Quotes & Sayings About Wonder And Awe

Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source. — Thomas Merton

There is also a dimension of patience which links it to a special reverence for life. Patience is a willingness, in a sense, to watch the unfolding purposes of God with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstance. Put another way, too much anxious opening of the oven door and the cake falls instead of rising. So it is with us. If we are always selfishly taking our temperature to see if we are happy, we will not be. — Neal A. Maxwell

If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude ... — A.E. Housman

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

The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy. — Abraham H. Maslow

Maslow might be speaking of clients I have known when he says, "self-actualized people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may be for other people." (4, p. 214) — Carl R. Rogers

St. Pope John XXIII called for the Second Vatican Council because he understood, as no Holy Father had in a long time, religion spoke to and found its language and symbols - its entire sense of the sacramental nature of existence - in the imagination that reveals not just the penalties of living, but the wonder and awe of our existence. — Eugene Kennedy

Childlike wonder and awe have died. The scenery and poetry and music of the majesty of God have dried up like a forgotten peach at the back of the refrigerator. — John Piper

A dread of white people now came to live permanently in my feelings and imagination. As the war drew to a close, racial conflict flared over the entire South, and though I did not witness any of it, I could not have been more thoroughly affected by it if I had participated directly in every clash. The war itself had been unreal to me, but I had grown able to respond emotionally to every hint, whisper, word, inflection, news, gossip, and rumor regarding conflicts between the races. Nothing challenged the totality of my personality so much as this pressure of hate and threat that stemmed from the invisible whites. I would stand for hours on the doorsteps of neighbors' houses listening to their talk, learning how a white woman had slapped a black woman, how a white man had killed a black man. It filled me with awe, wonder, and fear, and I asked ceaseless questions. One evening I heard a tale that rendered — Richard Wright

We talked about trying to create an image that would somehow, to an audience, create the sense of awe, wonder and shock that the troops must have felt that their monarch - and a female monarch - went to the frontline of battle and was prepared to lay down her life. This speech is so well known and has been done in virtually every version of the events of Elizabeth's life. — Cate Blanchett

Nature blessed every person with the innate capacity to express wonder and awe for the eternal world and act with a kind and unstinting soul. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Wonder and awe have gone out of your religions. You are prepared to accept the irrational, but not the transcendent. — G. Willow Wilson

We have lost awe and wonder. In reference to the mystery of life itself, we've lost respect for movement in our planet. — Gabrielle Roth

If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. — Pope Francis

We need mystery. Creator in her wisdom knew this. Mystery fills us with awe and wonder. They are the foundations of humility, and humility is the foundation of all learning. So we do not seek to unravel this. We honour it by letting it be that way forever.
The quote of a grandmother explaining The Great Mystery of the universe to her grandson. — Richard Wagamese

Thor is a god who's lived in Asgard most all his life, but I think he still has a sense of awe and wonder about the place. I want us, as readers, to have that same sense of awe whenever we see, finally see, the golden spires of Realm Eternal. — Jason Aaron

He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs. — Craig Ferguson

Creativity can never be explained by appeal to reason alone. Like the birth of a child, creativity compels us not to explanation but to wonder and awe. — George Vaillant

All great art ... creates in the beholder not self-satisfacti on but wonder and awe. Its great liberation is to lift us out of ourselves. — Dorothy Thompson

Even when the characters are supposed to be accustomed to the wonder, I try to weave an air of awe and impressiveness corresponding to what the reader should feel. A casual style ruins any serious fantasy. — H.P. Lovecraft

Obviously there is pain in childbirth. But giving birth is also a moment of awe and wonder, a moment when the true miracle of aliveness, and of a woman's amazing part in that miracle, is suddenly experienced in every cell of one's body. It is in that sense truly an altered state of consciousness. — Riane Eisler

The sense of alienation that inspires wonder, awe and fear in us is enough of a proof that life does not belong to the planet Earth. — Raheel Farooq

The women paused to regard the taxidermied creatures with awe.
Predictably, Pandora went forward with her hand outstretched.
"Pandora," Lady Berwick snapped, "if you molest the exhibits, we will not be returning to the museum."
Turning, Pandora gave her a pleading glance. "A giraffe is right there - it once roamed the African savannah - don't you want to know how it feels?"
"Indeed not."
"There's no sign that says we can't."
"The railing implies it."
"But the giraffe is so close," Pandora said woefully. "If you would look the other way for five seconds, I could reach out and touch it so easily . . . and then I wouldn't have to wonder anymore — Lisa Kleypas

Nature's beauty never fails to fill me with a sense of wonder and awe, and still, I refuse to go camping. — Dov Davidoff

And it is utterly true that he who cannot find wonder, mystery, awe, the sense of a new world and an undiscovered realm in the places by the Gray's Inn Road will never find these secrets elsewhere ... — Arthur Machen

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

In Ankh-Morpork even the shit have a street to itself," said Detritus, awe and wonder in his voice. "Truly, this a land of opportunity. — Terry Pratchett

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. — Albert Einstein

the fear of God" is increased by an experience of God's grace and forgiveness. What it describes is a loving, joyful awe and wonder before the greatness of God. — Timothy J. Keller

We teach children how to measure and how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. — Harold S. Kushner

This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of
please forgive me
wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious. Try walking around with a child who's going, "Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!" And the child points and you look, and you see, and you start going, "Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!" I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world
present and in awe. — Anne Lamott

God can be addressed by any name that taste sweet to your tongue or pictured in any form that appeals to your sense of wonder and awe. — Sathya Sai Baba

I have always tried to live by the 'awe principle.' That is: Can I find awe, wonder and enchantment in the most mundane things conceivable? — Craig Hatkoff

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. — Thomas Aquinas

If I had influence with the good fairy ... 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. — Rachel Carson

I always thought that the spine of a character was awe and wonder. — William Shatner

Haiku Christmas Story

New light in the sky
announces a sacred birth.
Shine brightly young star.

Hallelujah song
carries on a gentle wind,
heralding a king.

Shepherds lift their heads,
not to gaze at a new light
but to hear angels.

"Unto you is born
in the city of David
a Savior for all."

Born on straw at night
under low stable rafters,
Baby Jesus cried.

Sheep and goats and cows
gather 'round a manger bed
to awe at a babe.

Wise men come to see
a child of greater wisdom
and honor divine.

Rare and precious gifts,
gold and myrrh and frankincense,
to offer a king.

Mary and Joseph
huddle snugly together.
They cradle God's son.

On this wise He came,
the Son of God to the earth.
A humble wonder. — Richelle E. Goodrich

But here in my hometown, history was like a fine dust that settled out on everything. There was nothing to counter it. The culture had been hardened by a religion suspect of joy, yet fascinated by sin. Its moral acceptance of slavery eroded compassion. And gentility became a necessary pretense to cover the resentment created long ago when the North's industrial prestige trumped the agrarian South. It was not an easy place to feel lighthearted or triumphant. Nor was it an easy place to remember the beauty of wonder and awe. — Christina Carson

A thought that stayed with me was that I had entered a private place in the earth. I had seen exposed nearly its oldest part. I had lost my sense of urgency, rekindled a sense of what people were, clambering to gain access to high waterfalls and a sense of our endless struggle as a species to understand time and to estimate the consequences of our acts. — Barry Lopez

Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence. — Paracelsus

...the disappearance in our lives of a sense of the sacred. With nothing to evoke awe, wonder, or devotion, we inevitably feel empty within, Maslow contended, for these are intrinsic human needs. In a similar way, we have lost genuine heroes; the very concept of heroism has become suspect, old-fashioned, and seemingly obsolete. The same has occurred with such traditional virtues as courage, fidelity, and reverence. — Edward Hoffman

When you look at yourself and feel dissatisfaction about any part of you, you will continue to attract feelings of dissatisfaction, because the law mirrors back to you exactly what you are holding inside. Be in awe and wonder at the magnificence of you! — Rhonda Byrne

Seeing with your soul will bless you with greater capacity for awe and wonder, for joy and for appreciation of all the quiet miracles that happen all around us every day when we stop to look and admire. — Catherine Carrigan

Most people are not in the world of awe and wonder. They're in the world of deadness. Their perceptual fields and bodies are completely self-reflective, and all they see is themselves wherever they go. — Frederick Lenz

The feeling of awe and sense of wonder arises from the recognition of the deep mystery that surrounds us everywhere, and this feeling deepens as our knowledge grows. — Anagarika Govinda

To science, not even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water is dull or a handful of dirt banal. They all arouse awe and wonder. — Jane Jacobs

It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings. Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. — Marcus Aurelius

Isn't it comforting to know that God knew each of us before He created us? He planned what each of us would look like, who our parents would be, if and who we would marry, and how many children we would have. Before we could know God, He cared for us. He hid each of us away as a treasure until He brought us to be. God says that He fashioned each of us with awe and wonder. — Linda Dillow

Don't you sometimes feel bewildered when you think of the millions of things that put life together?' ... 'I;m not bewildered. I'm filled with the deepest awe and wonder. The miracle is that in its complexity it all works. — Julie Andrews Edwards

All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation. — Richard Dawkins

Metaphysics is the study of how to shift the self. How to get outside the self-reflection and to just gaze with awe and wonder at the countless universes, the countless celestial radiances of mind, of life, of enlightenment, nirvana, or God, whatever you want to call it. — Frederick Lenz

By cutting ourselves off from the rest of creation, we are left bereft of awe and wonder and therefore of reverence and gratitude. We violate our very beings, and we have nothing but trivia to teach our young. — Matthew Fox

A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full or wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. 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 year ... the alienation from the sources of our strength. — Rachel Carson

You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship. — N. T. Wright

I am not all knowing.
Therefore, I will not even attempt to be.
I need to be loved.
Therefore, I will be open to loving children.
I want to be more accepting of the child in me.
Therefore, I will with wonder and awe allow children to illuminate my world. — Garry L. Landreth

God is in the mountains. Impassive, immovable, jagged giants, separating the celestial from the terrestrial with eternal diagonal certainty. As if silently monitoring the beating heart of the creator from the universe's perfect birth. Stood in the thin air and the awe, one inhales God, involuntarily acknowledging that we are but fragments of a whole, a higher thing. The mountains remind me of my place, as a servant to truth and wonder. Yes, God is in the mountains. Perhaps the pulpit too and even in the piety of an atheist's sigh. I don't know; but I feel him in the mountains. — Russell Brand

I am curious about many things, and find the world around me, and the people and objects and things in it, equally fascinating. There is a great deal of that awe and wonder in me. — William Shatner

I can sometimes sit for two hours in a room with almost no thought. Just complete stillness. Sometimes when I go for walks, there's also complete stillness; there's no mental labeling of sense perceptions. There's simply a sense of awe or wonder or openness, and that's beautiful. — Eckhart Tolle

What's interesting is, if you take the scientists and the theologians, the really good ones, they end up both filled with this wide-eyed sense of wonder and awe about look at this world we live in. — Rob Bell

There were two forests for every one you entered. There was the one you walked in, the physical echo, and then there was the one that was connected to all the other forests, with no consideration of distance, or time. The forest primeval, remembered through the collective memory of every tree in the same way that people remembered myth- through the collective subconscious that Jung mapped, the shared mythic resonance that lay buried in every human mind. Legend and myth, all tangled in an alphabet of trees remembered, not always with understanding, but with wonder. With awe. — Charles De Lint

Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend later in life. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born. — Walter Isaacson

The scientist is activated by a wonder and awe before the mysterious comprehensibility of the universe which is yet finally beyond his grasp. In its profoundest depths it is inaccessible to man. — Albert Einstein

As you travel around Slovenia,
Think of the tales the hills could tell you.
Share the awe of natural wonder;
Tread the trails, but as you wander
Honor the age-old endeavors to be
Literate, informed, democratic and free. — Jacqueline Widmar Stewart

Patience is a willingness, in a sense, to watch the unfolding purposes of God with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstance. — Neal A. Maxwell

Obviously, to be in the fear of the Lord is not to be scared of the Lord, even though the Hebrew word has overtones of respect and awe. "Fear" in the Bible means to be overwhelmed, to be controlled by something. To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love. It means that, because of his bright holiness and magnificent love, you find him "fearfully beautiful." That is why the more we experience God's grace and forgiveness, the more we experience a trembling awe and wonder before the greatness of all that he is and has done for us. Fearing him means bowing before him out of amazement at his glory and beauty. — Timothy Keller

I think that when you consider the beauty of the world and you wonder how it came to be what it is, you are naturally overwhelmed with a feeling of awe, a feeling of admiration and you almost feel a desire to worship something. I feel this, I recognise that other scientists such as Carl Sagan feel this, Einstein felt it. We, all of us, share a kind of religious reverence for the beauties of the universe, for the complexity of life. For the sheer magnitude of the cosmos, the sheer magnitude of geological time. And it's tempting to translate that feeling of awe and worship into a desire to worship some particular thing, a person, an agent. You want to attribute it to a maker, to a creator. What science has now achieved is an emancipation from that impulse to attribute these things to a creator.
God Delusion debate Professor Richard Dawkins vs John Lennox — Richard Dawkins

They're still walking south, with the whole of north London and central London and south London to get through. Even for the young private, Caldwell sees, some of the shock and awe has drained away. The only one who's still looking at every new thing they pass with indefatigable wonder is test subject number one. As — M.R. Carey

He had looked at Jude, then, and had felt that same sensation he sometimes did when he thought, really thought of Jude and what his life had been: a sadness, he might have called it, but it wasn't a pitying sadness; it was a larger sadness, one that seemed to encompass all the poor striving people, the billions he didn't know, all living their lives, a sadness that mingled with a wonder and awe at how hard humans everywhere tried to live, even when their days were so very difficult, even when their circumstances were so wretched. Life is so sad, he would think in those moments. It's so sad, and yet we all do it. — Hanya Yanagihara

As Rockwell Kent said in his Alaskan journal, 'The wonder of wilderness was its tranquility.' I wish I had said that first. It grasps the salient point: not just tranquility, but wonder at tranquility. Wilderness is a surprise. We were raised on nature films that converted nature into thrilling entertainment; we still expect to find predators lurking everywhere in the wildness, and danger and excitement. But instead we find tranquility. And wonder at it.

Interesting word, "wonder." From Old English wundrain: 'to be affected with astonishment.' Its antonyms name the most pervasive symptoms of modern life: indifference, boredom, ennui. The dictionary strains to explain wonder, mentioning awe, astonishment, marvel, miracle, wizardry, bewilderment (note the 'wild' in 'bewilderment'). Finally it offers this: 'Far superior to anything formerly recognized or foreseen.'

Indeed. — Jack Turner

These belief systems have to be dropped. Then understanding arises; then readiness to explore, then innocence, arises. Then you are surrounded by a sense of mystery, awe, wonder. Then life is no longer a known thing, it is an adventure. It is so mysterious that you can go on exploring; there is no end to it. And you never create any belief, you remain in a state of not-knowing. On that not-knowing state Sufis insist very much, and so do Zen masters. — Osho

And if I may pursue this subject farther I would suggest that the whole matter of imaginative literature depends upon this faculty of seeing the universe, from the aeonian pebble of the wayside to the raw suburban street as something new, unheard of, marvellous, finally, miraculous. The good people
amongst whom I naturally class myself
feel that everything is miraculous; they are continually amazed at the strangeness of the proportion of all things. The bad people, or scientists as they are sometimes called, maintain that nothing is properly an object of awe or wonder since everything can be explained. They are duly punished. — Arthur Machen

Occasionally we glimpse the South Rim, four or five thousand feet above. From the rims the canyon seems oceanic; at the surface of the river the feeling is intimate. To someone up there with binoculars we seem utterly remote down here. It is this know dimension if distance and time and the perplexing question posed by the canyon itself- What is consequential? (in one's life, in the life of human beings, in the life of a planet)- that reverberate constantly, and make the human inclination to judge (another person, another kind of thought) seem so eerie ... Two kinds of time pass here: sitting at the edge of a sun-warmed pool watching blue dragonflies and black tadpoles. And the rapids: down the glassy-smooth tongue into a yawing trench, climb a ten-foot wall of standing water and fall into boiling, ferocious hydraulics ... — Barry Lopez

My life is one long daily, hourly record of answered prayer. For physical health, for mental overstrain, for guidance given marvelously, for errors and dangers averted, for enmity to the Gospel subdued, for food provided at the exact hour needed, for everything that goes to make up life and my poor service. I can testify, with a full and often wonder-stricken awe, that I believe God answers prayer. — Mary Slessor

There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habitutation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways. — Richard Dawkins

Adam understood, then, that Gansey and Blue's awe changed this place. Ronan and Adam may have seen this place as magical, but Gansey and Blue's wonder made it holy. — Maggie Stiefvater

What better way to learn about life in the ocean
and how we are changing it
than through stories of blind zombie worms, immortal jellyfish, and unicorns of the sea? The Extreme Life of the Sea is an insightful book that inspires awe and wonder about our ocean, and brilliantly shows us the immense possibilities of life on Earth. — Enric Sala

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

Worship," Tozer explained, "is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence of that most ancient Mystery, that majesty which philosophers call the First Cause but which we call Our Father Which Art in Heaven. — A.W. Tozer

In one breath, I release all negative feelings and fearful thoughts, then fill up my lungs with wonder and awe and pure, unadulterated joy. — Sara Baysinger

The field was covered with ice crystals sticking up like a garden of little diamonds. Sophia was beside her now, and the two animals walked slowly into the crystal blossoms. Flora was enchanted.

For a moment she forgot she was hungry, tired, and ill-equipped to make this journey. She forgot to worry about Oscar. She forgot to worry that there would never be a useful job for her. She kicked up her front hooves with each step and watched the ice crystals scatter in front of her. — Chris Kurtz

A new thought happens and a new plant springs up. A feeling fades away and the plant dies. Some of the more common ones are always in bloom - fear, anger, happiness, love, envy. They're quite unruly, they grow like weeds. Certain basic mathematical ideas never go away either. But others are quite rare. Complex concepts, extreme or subtle emotions. Awe and wonder are harder to find than they once were. — Lev Grossman

But the irony: Don't I often want to desperately wriggle free of the confines of a small life? Yet when I stand before immensity that heightens my smallness--I have never felt sadness. Only burgeoning wonder. Is it because within each frame of finite flesh lies the likeness of infinite God? In all things large and spectacular, we recognize glimpses of home and the call to our own deeper chemistry. Do we writhe to peel out of our smallness and into the big life because that fits our inborn God-image? — Ann Voskamp

It would be very difficult to draw a line between holy wonder and real worship; for when the soul is overwhelmed with the majesty of God's glory, though it may not express itself in song, or even utter its voice with bowed head in humble prayer, yet it silently adores. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

What is sacred is what is worthy of our reverence, what evokes awe and wonder in the human heart, and what, when contemplated, transforms us utterly. — Phil Cousineau

The knowledgeable person lives with a question mark '?' and the man of awe and wonder lives with an exclamation mark. — Rajneesh

At length the grandeur of the mountains becomes monotonous; with familiarity, the landscape ceases to provoke awe and wonder and the traveller sees the alps with the indifferent eye of those who always live there. — Angela Carter

I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder. — Theodore Bikel

Three people stood close behind him, but all Cress could see were the blue eyes staring back at her, directly back at her, beginning to fill with the same breathless awe she felt.

The same wonder.

The same enchantment.

Though they were separated by two screens and vast amounts of empty space, she could feel the link being forged between them in that look. A bond that couldn't be broken. Their eyes had met for the first time, and by the look of pure amazement on his face, she knew he felt it too. — Marissa Meyer

Never lose the awe and wonder of having a personal God get personally involved in your life. — Calvin Miller

I can only gaze with wonder and awe at the depths of and heights of our psychic nature. Its non-spatial universe conceals an untold abundance of images which have accumulated over millions of years of living development and become fixed in the organism ... Beside this picture I would like to place the spectacle of the starry heavens at night, for the only equivalent of the universe within is the universe without; and just as I reach this world through the medium of the body, so I reach that world through the medium of the psyche. — Carl Jung

In all the things that really matter, we are one. Love and faith, trust and empathy, family and friendship, sunsets and songs of awe: in every wish born in our humanity we are one. Our humankind, at this moment in our destiny, is a child blowing on a dandelion, without thought or understanding. But the wonder in the child is the wonder in us, and there's no limit to the good we can do when human hearts connect. It's the truth of us. It's the story of us. It's the meaning of the word God: we are one. We are one. We are one. — Gregory David Roberts

Mystery has great power. In the many years I have worked with people with cancer, I have seen Mystery comfort people when nothing else can comfort them and offer hope when nothing else offers hope. I have seen Mystery heal fear that is otherwise unhealable. For years I have watched people in their confrontation with the unknown recover awe, wonder, joy, and aliveness. They have remembered that life is holy, and they have reminded me as well. In losing our sense of Mystery, we have become a nation of burned-out people. People who wonder do not burn out. — Rachel Naomi Remen

What can we make of the inexpressible joy of children? It is a kind of gratitude, I think - the gratitude of the ten-year-old who wakes to her own energy and the brisk challenge of the world. You thought you knew the place and all its routines, but you see you hadn't known. Whole stacks at the library held books devoted to things you knew nothing about. The boundary of knowledge receded, as you poked about in books, like Lake Erie's rim as you climbed its cliffs. And each area of knowledge disclosed another, and another. Knowledge wasn't a body, or a tree, but instead air, or space, or being - whatever pervaded, whatever never ended and fitted into the smallest cracks and the widest space between stars. — Annie Dillard

I really should not be so willing to interpret my own books as I seem to be this evening. But the blessing Ames gives Jack is an act of recognition that blesses Ames, too. He is profoundly moved that he has had the occasion to do it, that Jack accepted it, wanted it. I really do believe that all blessing is mutual, and that the moment of blessing is when people rise to the very beautiful seriousness of what they are. I feel that we ought to value ourselves and one another far more than we do, and I'm speaking theologically here, but also with an awareness that always haunts me, that we are the wonder of the universe, incomparably complex, brilliant, poignant - and perverse, of course. Our own overwhelming problem. But there are good grounds for awe in any human encounter. If we came anywhere near respecting the richness of this improbable life - hopes would flourish and blossom as they have never done before. — Marilynne Robinson

Wonder at God's merciful love is a very practical emotion. Holy wonder will lead you to grateful worship and heartfelt thanksgiving. It will cause within you godly watchfulness; you will be afraid to sin against such a love as this. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I loved 'Fantasia' as a kid because it filled me with wonder, enchantment and awe. It was my first real introduction into classical music. It was totally inspiring to me. — Nicolas Cage

I had never been more alone than I was in my admiration for the real killer's work. The very body parts seemed to sing to me, a rhapsody of bloodless wonder that lightened my heart and filled my veins with an intoxicating sense of awe. — Dexter Morgan

To be more childlike, you don't have to give up being an adult. The fully integrated person is capable of being both an adult and a child simultaneously. Recapture the childlike feelings of wide-eyed excitement, spontaneous appreciation, cutting loose, and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe. — Wayne Dyer

The mystery and art of living are as grand as the sweep of a lifetime and the lifetime of a species. And they are as close as beginning, quietly, to mine whatever grace and beauty, whatever healing and attentiveness, are possible in this moment and the next and the next one after that. — Krista Tippett