When you view your world exclusively through the lens of science, your prescription will never be strong enough.

Cafe Endless: Spring Rain”)

There is nothing like taking someone’s breath away.

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...

These aren’t still shots; the camera is always moving. And the scene is always just slipping out of sight, as if in spite of myself I were always descending a hill, rounding a corner, stepping...

Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep awe and joy that the natural order of things brings to...

Sometimes you can’t stand the sound of her voice and other times you wonder how you’d even breathe if she wasn’t there. That’s marriage, and she’ll feel the same way.

Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a...

I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!” – The...

Rarely do wonder tales end unhappily. They triumph over death. The tale begins with “Once upon a time” or “Once there was” and never really ends when it ends. The ending is actually the beginning....

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that...

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....

Oftentimes we call Life bitter names, but only when we ourselves are bitter and dark. And we deem her empty and unprofitable, but only when the soul goes wandering in desolate places, and the heart...

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

Consciousness is our gateway to experience: It enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously...

…when you look at the stars, you should tremble – only dullards have become callous to this frisson …

Why not other elements besides fire, air, earth and water? There are four of them, just four, those foster parents of beings! What a pity! Why aren’t there forty elements instead, or four hundred, or...

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.

Custom, that unwritten law, By which the people keep even kings in awe.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.When it’s over, I don’t want to wonderif I have made...

Love is something to be treated with awe. Or should it be aww? People don’t know my capacity for love. If you tried to bottle it up, I’m sure it would take at least three...

Zen has been called the “religion before religion,” which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith. And that phrase evokes that natural religion of our early childhood, when heaven...

There is pride, too, though – pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if...

Wonder isn’t about finding answers; it’s about becoming more comfortable with questions.

The prosaic fact of the universe’s existence alone defeats both the pragmatist and the romantic.

We are one knot in a great web of being, building out of the vast past and (with luck) continuing billions of years into the future, until the sun dies, the last of its energy...

There she was, the mother of me, like a lit plinth,Heavenly, though I was reared to find this kind Of visitation impractical; she was an unbearable detailOf the supreme celestial map,Of which I had been...

There are in life a few moments so beautiful,that even words are a sort of profanity.

All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.

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...

…fjældene slutter sig tættere og tættere omkring os, det synes som om alt håp er ute, bare litt himmel er synlig ret over vore hodet. Det virker beklemmende på os, vi overvældes og tier. Pludselig...

Cinders patter, falling with the snow. We creep infinitesimally northward through the dirty chaos of a world in the process of making itself. Praise then Creation unfinished!

No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might...

I thought if I had a party, you would come.

I know you deserve better than me. You think I don’t know that? But if there was any woman made for me … it’s you.

Benjamin and I sat in the middle of one of the large canoes with our grandmother in the stern, directing us past shoals and through rapids and into magnificent stretches of water. One day the...

In contrast to your usual minions, I imagine, I’m a bit more awed by your conceit and arrogance than I am by your supposed magnificence.

Solen er forlængst dukket under synsranden, fjældene er blit hvitlig grønne, de ser ut i sin fjærnhet og i sin vælde som en verden for sig selv.

I am still in shock and awe at being fired.

Envy and respect are not the same things…Before I endow you with respect, I should find out whether your curiosity is intellectual or merely morbid. Not that those who gawk at train derailments are so...

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

Each time you happen to me all over again.

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...

For thousands of years, it had been nature–and its supposed creator–that had had a monopoly on awe. It had been the icecaps, the deserts, the volcanoes and the glaciers that had given us a sense...

You fascinate me in every way,” Harry whispered, his hand playing gently in her hair . “There are mysteries in your soul that will take a lifetime to uncover…and I want to know every one...

Singing at the Edge of Need by Susan Laughter Meyers (fragment)Three things I turned my back to: light,the past, the trunk of an old tree.One by one each unfastened itself.To sit is to present when...

I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that this delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it. I remember,...

…I’ve never really had a party before.””Why did you have one now?” I say, just to keep him talking.He gives a half laugh. “I thought if I had a party, you would come.

No one can help but stare at the monster, because horror is a cousin to awe.

Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.