awe

The world is full of wonders and miracles
but people take their little hands and
cover their eyes and see nothing.

Israel Baal Shem
   

There once was a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought
of a number of things.  He had a sister, who was a child too, and his
constant companion.  These two used to wonder all day long.  They
wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height
and blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright
water; they wondered at the goodness and the power
of God who made the lovely world.

Charles Dickens

      

It's been said that to wonder is to begin to understand.  Wonder most definitely
creates possibilities!  Where's your sense of wonder?  Have you gotten so
bogged down in the minute-to minute "stuff" that  life has become dull?  Bring
forth your curious, creative, sense of wonder  and dust if off -- lighten up and
wonder about everything!  We are all amazing and awesome beings and our world
is extraordinary even when days may be dark.  A sense of wonder reminds us
of just how vast the unknown is and how much we have to learn each day.

Beth Burns
  

Every time I jog through the world, I am awed by what I find.  On a winter morning,
when it seems too cold and slippery for safe jogging or bicycling, I can still go out and experience the glory of sunlight turning icy branches into strings of sparkling diamonds.

Bernie Siegel

   
Be aware of wonder.  Live a balanced life-- learn some
and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance
and play and work every day some.

Robert Fulghum

   

The important thing is not to stop questioning.  Curiosity has its
own reason for existing.  One cannot help but be in awe when
one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous
structure of reality.  It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend
a little of this mystery every day.  Never lose a holy curiosity.

Albert Einstein
   
   
   

One of my fondest memories from childhood is of looking at a globe
with my father.  "What's the biggest country?" he'd ask me
and my sister.  We'd spin the globe around and guess. . . .
The globe brought me a sense of wonder and adventure.  I wanted
to go to those other places and see how people did things differently.
And, many years later, when I did visit other countries, I took
my father's interest and fascination with me.  When we plant the
seeds of fascination and respect for other people,
we are teaching tolerance and peace.

Charlotte Davis Kasl
   

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 as an unfailing antidote
against the boredom and
disenchantment of later years,
the sterile preoccupation with
things that are artificial, the
alienation from the
sources of our strength.

Rachel Carson

   

Everything is extraordinarily clear.  I see the whole landscape
before me, I see my hands, my feet, my toes, and I smell the rich
river mud.  I feel a sense of tremendous strangeness
and wonder at being alive.  Wonder of wonders.

the Buddha
   

  
Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of the human being's desire to understand.

Neil Armstrong

It was through the feeling of wonder that people now and at first began to philosophize.

Aristotle

Stuff your eyes with wonder. . . live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds.  See the world.  It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Ray Bradbury

Those who wonder discover that this in itself is wonder.

M.C. Escher
   

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People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.

St. Augustine

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

Rachel Carson
   

The job of a teacher is to excite in the young a boundless sense
of curiosity about life, so that the growing child shall come to
apprehend it with an excitement tempered by awe and wonder.

John Garrett
   
Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose,
bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and
astonishing.  The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.

Eugene Ionesco
   

  

The moment one gives a close attention to anything,
even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious,
awesome, indescribably magnificent world unto itself.

Henry Miller
   

Life isn't long enough
to do all you could
accomplish.  And what
a privilege even to be
alive.  In spite of all
the pollutions and horrors,
how beautiful this
world is.  Supposing you
only saw the stars
once every year.
Think what you
would think.
The wonder of it!

Tasha Tudor
   
I am mentally preparing myself for the five-year-old mind.
I want to come down to their physical limitations and
up to their sense of wonder and awe.

Shinichi Suzuki
  
  

Invite the Sacred to participate in your joy in little things,
as well as in your agony over the great ones.  There are
as many miracles to be seen through a microscope as through
a telescope.  Start with little things seen through the
magnifying glass of wonder, and just as a magnifying glass
can focus the sunlight into a burning beam that can
set a leaf aflame, so can your focused wonder set
you ablaze with insight.  Find the light in
each other and just fan it.

Alice O. Howell
  

True and lasting wonder needs to be renewed regularly, even daily.  Otherwise,
life's inevitable formula will be:  Wonderful is followed by wonder-half-full,
which is followed by wonder-quarter-full, which quickly becomes wonder-less. 
If you want to make your capacity for awe as wide as the sky, you must take
preventative action.  Otherwise, you'll end up as a wonderless wanderer
and life will cease to be a joyful adventure.

Edward Hays
    
   
Magic is a sudden opening of the mind to the wonder of existence.
It is a sense that there is much more to life than we usually recognize;
that we do not have to be confined by the limited views that our family,
our society, or our own habitual thoughts impose on us; that life
contains many dimensions, depths, textures, and meanings extending
far beyond our familiar beliefs and concepts.

John Welwood

awe

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

Thomas Browne
   

The world will never starve for want
of wonders, but only for want of wonder.

G.K. Chesterton
   

   
Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.

Abraham Heschel
   
Articles and book excerpts on wonder:

I Was Wondering      Beth Burns
   

They say that every snowflake is different.  If that were true, how could
the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees?
How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?

Jeanette Winterson
    
    

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul.

D.H. Lawrence
   

   
The more I wonder, the more I love.

Alice Walker
    

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life:  overcome fear, behold wonder.

Richard Bach
   

If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.

Ray Bradbury
   

    
The problem with our time, perhaps, is that we have been seduced by
facts and data, at the same time, become bereft of wonder. We want
to know it all rather than to understand the meaning of it all for the
good life here and now.  The universe, however technological it may
now be, is still the ultimate mystery, the essential human question, the
greatest spiritual revelation. Everything else is distraction. To know all
the elements, all the chemistry of life, is one thing; to know what it
means to live a good life in the midst of the knowledge of what humans
can do with them to destroy it is entirely another.

Joan Chittister
    

We are here to feel, wonder and gaze in awe at the world.
Instead of just teaching our children how to use things
and do things, I suggest we nourish their sense of wonder.

Bernie Siegel
   

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder.  The capacity
for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty,
for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.

Ralph Sockman

   
   

  

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