Great Throughts Treasury

"I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt? What would Jesus Christ have preached if He had taken a poll in the land of Israel?" - Harry S. Truman

"The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned with it, teachers and students." -

"If spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual exercise of God’s power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"If spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual existence of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"If spring came but once in a century instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it." - Herman Melville

"Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too." - Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov

"I still find each day too short for all thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. The longer I lie the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and wonder of the world." - John Burroughs

"To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man... If anyone in a discussion with us is not concerned with adjusting himself to truth, if he has no wish to find the truth, he is intellectually a barbarian. That, in fact, is the position of the mass-man when he speaks, lectures or writes... The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learnt, and arrives at the new truth with hands bloodstained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes." - José Ortega y Gasset

"When all thy mercies, O my God, my rising soul surveys, transported with the view I’m lost, in wonder, love and praise." - Joseph Addison

"The life of a mythology derives from the vitality of its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply the idea, but a sense of actual participation in such a realization of transcendence, infinity, and abundance, as this of which the upanishadic authors tell. Indeed, the first and most essential service of a mythology is this one, of opening the mind and heart to the utter wonder of all being. And the second service, then, is cosmological: of representing the universe and whole spectacle of nature, both as known to the mind and as beheld by the eye, as an epiphany of such kind that when lightning flashes, or a setting sun ignites the sky, or a deer is seen standing alerted, the exclamation "Ah!" may be uttered as a recognition of divinity." - Joseph Campbell

"The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation – initiation – return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth. A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from his mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." - Joseph Campbell

"Life is a score that we play at sight, not merely before we have divined the intentions of the composer, but even before we have mastered our instruments: even worse, a large part of the score has been only roughly indicated, and we must improvise the music for our particular instrument, over long passages. On these terms, the whole operation seems one endless difficulty and frustration; and indeed, were it not for the fact that some of the passages have been played so often by our predecessors that, when we come to them, we seem to recall some of the score and can anticipate the natural sequence of the notes, we might often give up in sheer despair. The wonder is not that so much cacophony appears in our actual individual lives, but that there is any appearance of harmony and progression." - Lewis Mumford

"In the end, science as we know it has two basic types of practitioners. One is the educated man who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery, whether it hides in a snails eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ. The second kind of observer is the extreme reductionist who is so busy stripping things apart that the tremendous mystery has been reduced to a trifle, to intangibles not worth troubling one’s head about." - Loren Eiseley

"To know how to wonder and question is the first step of the mind toward discovery." - Louis Pasteur

"A man does not wonder what he sees frequently, even though he be ignorant of the reason." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

"We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life." - Martha Graham

"There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened. We all have a choice. You can decide which type of person you want to be. I have always chosen to be in the first group." - Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash

"If we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Man must understand his universe in order to understand his destiny. Mystery, however, is a very necessary ingredient in our lives. Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis for man’s desire to understand. Who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generations? Science has not mastered prophesy. We predict too much for next year yet far too little for the next ten. Responding to challenge is one of democracy’s great strengths. Our successes in space lead us to hope that this strength can be used in the next decade in the solution of many of our planet’s problems." - Neil Armstrong, fully Neil Alden Armstrong

"Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand." - Neil Armstrong, fully Neil Alden Armstrong

"Education tends to be diagrammatic and categorical, opening up no sluices in the human imagination of the wonder or beauty of their unique estate in the cosmos. Little wonder that it become so easy for our young to regard human hurt casually or to be uninspired by the magic of sensitivity." - Norman Cousins

"If we begin to contemplate our own composite wonder, we will lose ourselves in celebration and have time for nothing else." - Norman Cousins

"A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life." - Norman Cousins

"Philosophy begins in wonder." - Plato NULL

"Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy." - Plato NULL

"Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder." - Plato NULL

"The wonder is not that there should be obstacles and sufferings in this world, but that there should be law and order, beauty and joy, goodness and love." -

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." -

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." -

"If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life." -

"That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. Shall not the heart which has received so much trust the power by which it lives?" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Men love to wonder." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The soul contains in itself the event that shall presently befall it, for the event is only the actualizing of its thoughts. It is no wonder that particular dreams and presentiments should fall out and be prophetic." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder." - Ralph Washington Sockman

"The wonder is here, not there; now, not to be, now always." - Richard Jefferies, fully John Richard Jefferies

"No wonder poets sometimes have to seem so much more businesslike than business men. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of." - Robert Frost

"The shortest and surest way to prove a work possible is strenuously to set about it; and no wonder if that proves it possible that for the most part makes it so." -

"Men go forth to wonder at the height of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of rivers, the extent of the ocean, the course of the stars - and forget to wonder at themselves." -

"People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering." -

"Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees." - Saint Gregory, aka Pope Gregory I, St. Gregory the Dialogist, "Gregory the Great" NULL

"In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends, and admiration fills up the interspace; but the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration." -

"Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind, it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness off the deep springs of life. Youth means the temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living." - Samuel Ullman

"Philosophy begins in wonder." - Socrates NULL

"Wisdom begins in wonder. [Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.]" - Socrates NULL

"The man who cannot wonder is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye." - Thomas Carlyle

"Wonder is the basis of worship." - Thomas Carlyle

"Worship is transcendent wonder." - Thomas Carlyle

"A soul-oriented spirituality begins in a reevaluation of the qualities of soul: subtlety, complexity, ripening, worldliness, incompleteness, ambiguity, wonder." - Thomas Moore