Marvelled Quotes & Sayings

I often had to run very quickly to be on time, and from being a fleet runner was generally successful; but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and marvelled how generally I was aided. — Charles Darwin

Much I marvelled at the sagacity evinced by waiters and chamber-maids in proportioning the accommodation to the guest. How could inn-servants and ship-stewardesses everywhere tell at a glance that I, for instance, was an individual of no social significance, and little burdened by cash? They did know it evidently: I saw quite well that they all, in a moment's calculation, estimated me at about the same fractional value. The fact seemed to me curious and pregnant: I would not disguise from myself what it indicated, yet managed to keep up my spirits pretty well under its pressure.
Having at last landed in a great hall, full of skylight glare, I made my way somehow to what proved to be the coffee room.It cannot be denied that on entering this room I trembled somewhat; felt uncertain, solitary, wretched; wished to Heaven I knew whether I was doing right or wrong; felt convinced that it was the last, but could not help myself. — Charlotte Bronte

The mouse began to shift and Kammy marvelled at the sight. Soon a second boy stood before her. She hardly noticed Eric appear beside him.
He was dressed much like Eric, though his shirt hung looser on his slimmer frame. His hair was a fluffy, chocolate mess. He was taller than Eric and he glared between them both before his eyes came to rest fully on Kammy. The first thing she noticed was the purple bruise on his cheek. The second was how bright his blue eyes were. — Natalie Crown

I prayed very hard for this to happen and it happened. I don't even think about what I've achieved, I haven't focused on it and I wish I had, because I really want to enjoy it, and I don't know if I am enjoying it, because I am going through my life like a bulldozer. I still haven't marvelled at it. — Mariah Carey

Often I felt that these men were play-acting: the unreality of their role was their security, even their own destinies were to them saga and folk-tale rather than a private matter; these were men under a spell, men who had been turned into birds or even more likely into some strange beast, and who bore their magic shapes with the same unflurried equanimity, magnanimity, and dignity that we children had marvelled at the beasts of fairy tale. Did they not suspect, moreover, with the wordless apprehension of animals, that if their magic shapes were to be stripped from them the fairy tale would be at an end and their security gone, too, while real life would begin with all it's problems, perhaps in some town where there was neither nature or mirage, no link with the folk-tale and the past, no ancient path to the far side of the mountains and down to the river gullies and out beyond the grass plains, no landmarks from the Sagas? - Only a restless search for sterile, deadening enjoyment. — Halldor Laxness

I was sat at the bottom of the garden a week ago, smoking a reflective cheroot, thinking about this and that - mostly that, and I just happened to glance at the night sky and I marvelled at the millions of stars glistening like pieces of quicksilver thrown carelessly onto black velvet. In awe I watched the waxen moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an amber chariot towards the void of infinite space wherein the tethered bolts of Jupiter and Mars hang forever in their orbital majesty; and as I looked at all this, I thought, 'I must put a roof on this lavatory. — Les Dawson

The Eliots found it a queer sort of evening - a transition evening. Hitherto the Herb of Grace had been to them a summer home; they had known it only permeated with sun and light, flower-scented, windows and doors open wide. But now doors were shut, curtains drawn to hide the sad, grey dusk. Instead of the lap of the water against the river wall they heard the whisper of the flames, and instead of the flowers in the garden they smelt the roasting chestnuts, burning apple logs, the oil lamps, polish - all the home smells. This intimacy with the house was deepening; when winter came it would be deeper still. Nadine glanced over her shoulder at the firelight gleaming upon the dark wood of the panelling, at the shadows gathering in the corners, and marvelled to see how the old place seemed to have shrunk in size with the shutting out of the daylight. It seemed gathering them in, holding them close. — Elizabeth Goudge

Taryn marvelled at how all the males could walk at such a leisurely pace yet look extremely menacing at the same time. Each of them suddenly seemed two inches taller than what they truly were and had the most sinister look. Trey ... well that was another matter altogether. Scarp hostile and sinister, the guy looked like he needed a rabies shot. — Suzanne Wright

Chacko marvelled at how someone so small and undefined, so vague in her resemblances,could so completely command the attention, the love, the sanity, of a grown man. — Arundhati Roy

He could understand that the creatures, the fish and the owls, should feed and frolic at moon-rise, at moon-down and at south-moon-over, for these were all plain marks to go by, direct and visible. He marvelled, padding on bare feet past the slat-fence of the clearing, that the moon was so strong that when it lay the other side of the earth, the creatures felt it and stirred by the hour it struck. The moon was far away, unseen, and it had power to move them. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

And Nurd, who had never had a mother and father, and who had never loved or been loved, marvelled at the ways in which feeling so wonderful could also leave one open to so much pain. In a strange way, he envied Samuel even that. He wanted to care about someone so much that it could hurt. — John Connolly

You have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. — Charlotte Bronte

Circling the earth in the orbital spaceship I marvelled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world!! Let us safeguard and enhance this beauty-not destroy it — Yuri Gagarin

For years, American officials visiting China marvelled at how Chinese leaders could push through infrastructure projects and sweeping legislative changes without the complications of opposition and the niceties of voting. — Evan Osnos

Nothing is more likely to drive listeners away than a ponderous interpretation of what they've just marvelled at. — Philip Pullman

Sometimes Naomi marvelled at how much [children] seemed to know, how their chatter and play landed nearly square on adult matters of love and loneliness and disappointment and joy and regret. It sometimes seemed that they came to these things with clearer eyes than adults who talked themselves out of too much. — Paul Elwork

Also in this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness]. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall [last] for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God. — Julian Of Norwich

A Nightingale!" he marvelled. Ah, so Matron had told him that much. Lib was always shy of introducing the great lady's name into conversation and loathed the whimsical title that had come to be attached to all those Miss N. had trained, as if they were dolls cast in her heroic mould. "Yes, I had the honour of serving under her at Scutari." "Noble labour." It — Emma Donoghue

Reyna marvelled at how peaceful he looked. The worry lines vanished. His face became strangely angelic ... like his surname, di Angelo. She could almost believe he was a regular fourteen-year-old boy, not a son of Hades who had been pulled out of time from the 1940s and forced to endure more tragedy and danger than most demigods would in a lifetime. — Rick Riordan

Clemency marvelled, trying a purple eyeshadow shot with gold sparkly bits on the back of her hand — Jill Mansell

He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest. — Diogenes Laertius

I marvelled about the nature of humanity, and how something as lovely as friendship could stem from something so hideous. — Wendy Higgins

She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him! She deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sin is our condition," I said.
"Say rather that love is our rightful condition."
"You talk like
you are a good man! But how can you be good without God?"
He grinned. "Not so good, neither. But what virtue I do have is in me and of me. Men deny the good that comes from themselves, calling it God. So they do with their own evil, calling it the Devil."
I tried to see how this might be.
"There is no Hell, Jacob."
"And the Bible?"
"Was written by men like ourselves."
He was frightening. At the idea of there being no Hell I had felt a breath of something like freedom, but it was illusion. I marvelled at his foolhardiness, feared it, and loved it. — Maria McCann

..I marvelled at the intense beauty of this human relationship that was born out of so much love and was destined, perhaps inevitably, to end in a tragedy of such terrible proportions. — Arun Joshi

Sometimes he hoped that she would die, painlessly, in some accident, she who was out of doors in the streets, crossing busy thoroughfares, from morning to night. And as she always returned safe and sound, he marvelled at the strength, at the suppleness of the human body, which was able continually to hold in check, to outwit all the perils that environed it (which to Swann seemed innumerable, since his own secret desire had strewn them in her path), and so allowed its occupant, the soul, to abandon itself, day after day, and almost with impunity, to its career of mendacity, to the pursuit of pleasure. — Marcel Proust

He listened to the workers' comments on events. He wondered how they could know so much, but above all he marvelled at how much misery grown men could cause. — Anonymous

He was succeeded on the throne by RAGNAR. At this time Fro (Frey?), the King of Sweden, after slaying Siward, the King of the Norwegians, put the wives of Siward's kinsfolk in bonds in a brothel, and delivered them to public outrage. When Ragnar heard of this, he went to Norway to avenge his grandfather. As he came, many of the matrons, who had either suffered insult to their persons or feared imminent peril to their chastity, hastened eagerly to his camp in male attire, declaring that they would prefer death to outrage. Nor did Ragnar, who was to punish this reproach upon the women, scorn to use against the author of the infamy the help of those whose shame he had come to avenge. Among them was Ladgerda, a skilled amazon, who, though a maiden, had the courage of a man, and fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders. All-marvelled at her matchless deeds, for her locks flying down her back betrayed that she was a woman. — Saxo Grammaticus

All the different ways God has chosen to display his glory in creation and redemption seem to reach their culmination in the praises of his redeemed people. God governs the world with glory precisely that he might be admired, marvelled at, exalted and praised. The climax of his happiness is the delight he takes in the echoes of his excellence in the praises of the saints. — John Piper

... He showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand ... as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, What may this be, and I was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last. For I thought it might fall suddenly to nothing, for little cause; and I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so has everything its being, through the love of God. — Margaret Atwood

Pooley rose to investigate but the Professor restrained him with a firm and unyielding hand. Jim marvelled at the ancient's newly acquired strength. 'Do not look, Jim,' the Professor said dramatically, 'you would not care for what you saw. — Robert Rankin

Sam marvelled at how easily people walked off the street and into these decadent dioramas. It was spooky how easily people's inner landscapes were expressed in enclosed booths and glittering bars. Their private nightmares slid into the moulded furniture as if it had been designed for them. — Guy Mankowski

Eight years! you must be tenacious of life. I thought half the time in such a place would have done up any constitution! No wonder you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet.
Jane Eyre. — Charlotte Bronte

He marvelled at the fact that the cats had two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes were. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Then a soft air, a simple melody, rose to the ears of the suddenly hushed court; and for me, it was May Day again, and I was no longer cold, for the sun burned bright and the grass smelled of its sour-sweet bruisings and an old man fashioned a ballad for the Nut-Brown maid, who would ever be true to her lover. I leaned towards the brightness and, in an abandonment of joy and because there was none to see, tore off my henin and let my nut-brown hair fall to my knees. For I would be a child again, for five minutes, and remember the time when men stopped to gaze at me, with my chaplet of flowers crowning that at which they all marvelled, and longed to touch and stroke and possess. — Rosemary Hawley Jarman

But what made him still more fortunate, as he said himself, was having a daughter of such exceeding beauty, rare intelligence, gracefulness, and virtue, that everyone who knew her and beheld her marvelled at the extraordinary gifts with which heaven and nature had endowed her. As a child she was beautiful, she continued to grow in beauty, and at the age of sixteen she was most lovely. The fame of her beauty began to spread abroad through all the villages around - but why do I say the villages around, merely, when it spread to distant cities, and even made its way into the halls of royalty and reached the ears of people of every class, who came from all sides to see her as if to see something rare and curious, or some wonder-working image? — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra