W is for WONDER

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


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

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
- Anais Nin



He shall have chariots easier than air,
That I will have invented; . . . And thyself,
That art the messenger, shalt ride before him
On a horse cut out of an entire diamond.
That shall be made to go with golden wheels,
I know not how yet.
- Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher,
A King and No King (act V)

We carry with us the wonders we seek without us.
- Sir Thomas Browne

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
- Anais Nin



Wonders I sing; the sun has set; no night has followed.
[Lat., Mira cano; sol occubuit;
Nox nulla secuta est.]
- Robert Burton,
quoting Giraldus Gambrensis found in Camden "Epigrammes"

If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself . . . that a tiger is an optical illusion--well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton,
Tremendous Trifles



Before the ice is in the pools,
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow,
Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!
- Emily Dickinson

We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise,
And the door stood open at our feast,
When there passed us a woman with the West in her eyes,
And a man with his back to the East.
- Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Unwelcome

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



Long stood the noble youth oppress'd with awe,
And stupid at the wondrous things he saw,
Surpassing common faith, transgressing nature's law.
- John Dryden, Theodore and Honoria (l. 217)

That is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual; the wise man wonders at the usual.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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



Wonder, connected with a principle of rational curiosity, is the source of all knowledge and discovery, and it is a principle even of piety; but wonder which ends in wonder, and is satisfied with wonder, is the quality of an idiot.
- Samuel Horsley

No wonder is greater than any other wonder, and if once explained ceases to be a wonder.
- Leigh Hunt (James Henry Leigh Hunt)

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.
- Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")



The things that have been and shall be no more,
The things that are, and that hereafter shall be,
The things that might have been, and yet were not,
The fading twilight of joys departed.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
Christus--Divine Tragedy--First Passover
(III, Marriage in Cana)

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

Wonder is prophetic.
- Charles Henry Parkhurst

Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this.
- Plato (originally Aristocles}, Theoetetus
(XXXII), (Cary's translation)



Pretty! in amber to observe the forms
Of hairs, of straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!
The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.
- Alexander Pope, Prologue to the Satires
(l. 169)

Out of our reach the gods have laid
Of time to come th' event,
And laugh to see the fools afraid
Of what the knaves invent.
- Sir Charles Sedley, Lycophron

Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.
- William Shakespeare

They spake not a word;
But like dumb statues or breathless stones,
Star'd on each other, and look'd deadly pale.
- William Shakespeare



'Twas strange, 'twas passing strange;
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful.
- William Shakespeare

O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping!
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It
(Celia at III, ii)

O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
- William Shakespeare,
Hamlet Prince of Denmark
(Horatio at I, v)



Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud
Without our special wonder?
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth
(Macbeth at III, iv)

It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood.
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
Augures and understood relations have
By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood. What is the night?
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth
(Macbeth at III, iv)

There's something in a flying horse,
There's something in a huge balloon.
- William Wordsworth, Peter Bell
(prologue, st. 1)



Wonder is involuntary praise.
- Edward Young

Nothing but what astonishes is true.
- Edward Young, Night Thoughts (night IX)

We nothing know, but what is marvellous;
Yet what is marvellous, we can't believe.
- Edward Young, Night Thoughts (night VII)