously colored and so radiant, it seemed not clothed with light but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city…. Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spray of countless waterfalls, it still seems above all others the Range of Light.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

The Yosemite http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/ (1912), chapter 1: The Approach to the Valley 1910s

Beauty, Color, Flowers, Light

“As I have noted elsewhere, and with the clarity of hindsight, I think Stan and Jack made a mistake when they decided to make Thor the “real” Thor. “Whosoever holds his hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor(r)!” That was really all I needed to know. But, of course, the rest of the Norse mythology began appearing early on, so it was only natural (if a tad anal) that fans should start writing in wondering what had happened to the real Thor.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2007
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=20511&PN=1&TPN=3
Regarding Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s version of Thor

Nature, Thinking, Appearance

“You sometimes get a thrill at knowing where you are. You’re often filled with wonder, but more often you are puzzled. You are reminded, again and yet again, of how insignificant you are. And there are times when you forget that you are human. You’re just a blob of life—brother to everything that ever existed or ever will exist.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 9 (p. 69)

Life, Time, Forgetting

“…he often wondered when exactly her feeling for him finally overwhelmed those she'd had for Kevin…
He wasn't sure; capturing a specific instant like that was no more possible than locating a specific drop of water in the ocean.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Travis Parker, Chapter 15, p. 193-194
2000s, The Choice (2007)

Feeling, Water

“You ask me how it's possible for me to carry on. I wonder
if I look like someone who looks like
it's possible to carry on.”

Michael Rosen (1946) British children's writer

Carrying the Elephant

“My art is going well. I have a feeling of satisfaction about it. Afternoons I stroll around the city [Paris] taking a good look at everything and trying to absorb it all... I went back to the Notre Dame again. Such wonderful Gothic detailing, those monstrous gargoyles, each one with its own character and face... Directly behind Notre Dame, almost encircled by the Seine, lies the morgue. Day after day they fish corpses from the river here, people who don't want to get on living.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her sister Milly, from Paris, 29 February 1900; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 200
1900 - 1905

People, Art, Feeling, Fish

“I would have liked to have had kids, and had a family, but I think in my profession it's quite difficult to achieve because you're always working. I think I'm the kind of person as well, had I had kids, I wouldn't have gone on working. I would have jacked it all in. But it's a wonderful life I have, so I'm very fulfilled in other ways. Am I ever bothered by it? Well it's too late now”

Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress

laughs
Rock and pop (2006)

Life, Family, Way, Thinking

“I often conduct an orchestra in my sleep; my orchestras are so huge that the back desks of the violas vanish into the horizon. And everything is so wonderful.”

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Finnish composer of the late Romantic period

To Jussi Jalas, August 27, 1943. http://www.sibelius.fi/english/omin_sanoin/ominsanoin_13.htm

Sleep

“Indeed, if any man can say, that it is not an interesting question, whether his existence terminate at death, or is to be resumed at a future period, and then to continue for ever, he must be of a low and abject mind. To a rational being, capable of contemplating the wonders of nature, and of investigating the laws of it, and to a being of a social disposition, his existence, and the continuance of his rational faculties, must be an object of unspeakable value to him; and consequently he must ardently wish that christianity… may be true. For to a philosopher, who forms his judgment by what he actually observes, the doctrine of soul, capable of subsisting and acting when the body is in the grave, will never give any satisfaction. To every person, therefore, who is capable of enjoying his existence, the christian doctrine of a resurrection opens a glorious and transporting prospect.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

Death, Law, Soul, Question

“One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people —
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
God blessed America for me.”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

Final stanza of manuscript notes for "God Blessed America" which later became "This Land Is Your Land" (23 February 1940)

God, People

“I have generally made it a rule to parry the inquiries and comparisons which the Americans are so apt to thrust at an Englishman. On one or two occasions, when the party has been numerous and worth powder and shot, I have, however, on being hard pressed, and finding my British blood up, found the only mode of allaying their inordinate vanity to be by resorting to this mode of argument:—"I admit all that you or any other person can, could, may, or might advance in praise of the past career of the people of America. Nay, more, I will myself assert that no nation ever did, and in my opinion none ever will, achieve such a title to respect, wonder, and gratitude in so short a period; and further still, I venture to allege that the imagination of statesmen never dreamed of a country that should in half a century make such prodigious advances in civilization and real greatness as yours has done. And now I must add, and I am sure you, as intelligent, reasonable men, will go with me, that fifty years are too short a period in the existence of nations to entitle them to the palm of history. No, wait the ordeal of wars, distresses, and prosperity (the most dangerous of all), which centuries of duration are sure to bring to your country. These are the test, and if, many ages hence, your descendants shall be able only to say of their country as much as I am entitled to say of mine now, that for seven hundred years we have existed as a nation constantly advancing in liberty, wealth, and refinement; holding out the lights of philosophy and true religion to all the world; presenting mankind with the greatest of human institutions in the trial by jury; and that we are the only modern people that for so long a time withstood the attacks of enemies so heroically that a foreign foe never put foot in our capital except as a prisoner (this last is a poser);—if many centuries hence your descendants will be entitled to say something equivalent to this, then, and not till then, will you be entitled to that crown of fame which the historian of centuries is entitled to award."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 33-34.
1830s

Men, War, People, Age

“Glory of earth, and light from heaven,
Young Genius! but for thee,
And the wild wonders to thee given,
How base our earth would be!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(19th May 1827) Genius
The London Literary Gazette, 1827

Light

“I believe that most of us are too quick to name things when we are with small children. By simply naming a thing and letting it go at that when a child asks, "What is that?" we communicate that the name or label is the most important thing, that naming is sufficient. We deprive our children of their sense of wonder and discovery by labeling and categorizing things in the physical world. Instead of merely naming a tree, for example, try also guiding your child through an exploration of the tree both physically and mentally. This exploration may include touching, smelling, seeing from various angles, comparing one tree with another, imagining the inside of the tree and the parts underground, listening to the leaves, viewing the tree at different times of the day or during different seasons, planting its seeds, observing how other creatures — birds, moths, bugs — use the tree, and so on. After discovering that every object is fascinating and complex, a child will begin to understand that the label is only a small part of the whole. Thus taught, a child's sense of wonder will survive, even under our modern avalanche of words.”

Betty Edwards (1926) American artist

Source: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), p.239

Children, World, Imagination, Communication

“I am extremely critical. I am seriously wondering whether we are taking ourselves and our values seriously or if we are throwing them overboard.”

Johanna Mikl-Leitner (1964) Austrian politician (ÖVP), former Member of National Council of Austria and former Federal Interior Minister of …

Austria's interior minister hit out on Thursday about a proposed deal between the European Union and Turkey on migrants and refugees, saying Europe was in danger of "throwing its values overboard", quoted on Thelocal.at, "Austria 'extremely critical' of EU-Turkey migrant deal" http://www.thelocal.at/20160310/austria-extremely-critical-of-mooted-eu-turkey-migrant-deal, March 10, 2016.

“Like Rimbaud before them, the surrealists abandoned the aesthetic altogether; it takes a certain courage to leave poetry for Africa [as Rimbaud himself did]. They revealed their insight as essentially moral in never forgetting for a moment that most living is a process of conforming to an established order which is inhuman in its drives and consequences. Their hatred sustained them through all the humiliating situations in which the modern artist find himself, and led them to conceptions beyond the reach of more passive souls. For them true 'poetry' was freedom from mechanical social responses. No wonder they loved the work of children and the insane – if not the creatures themselves.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: 1940's, Beyond the Aesthetics (1946), pp. 39-40

Love, Children, Soul, Courage

“The "music of decline" had sounded, as in that wonderful Chinese fable; like a thrumming bass on the organ its reverberations faded slowly out over decades; its throbbing could be heard in the corruption of the schools, periodicals, and universities, in melancholia and insanity among those artists and critics who could still be taken seriously; it raged as untrammeled and amateurish overproduction in all the arts.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

School, Art, Music, Universe

“She leant upon her harp, and thousands looked
On her in love and wonder—thousands knelt
And worshipp'd in her presence—burning tears,
And words that died in utterance, and a pause
Of breathless, agitated eagerness,
First gave the full heart's homage: then came forth
A shout that rose to heaven; and the hills,
The distant valleys, all rang with the name
Of the Æolian Sappho—every heart
Found in itself some echo to her song.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Sappho from The London Literary Gazette (4th May 1822) Poetic Sketches. 2nd Series - Sketch the First
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love, Tear, Distant, Heart

“The Indian diaspora is a wonderful place to write from and I am lucky to be part of it.”

Kiran Desai (1971) Indian author

"I am envious of writers who are in India" http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/envious-of-writers-who-are-in-india-kiran-desai/1/180336.html (October 30, 2006), Interview by Nabanita Sircar, India Today

Parting

“[Fox] exhibited two pictures of this country; the one representing her at the end of the last glorious war, the other at the present moment. At the end of the last war this country was raised to a most dazzling height of splendour and respect. The French marine was in a manner annihilated, the Spanish rendered contemptible; the French were driven from America; new sources of commerce were opened, the old enlarged; our influence extended to a predominance in Europe, our empire of the ocean established and acknowledged, and our trade filling the ports and harbours of the wondering and admiring world. Now mark the degradation and the change, We have lost thirteen provinces of America; we have lost several of our Islands, and the rest are in danger; we have lost the empire of the sea; we have lost our respect abroad and our unanimity at home; the nations have forsaken us, they see us distracted and obstinate, and they leave us to our fate. Country! …This was your situation, when you were governed by Whig ministers and by Whig measures, when you were warmed and instigated by a just and a laudable cause, when you were united and impelled by the confidence which you had in your ministers, and when they were again strengthened and emboldened by your ardour and enthusiasm. This is your situation, when you are under the conduct of Tory ministers and a Tory system, when you are disunited, disheartened, and have neither confidence in your ministers nor union among yourselves; when your cause is unjust and your conductors are either impotent or treacherous.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (27 November 1781), reprinted in J. Wright (ed.), The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox in the House of Commons. Volume I (1815), p. 429.
1780s

Fate, War, World, Home

“Science kills credulity and superstition, but to the well-balanced mind it enhances the feeling of wonder, of veneration, and of kinship which we feel in the presence of the miraculous universe.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: Accepting the Universe (1920), p.108

Feeling, Universe, Science

“In the beginning there are those who don't quite fit in
But are somehow okay. And then some morning
There are places that suddenly seem wonderful:
Weather and water seem wonderful,
And the peaceful night sky that arrives
In time to protect us, like a sword
Cutting the blue cloak of a prince.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

"A Snowball in Hell"
Source: April Galleons (1987)

Peace, Water, Time, Weather

“It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million of faces there should be none alike.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 2
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Men

“I am the only major best-selling novelist in the United States who is not tainted by "liberalism" and Communism, and who has never belonged to a Communist front. As a result, the press, which is mainly "liberal", has been furiously attacking me for years in their alleged "reviews."… In our bitterness, we are beginning to wonder what protection an antiCommunist has in the United States now, had we been Communists we'd have had the enthusiastic support of the press and would now be very wealthy, for, as liberal writers told me in New York, with contempt, that had we been "liberals" we'd not have had to pay any taxes, or only token payments.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

Letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation http://www.peterbgemma.com/2013/07/no-eunuch-ever-wrote-a-book/ (1957) 1950s

Communication, Support

“Magic means nothing. It has the potential to connect us to something wonderful, as does any performance, but it is not wonderful in itself, for it is inseparable from the particular performance in which it is experienced. A magician who is too fast, too slow, mumbles, shouts, smells, is unlikeable or incomprehensible will unavoidably taint his magic with his personal failings.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

Personality

“Empathy has been in short supply in our nation recently. Our leaders are quick to congratulate us on our own feelings, slow to ask us to wonder how others feel. But maybe times are changing. Every Lee film is an exercise in empathy. He is not interested in congratulating the black people in his audience, or condemning the white ones. He puts human beings on the screen, and asks his audience to walk a little while in their shoes.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/malcolm-x-1992 of Malcolm X (18 November 1992) Reviews, Four star reviews

People, Shoe, Feeling, Exercises

“And as for the close connection between philosophy and poetry, we can refer to a little-known statement by Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics [I, 3]: the Philosopher is akin to the Poet in this, that both are concerned with the mirandum, the "wondrous," the astonishing, or whatever calls for astonishment or wonder. This statement is not that easy to fathom, since Thomas, like Aristotle, was a very sober thinker, completely opposed to any Romantic confusion of properly distinct realms. But on the basis of their common orientation towards the "wonderful" (the mirandum — something not to be found in the world of work!) — on this basis, then, of this common transcending-power, the philosophical act is related to the "wonderful," is in fact more closely related to it than to the exact, special sciences; to this point we shall return.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 68–69
The Aquinas quote cited — "The reason why the philosopher can be compared to the poet is that both are concerned with wonder" — is the epigraph of "The Philosophical Act".

World, Science

“I had often heard of the wonderful power of the President in telling anecdotes, but no one could form an adequate idea of his ability in this line unless he had been alone with him for ten days as I was. He had an illustration for everything, and if anything particular attracted his attention he would say, 'That reminds me of something that occurred when I was a lawyer in Illinois,' or 'when I was a boatman on the Mississippi.' He was not at all ashamed of any business he had ever been engaged in, because it was honest business, and he made an honest living by it; and he told me many stories of his earlier life, which were as creditable to him as anything he was engaged in while occupying a higher sphere.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), pp. 282–283

Life, Idea, Business

“If you really think about it, everything is wonderful in this world, everything except for our thoughts and deeds when we forget about the loftier goals of existence, about our human dignity.”

Anton Chekhov book The Lady with the Dog

The Lady with the Dog (1899)

World, Thinking, Forgetting

“"Where do you get those superior airs of yours?" "I've managed to survive, you see, all those nights when I wondered: am I going to kill myself at dawn?"”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Night

“That's easy. The new rules have made these pitchers turn square, and their offerings have been clouted. I know some pitchers who used the old emery and the shiner and all the rest, and they were bearcats. Now they have to get by on their natural ability and they don't rate so high. I can think of one pitcher who was a wonder last year. They took the old sail ball away from him, and now he hasn't enough to get by in a good class AA league. So it goes. They say that the ball is livelier. I think that is the old bunk. The pitchers are not pitching as they used to and the batters have a better chance.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "Ruth Has One Great Fear: May Drive Ball Back At Pitcher Some Day and Injure Him"

Nature, Thinking, Chance

“Well I've travelled around the earth and still I wonder if I'm the first human being who questions his worth.”

Ed Harcourt (1977) British musician

Bittersweetheart

Travel, Question

“Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!”
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness.”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)

“I don't have to be a hero, he thought in silent wonder. All I have to do is pretend.”

Matthew Stover book Traitor

Ganner Rhysode, p. 261
Traitor (2002)

“I ask particularly that those of you who are now in school will prepare yourselves to bear the burden of leadership over the next 40 years here in the United States, and make sure that the United States — which I believe almost alone has maintained watch and ward for freedom — that the United States meet its responsibility. That is a wonderful challenge for us as a people.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Remarks at the Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, Washington (387)" (27 September 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx 1963

People, School, Freedom

“The feats of our brave troops are wonderful, God gave them success. — May He continue to help them to peace with honour, & the victory over Juda & Antichrist in British garb.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Letter to Margarethe Landgraffin von Hessen (20 April 1941), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1262
1940s

God, Peace, Success, Victory

“Perhaps if we had realized they are birds, with all the wonderful characteristics of birds, we would have paid closer attention to the ways in which chickens can enchant us. Take dust-bathing, for example. We call it a bath because the chicken finds a small indentation of dry earth and then proceeds to immerse herself in it as into a warm bath. The earth cleans her feathers. The first time I saw a chicken taking a dust bath, stretching out one iridescent wing and holding it up to the sunshine, then settling into the warmth of the afternoon only to fly effortlessly to a tree to roost in the evening, I was astonished.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Pig Who Sang to the Moon (2003), Ch. 2, p. 59

Way, Bird, Tree, Time

“The historian…loaden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing himself (for the most part) upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay; having much ado to accord differing writers and to pick truth out of partiality; better acquainted with a thousand years ago than with the present age, and yet better knowing how this world goeth than how his own wit runneth; curious for antiquities and inquisitive of novelties; a wonder to young folks and a tyrant in table talk, denieth, in a great chafe, that any man for teaching of virtue, and virtuous actions is comparable to him.”

Philip Sidney (1554–1586) English diplomat

Page 89.
An Apology of Poetry, or The Defence of Poesy (1595)

Truth, Age, World, History

“I say if you have the urge to pursue this, do it, especially when you’re very young. If you don’t throw your marbles out and see what happens, for the rest of your life you’ll wonder what could have happened. And that can have negative effects on the rest of your life. Not necessarily devastating, but you’ll always have that nagging thing. When you go out like I did – I went from Arkansas to New York City – and if I had done that and spent five, 10 years trying to do it, I would either have been successful or I would have said, you know, I’m done with this. I gave it my shot. The only failure is not trying. And I encourage all young people, if you have any inkling whatsoever, that you can do this. At least try.”

Rodger Bumpass (1951) American character actor and voice actor

Rodger Bumpass is Squidward Tentacles http://georgiastatesignal.com/rodger-bumpass-is-squidward-tentacles/ (September 8, 2013)

Life, People, Failure, Success

“I got shot in the guts at the Beaumont-Hamel show. It hurt like hell, let me tell you. They took me down to the field-hospital. I was busy dying, but a company-sergeant major had got it in the head, and he was busy dying, too; and he did die. Well, as soon as ever the sergeant-major died, they took out that long gut… and they put it into me, grafted it on somehow. Wonderful chaps, these medicos! … Well, this sergeant-major seems to have been an abstemious man. The lining of the new gut is much better than my old one; so I'm celebrating it. I only wish I'd borrowed his kidneys, too.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch.21.

Hell, Business, Hurt

“The man's father is a wonderful human being. I think this guy is a loser.”

Harry Reid (1939) American politician

on George W. Bush. Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/May-06-Fri-2005/news/reid.html, May 6, 2005

Guy, Thinking

“I will not cataloge my opinions to which there have been objections since they are a matter of public record. But I must note in passing that I can't help but wonder if some of my critics can read.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Reading, Help

“Aretha Franklin was tough. She turned out to be good, but she was, you know, she was -- she's a very -- she's a very wonderful, but in some ways, shy woman. You don't think about that when you see how she emotes and performs.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Larry King, Interview with Ed Bradley, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0402/08/lkl.00.html, February 8, 2004, Larry King Live, CNN]

Way, Thinking

“The plains are very wonderful now – like green gold and yellow gold and red gold – in patches – and the distance blue and pink and lavender strips and spots – May sounds like a Dow Canyon but really its wonderful – specially in the evening – I usually go alone – Yesterday rode home on a hay wagon – no it was clover with a funny old man – His mules and wagon blocked my path so we started talking... We had a great time riding toward the sunset. He was little and dried up and weather beaten – but he likes living..”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas, (October 30), 1916, pp. 209, 210
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Home, Time, Weather

“To know the mighty works of God, to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power; to appreciate, in degree, the wonderful workings of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High, to whom ignorance cannot be more grateful than knowledge.”

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) Renaissance mathematician, Polish astronomer, physician

As quoted in Poland : The Knight Among Nations (1907) by Louis E. Van Norman, p. 290; also in The Language of God (2006) by Francis Collins, pp. 230-31

Wisdom, God, Law, Knowledge

““His eyes were the unrivaled wonder of Abhinaya”
- P. T. Narendra Menon (connoisseur of art), 1990”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Source: Abhinaya and Netrābhinaya, P.T. Narendra Menon, Kulapati of Koodiyattam, Sruti- India's premier Music and Dance magazine, August 1990 issue (71).

Art

“My obsession with wolves hadn't helped past relationships. I had split up with Jan, the mother of my four children, after 11 years together, but there was never any animosity; it was more a case of separation by default. Maybe I never gave that relationship a chance. I was so passionate about wolves that I wonder whether any human relationship could have come close. If I'd had to choose between spending a night in the wolf enclosure or at home, I would probably have chosen the wolves.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

I howled for the woman I loved... and she howled back - British wolfman tells how his obsession drove away the love of his life http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1245507/I-howled-woman-I-loved--howled--British-wolfman-tells-obsession-drove-away-love-life.html, Daily Mail, (23 January, 2010)

Children, Home, Wolf, Passion

“I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 35. It just happened—it just came over me. I’d gotten asthma and was having trouble sleeping, getting less than an hour of sleep a night. … I decided I wouldn’t eat meat any more, not even for a million dollars. I felt cleansed and incredible, like the inflammation in my body had been reduced. It was life-changing. … When I decided to become vegetarian, I had to learn how to ‘recook,’ if you will. … When I gave up meat, I wondered what I would make. That turned out to be vegetables, really organic and fresh. I made them very flavorful, using herbs, lemon and a little oil. I think I taught my kids well. My daughter, Dinah, for example, is also a vegetarian and doesn’t eat anything that can look at her.”

Cloris Leachman (1926) American actress

"For Cloris Leachman, No Bad Days" https://parade.com/362906/stephaniestephens/for-cloris-leachman-no-bad-days/, interview with Parade magazine (2 January 2015).

Life, Thinking, Sleep, Learning

“It is a great truth, wonderful as it is undeniable, that all our happiness—temporal, spiritual, and eternal — consists in one thing; namely, in resigning ourselves to God, and in leaving ourselves with Him, to do with us and in us just as He pleases.”

Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648–1717) French mystic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 297.

God, Happiness, Truth

“I wonder whether, in the history of all the civilisations that have ever been, a more insanely optimistic notion has ever been entertained than that you and I, mortal, puny creatures, may yet aspire, with God’s grace and Christ’s help, to be reborn into what St Paul calls the glorious liberty of the children of God. Or if there was ever a more abysmally pessimistic one than that we, who reach out with our minds and our aspirations to the stars and beyond, should be able so to arrange our lives, so to eat and drink and fornicate and learn and frolic, that our brief span in this world fulfils all our hopes and desires.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Originally in a sermon delivered at Queen's Cross church Aberdeen, Scotland (26 May 1968), later included in Jesus Rediscovered (1969)

God, Children, World, Hope

“These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Men, People, Age, Religion

“Even with all the difficulties and the frustrations that we feel—those of us who have been consistent in this journey—what makes it so remarkably attractive and encouraging are the men and women you meet on the way. I have met some glorious human beings: Eleanor Roosevelt, Fanny Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, and Dr. King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and Che Guevara, and Cesar Chavez and others not quite so famous—they are the ones who really make the journey rewarding. The work I do with UNICEF. The men and women I’ve met in Rwanda, South Africa, working against HIV/AIDS, and the courageous things that simple, wonderful human beings do for each other.”

Harry Belafonte (1927) American singer

Women, Men, Way, Feeling

“The Talisman could be operated only by certain beings with certain types of minds and something else besides (could it be, he wondered, with certain kinds of souls?). "Sensitives" was the word he had used in his mental translation of the term for these kinds of people, but once again, he could not be sure if the word came close to fitting. The Talisman was placed in the custody of the most capable, or the most efficient, or the most devoted (whichever it might be) of the galactic sensitives, who carried it from star to star in a sort of eternal progression. And on each planet the people came to make personal and individual contact with the spiritual force through the intervention and the agency of the Talisman and its custodian.
He found that he was shivering at the thought of it — the pure ecstasy of reaching out and touching the spirituality that flooded through the galaxy and, undoubtedly, through the universe. The assurance would be there, he thought, the assurance that life had a special place in the great scheme of existence, that one, no matter how small, how feeble, how insignificant, still did count for something in the vast sweep of space and time.”

Clifford D. Simak book Way Station

Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 12

Life, People, Soul, Star

“Looking at the Temple and the Courts and the mountain road that winds below, we see this picture of human evolution, and the track along which the race is treading, and the Temple that is its goal… along that road round the mountain stands a vast mass of human beings, climbing indeed, but climbing so slowly, rising step after step; sometimes it seems as though for every step forward there is a step backward, and though the trend of the whole mass is upwards it mounts so slowly that the pace is scarcely perceptible. And this aeonian evolution of the race, climbing ever upwards, seems so slow and weary and painful that one wonders how the pilgrims have the heart to climb so long…”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

p. 10

Pain, Mountain, Heart

“I have been haunted by that swim through the whale graveyard and haven’t been able to get the image of the bones out of my head. Man hunted whales almost to the point of extinction, not seeming to care that we would lose one of the wonders of the sea world forever. It is the coldness of the water in Antarctica that preserves the bones and makes it look like they were left there yesterday but I like to think they are there as a reminder of man’s potential for folly.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 315-6, describing his swim at Deception Island, Antarctica (2005)
Achieving The Impossible (2010)

World, Thinking, Water, Sea

“The gods smile on us, my son, or so it is written. It's a wonder they don't laugh aloud.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 1, Ch. 2
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

God, Smile

“I had the greatest pleasure of listening to Gloria Estefan's lecture on "Life, Art and Spirituality" at the Graham Center of Florida International University today. It was a great experieince. She is such a wonderful, amazing woman, and a great inspiration. I believe that everyone who attended her lecture today was blown away by her sincerity, kind words and her sense of humor... yes, because even in the darkest days of her life, there was a little room for humor. She spoke of the power of prayer, and how different this world would be if we were to stop the violence, and the hating, and the wars between us.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comment from audience member at Esteran's address at Florida International University (November 14, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life, Hate, War, Pleasure

“You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers — you're bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You are the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

August 1932 Henry and June
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Imagination, Idea, Thinking

“Thank you, Senator [Hagel] for that wonderful introduction. It is a great honour to be introduced by such a distinguished legislator.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Farewell Speech (2006)

“You spend so much time wondering who you are, don't you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves.”

Terry Brooks book The Tangle Box

The Tangle Box

Search, Question, Thinking, Time

“Art in Britain is in a very healthy state. The artists of my generation and older are at their best — people like Howard Hodgkin and Frank Auerbach. The YBAs are still very strong, and it's exciting to wonder what the next generation will bring.”

Peter Blake (1932) British artist

Simon O'Hagan "Credo:Peter Blake", http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20051120/ai_n15851377 The Independent on Sunday, 2005-11-20. Accessed from findarticles.com, 2007-01-22 Art

People, Art, Strong

“Hitler made a film about "Hitler gives a camp to the Jews". And they look all shiny. And they're drawing. And they're playing volleyball. And people are dancing. And people are having a wonderful time. And everybody fell for it.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

NOW interview (2004)

People, Time, Dance, Drawing

“The part that wasn't a jackpot was his baseball mound of red pubic hair that looked like it had literally been attached with a glue gun. I couldn't believe how much there was, and wondered how he had never heard of scissors, or--more appropriate for that kind of growth--hedge trimmers. I didn't understand what porn he was watching to not be aware of the trimming that was happening all across the world among his compatriots. I'm not a finicky person when it comes to pubic hair maintenance and I certainly don't expect men to shave it all off, leaving themselves to look like a hairless cat. That's even creepier then than seeing what Austin had, which could really only be compared to one thing: A clown in a leg lock.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (2008)

Men, World, Cats, Understanding

“… the huge church […] was thundering its gospel under her eyes.To have Niagara for a rival is no joke. Hazard spoke with no such authority; and Esther's next idea was one of wonder how, after listening here, any preacher could have the confidence to preach again. "What do they know about it?" she asked herself. "Which of them can tell a story like this, or a millionth part of it?"”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Source: Esther: A Novel (1884), Ch. IX

Confidence, Idea, Parting

“Who said anything about it hurting?
It's gonna be beautiful
It's gonna be wonderful
It's gonna be paradise.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Red Shoes (1993)

Beauty, Hurt

“Sense of justice is one of the most wonderful ideals of Islam, because as I read in the Quran I find those dynamic principles of life, not mystic but practical ethics for the daily conduct of life suited to the whole world.”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

Sarojini Naidu, Islam, 1 December 2013, Radio Islam http://www.radioislam.org.za/a/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6322&Itemid=47,

Life, World, Justice, Sense

“Mr. Chief of Staff [Ryunosuke Kusaka], what do you think? I feel that I've undertaken a heavy responsibility. If I had only been more firm and refused. Now we've left home waters and I'm beginning to wonder if the operation will work.”

Chuichi Nagumo (1887–1944) Japanese admiral

Quoted in "Day of Infamy" - Page 17 - by Walter Lord - History - 2001

Feeling, Home, Thinking, Water

“Christ of His gentleness
Thirsting and hungering,
Walked in the wilderness;
Soft words of grace He spoke
Unto lost desert-folk
That listened wondering.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"In the Wilderness," lines 1-6, from Over the Brazier (1916), Part I: Poems Written Mostly at Charterhouse 1910-1914.
Poems

Hunger, Christ

“Freud spoke of oceanic consciousness as that in which we feel our individual existence lost in mystic union with the universe. Nothing could be more appropriate to contemporary experience, when for the first time man has left the boundaries of this globe. The oceanic effect of synaesthetic cinema is similar to the mystical allure of the natural elements: we stare in mindless wonder at the ocean or a lake or river. We are drawn almost hypnotically to fire, gazing as though spellbound. We see cathedrals in clouds, not thinking anything in particular but feeling somehow secure and content. It is similar to the concept of no-mindedness in Zen, which also is the state of mantra and mandala consciousness, the widest range of consciousness.”

Gene Youngblood book Expanded Cinema

Source: Expanded Cinema, 1970, p. 92, as cited in: " Expanded Cinema, Gene Youngblood, Studio Vista, 1970 http://www.hohlwelt.com/en/books/gyngbld.html" at hohlwelt.com, January 21, 2012

Feeling, Nature, Thinking, Universe

“Instead of playing his part as truly and honestly as he could, the German intellectual has constantly rebelled against the word and against reason and courted wonderful creations of sound, and wonderful beauties of feeling and mood that were never pressed home to reality, has left the greater part of its practical gifts to decay. None of us intellectuals is at home in reality. We are strange to it and hostile. That is why the part played by intellect even in our own German reality, in our history and politics and public opinion, has be so lamentable a one.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

Hostility, Beauty, Feeling, Home

“As his blessed nature dictated, he was characterized by perfect devotion to the rites of the Faith; he followed the teaching of the great Imam. Abu Hanifa (God be pleased with him!), and established and enforced to the best of his power the five foundations of Islam'Through the auspices of his hearty endeavour, the Hanafi creed (i. e., the Orthodox Sunni faith) has gained such strength and currency in the great country of Hindustan as was never seen in the times of any of the preceding sovereigns. By one stroke of the pen, the Hindu clerks (writers) were dismissed from the public employment. Large numbers of the places of worship of the infidels and great temples of these wicked people have been thrown down and desolated. Men who can see only the outside of things are filled with wonder at the successful accomplishment of such a seemingly difficult task. And on the sites of the temples lofty mosques have been built.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Maasir-i-alamgiri, translated into English by Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 312-15
Quotes from late medieval histories

Men, God, People, Faith

“One wonders whether the ethnic categorization effort at finding solutions to problems that cross ethnic boundaries. Poverty is poverty is poverty. It does not have peculiar ethnic characteristics.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Speech to the Lautoka Rotary Club (Centenary Dinner), 12 March 2005 http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/printer_4326.shtml.

Problem, Effort

“Oh, I loved Mr. Moffet! He was WONDERFUL! He’d given me hope! I felt fearless once again, and I could clearly see it had always been fear that had kept me dammed up all these years. Fear of sin, fear of hell, fear of what people might think of me, fear of … of … I didn’t quite know how to say or even think all these thoughts I was having, and yet… it was like I was now so excited with all these thoughts racing around inside my brain that I was on fire. Maybe I wasn’t really stupid after all. Maybe I’d just been misled all these years from the very beginning. OH, A FIRE FOR WANTING TO LEARN ALL I COULD LEARN WAS NOW BURNING INSIDE ME!”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Love, People, Stupidity, Fear

“A second principle of Americanization is identity of economic interest. At this time, after all America has united to win the war, one hesitates to turn a page so shameful in American history. And yet, if America reverts to its former industrial brutality and indifference, Americanization will fail. Identity of economic interest, generally speaking, has meant to the American getting the immigrant to work for him at as low a wage as possible, for as long hours as possible, and scrapping him at the end of the game, with as little compunction as he did an old machine. And the immigrant's successful fellow-countryman, elevated to be a private banker, a padrone, or a notary public, has shared the practices of the native American. Always the immigrant has been in positions of the greatest danger, and with less safeguards for his care. He has been called by number and nicknamed and ridiculed. Frequently trades-unions have excluded him from their benefits, compensation laws have discriminated against him, trades have been closed to him, until he has wondered in the bitterness of his spirit what American opportunity was and how he could pursue life, liberty, and happiness at his work. Whenever he has been discontented, the popular remedy has been higher wages or shorter hours, and rarely the expansion of personal relationships. Very little self-determination has been given to him; on the contrary he has been made a cog in a highly organized industrial machine. His spirit has been imprisoned in the hum of machinery. His special gifts have been lost, even as his lack of skill in mechanical work has injured delicate processes and priceless materials. His pride has been humiliated and his initiative stifled because he has been given little of the artisan's pleasure in seeing his finished product.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, War, Happiness, Pleasure

“They say it all started out with a big bang. But, what I wonder is, was it a big bang or did it just seem big because there wasn't anything else drown it out at the time?”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

3 Minute Wonder, Episode 2
On Life

Time

“If you're wondering what I'm doing here, at a prayer breakfast, well, so am I. I'm certainly not here as a man of the cloth, unless that cloth is leather. It's certainly not because I'm a rock star. Which leaves one possible explanation: I'm here because I've got a messianic complex.
Yes, it's true. And for anyone who knows me, it's hardly a revelation.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

National Prayer Breakfast (2006)

Star, Clothes

“I've lived through 17 stays in penal institutions. Incarceration in a penitentiary. Five marriages, a bankruptcy, a broken back, brawls, shooting incidents, swindlings, sickness, the death of loved ones and more. I've heard tens of thousands chant my name when I couldn't hear the voice of my own soul. I wondered if God was listening and I was sure no one else was.”

Merle Haggard (1937–2016) American country music song writer, singer and musician

Sing Me Back Home (1981), co-written with Peggy Russell; also quoted in "Country Legend Merle Haggard Dies At 79" at NPR (6 April 2016) http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/04/06/473260432/country-legend-merle-haggard-dies-at-79

Love, Death, God, Marriage

“Now here are these children who have gone through great adventures and learned wonderful things and would therefore be in a position to do great things to help other people. But they're taken away. He doesn't let them. For the sake of taking them off to a perpetual school holiday or something, he kills them all in a train crash. I think that's ghastly. It's a horrible message.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

On The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
Surefish interview (2002)

Children, People, School, Thinking

“It's wonderful to be alive and to walk on earth.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Talk at Stonehill College (2002)

“Acting requires so much delving into yourself and exposing yourself, so it's sensible to be wondering, Do I still want to be doing this? But I enjoy the work, and everything is so solid at home. I don't care if they say I've had buttock implants. Or not. I don't care. Go ahead! That's the nice thing about getting to the age I am. I could have said I didn't care before -- but secretly I did. And now I really don't.”

Kate Beckinsale (1973) English actress

Allure magazine, March 2008.

Age, Home

“Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed there wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people. Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate aversion towards all Muslims…. Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benaras and other places. And there the antagonism between them (the Hindus) and all foreigners receives more and more nourishment both from political and religious sources”

Al-Biruni book Alberuni's India

Alberuni's India, vol. I, p. 22. Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
From Alberuni's India

People, Science, Parting, Country

“The life we’ve been leading couldn’t last forever. It’s a wonder it lasted as long as it did.”

Jack Vance book The Last Castle

Source: The Last Castle (1966), Chapter 2, section 1

Life

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter XIV: "Recapitulation and Conclusion", page 490 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F373&viewtype=image Close of the first edition (1859). Only use of the term "evolve" or "evolution" in the first edition. In the second http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F376&viewtype=image (1860) through sixth (1872) editions, Darwin added the phrase "by the Creator" to read:

Life, Law, Beauty

“…evidence-based approach, the U. S. negotiators argued, is interference with free markets, because corporations must have the right to deceive. […] The claim itself is kind of amusing, I mean, even if you believe the free market rhetoric for a moment. The main purpose of advertising is to undermine markets. If you go to graduate school and you take a course in economics, you learn that markets are systems in which informed consumers make rational choices. That's what's so wonderful about it. But that's the last thing that the state corporate system wants. It is spending huge sums to prevent that, which brings us back to the viability of American democracy. For many years, elections here, election campaigns, have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. And quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information, and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method, projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information. The candidates are trained, carefully trained, to project a certain image. Intellectuals like to make fun of George Bush's use of phrases like “misunderestimate,” and so on, but my strong suspicion is that he's trained to do that. He's carefully trained to efface the fact that he's a spoiled frat boy from Yale, and to look like a Texas roughneck kind of ordinary guy just like you, just waiting to get back to the ranch that they created for him…”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

25th anniversary of the International Relations Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 26, 2005
Quotes 2000s, 2005

School, Guy, Democracy, Boy

“Clara:
Neighbours, dear friends, ye dream, ye dream : awake!
Gaze not on me with sadly wondering eyes,
I only bid you to your actual wish.
My voice is but the voice of your own hearts.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette (7th March 1835)
Translations, From the German

Dreams, Heart

“Margaret: Haven't you done as much as God can reasonably want?
More: Well… finally… it isn't a matter of reason; finally it's a matter of love.
Alice: You're content, then, to be shut up here with mice and rats when you might be home with us!
More: Content? If they'd open a crack that wide I'd be through it. Well, has Eve run out of apples?
Margaret: I've not yet told you what the house is like, without you.
More: Don't, Meg.
Margaret: What we do in the evenings, now that you're not there.
More: Meg, have done!
Margaret: We sit in the dark because we've no candles. And we've no talk because we're wondering what they're doing to you here.
More: The King's more merciful than you. He doesn't use the rack.”

Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons

Act II
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

Love, God, Home, Housing

“Welcome back! If you're wondering where our good friend -- Kevin Eubanks couldn't be here. Kevin is on tour. He's in France right now. He called me today and he's over there and he wouldn't be back until next week. So if you're wondering where Kevin Eubanks is, he's with us in spirit certainly.
Okay. Boy, this is the hard part. I want to thank you, the audience. You folks have been just incredibly loyal. (emotionally) This is tricky. (laughs) We wouldn't be on the air without you people. Secondly, this has been the greatest 22 years of my life. (applause)
I am the luckiest guy in the world. I got to meet presidents, astronauts, movie stars, it's just been incredible. I got to work with lighting people who made me look better than I really am. I got to work with audio people who made me sound better than I really do. (voice breaking) And I got to work with producers! And writers! (choked pause) And just all kinds of talented people who make me look a lot smarter than I really am.
I'll tell you something. First year of this show, I lost my mom. Second year, I lost my dad. Then my brother died. And after that, I was pretty much out of family. And the folks here became my family. Consequently, when they went through rough times, I tried to be there for them. The last time we left the show, you might remember we had the 64 children that were born among all our staffers that married. That was a great moment.
And when people say to me, hey why don't you go to ABC? Why don't you go to FOX? Why don't you go…? I didn't know anybody over there. These are the only people I have ever known. I'm also proud to say this is a a union show. And I have never worked (applause) -- I have never worked with a more professional group of people in my life. They get paid good money and they do a good job.
And when the guys and women on this show would show me the new car they bought or the house up the street here in Burbank that one of the guys got, I felt I played a bigger role in their success as they played in mine. That was just a great feeling.
And I'm really excited for Jimmy Fallon. You know, it's fun to kind of be the old guy and sit back here and see where the next generation takes this great institution, and it really is. It's been a great institution for 60 years. I am so glad I got to be a part of it, but it really is time to go, hand it off to the next guy; it really is.
And in closing, I want to quote Johnny Carson, who was the greatest guy to ever do this job. And he said, I bid you all a heartfelt good night. Now that I brought the room down, hey, Garth, have you got anything to liven this party up? Give it a shot! Garth Brooks!”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Farewell speech, February 6, 2014
The Tonight Show

Life, Women, Money, Children

“You can see from the tape, the cameras were not on—it was only a mic. And I wonder if they even knew that the mic was on. Because they were kind of, ah, boy talk. And he was led on. Like egg on from the host to say, uh, dirty and bad stuff.”

Melania Trump (1970) Slovenian model, wife of Donald Trump and First Lady of the United States

Regarding the leaked Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump and Billy Bush; Interview with Anderson Cooper http://time.com/4534216/melania-donald-trump-billy-bush-boy-talk/ (October 17, 2016)

Boy

“"I wonder if you can understand the 'fun' of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!" The company glanced doubtfully at one another. In Gopher Prairie it is not good form to be holy except at church, between ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Beauty, Understanding

“I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Letter to a friend, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale Vol. II (1914) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 406

“I think it comes very naturally. It’s wonderful to be light and informal rather than aloof and indifferent- (On his personal camaraderie with his co-stars).”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Star, Nature, Thinking, Light

“When the Twin Towers collapsed do you know what was in the basement? […] Lots of gold. Do you know where it is? […] Nobody does. It disappeared. Did those buildings drop down to cover a great crime being committed? Somebody is taking all this gold out of the Twin Tower basement. Makes you wonder.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

3 April 2006
Truth Radio

“Sometimes captured from the great arboreal freedom of their jungle homes, monkeys are closely confined in cages only three or four feet square. … They can never sit or lie down on a flat, soft or yielding surface. Little wonder that by the time they are needed for the knife or the needle they are so crazed or inert that they are no longer representative examples of animal life. Psychologists who study the behaviour of thousands of such creatures annually, rarely make allowances for the fact that their pathetic subjects have been so deprived that they have become more like monsters than animals. Many people who have experienced close affectionate relationships with individuals of other species testify to the considerable potential for emotional and intellectual development that animals have. When properly cared for a pet dog or cat can develop great subtleties of behaviour that the laboratory animal never shows. Those who have been fortunate enough to closely observe unfrightened animals living in the wild are often struck by the complexity and richness of the life they lead. These positive pleasures the laboratory animal never knows; for him the same four white walls and the smell of disinfectant.”

Richard D. Ryder (1940) British psychologist

Experiments on Animals (1971)

Life, People, Pleasure, Lie

“Sin! Sin! Thou art a hateful and horrible thing, that abominable thing which God hates. And what wonder? Thou hast insulted His holy majesty; thou hast bereaved Him of beloved children; thou hast crucified the Son of His infinite love; thou hast vexed His gracious Spirit; thou hast defied His power; thou hast despised His grace; and in the body and blood of Jesus, as if that were a common thing, thou hast trodden under foot His matchless mercy. Surely, brethren, the wonder of wonders is, that sin is not that abominable thing which we also hate.”

Thomas Guthrie (1803–1873) British divine

Source: The Gospel in Ezekiel Illustrated in a Series of Discourses (1856), P. 32 (The Defiler).

Love, God, Hate, Children

“Indeed, our society, which has seemed so freedom-giving and passive in its attitudes toward the artist really makes extraordinary demands upon him: on the one side, to be free in some vague spiritual sense, free to act only as an artist, and yet on the other side to be rigorously tested as to whether the freedom he has achieved is great enough to be more solidly dependable than a government's financial structure... No wonder that modern painters, in view of these curious relations to society, have taken art matters into their own hands, decides for themselves what art is, what its subjects are to be, and how they are to be treated. Art like love is an active process of growth and development.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Source: 1950s, The painter and the audience' (1954), p. 108

Love, Art, Sense, Freedom

“Well, I don't call you an atheist then. I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery, then that is what God is. That is what God is, not the bearded guy in the sky.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

2013-10-13
Super Soul Sunday
TV
OWN
http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/Soul-to-Soul-with-Diana-Nyad-Im-an-Atheist-Whos-In-Awe-Video, quoted in * 2013-10-15
Why Oprah's Anti-Atheist Bias Hurts So Much
David Niose
Our Humanity, Naturally
Psychology Today
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201310/why-oprahs-anti-atheist-bias-hurts-so-much
in response to endurance swimmer Diana Nyad saying she can "weep with the beauty of this universe and be moved by all of humanity".

God, Guy, Thinking

““I pledged myself to show you wonders.”
I drew her farther from the building. “I’m not ready to see wonders. Yours, or any other woman’s.””

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Source: Fiction, The Book of the New Sun (1980–1983), The Urth of the New Sun (1987), Chapter 19, "Silence" (p. 132)