57 Quotes About Wonder

In a world that's often bustling with chaos and routine, the concept of wonder offers us a refreshing pause and a moment to reconnect with the extraordinary aspects of life. Wonder invites us to appreciate the beauty hidden in the ordinary, encouraging a sense of curiosity and awe that has the power to transform our perspectives. This collection of 57 quotes about wonder has been carefully curated to inspire, uplift, and remind us of the magic that exists in everyday moments. Whether you're seeking inspiration, a dose of positivity, or a gentle nudge to look at the world through a lens of fascination, these quotes will spark a sense of wonder within you.

1. “I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

2. “Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.” - Betty Smith

3. “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.” - Jonathan Swift

4. “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

5. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke

6. “Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” - Franz Kafka

7. “The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That's the advantage of space. It's big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does.People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing.There's nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. But the fact that there's a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere.” - Terry Pratchett

8. “The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” - Emerson

9. “I would rather have 30 minutes of "wonderful" than a lifetime of nothing special.” - Julia Roberts

10. “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?” - Richard Dawkins

11. “I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.” - Alice Walker

12. “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

13. “Is it folly to believe in something that is intangible? After all, some of the greatest intangibles are Love, Hope, and Wonder.Another is Deity.The choice to be a fool is yours.” - Vera Nazarian

14. “There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world.” - Kevin Brockmeier

15. “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of 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 years … the alienation from the sources of our strength.” - Rachel Carson

16. “Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” - Walt Whitman

17. “A Second Childhood.”When all my days are endingAnd I have no song to sing,I think that I shall not be too oldTo stare at everything;As I stared once at a nursery doorOr a tall tree and a swing.Wherein God’s ponderous mercy hangsOn all my sins and me,Because He does not take awayThe terror from the treeAnd stones still shine along the roadThat are and cannot be.Men grow too old for love, my love,Men grow too old for wine,But I shall not grow too old to seeUnearthly daylight shine,Changing my chamber’s dust to snowTill I doubt if it be mine.Behold, the crowning mercies melt,The first surprises stay;And in my dross is dropped a giftFor which I dare not pray:That a man grow used to grief and joyBut not to night and day.Men grow too old for love, my love,Men grow too old for lies;But I shall not grow too old to seeEnormous night arise,A cloud that is larger than the worldAnd a monster made of eyes.Nor am I worthy to unlooseThe latchet of my shoe;Or shake the dust from off my feetOr the staff that bears me throughOn ground that is too good to last,Too solid to be true.Men grow too old to woo, my love,Men grow too old to wed;But I shall not grow too old to seeHung crazily overheadIncredible rafters when I wakeAnd I find that I am not dead.A thrill of thunder in my hair:Though blackening clouds be plain,Still I am stung and startledBy the first drop of the rain:Romance and pride and passion passAnd these are what remain.Strange crawling carpets of the grass,Wide windows of the sky;So in this perilous grace of GodWith all my sins go I:And things grow new though I grow old,Though I grow old and die.” - G.K. Chesterton

18. “I said I *liked* being half-educated; you were so much more *surprised* at everything when you were ignorant.” - Gerald Durrell

19. “A stubborn refusal of the conditions of 20th Century 'reality', surrealism has denied intransigently and consistently that modern man can live without a sense of wonder at the world that was once embodied in myth. In approaching literature, it has aimed at restoring to the word its magical qualities. And at giving back to language the elemental power it once had within society. This determinism lies at the heart of the surrealist attitude and distinguishes it radically from the modernism which took shape contemporaneously with it.” - Michael Richardson

20. “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

21. “words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.” - Jodi Picoult

22. “The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.” - Huston Smith

23. “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.” - G.K. Chesterton

24. “I'm no more a wonder than anyone. And that's what makes the world magical. Every baby's a seed of wonder - that gets watered or it doesn't.” - Dean Koontz

25. “Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment!” - Ellis Peters

26. “Life is difficult.” - M. Scott Peck

27. “I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.” - Bram Stoker

28. “Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can't deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can't be explained and understood.” - Chuck Palahniuk

29. “As we wait and pray, God weaves his story and creates a wonder. Instead of drifting between comedy (denial) and tragedy (reality), we have a relationship with the living God, who is intimately involved with the details of our worlds. We are learning to watch for the story to unfold, to wait for the wonder.” - Paul E. Miller

30. “...Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?” - L.M. Montgomery

31. “Despite its successes, in the end, philosophical thinking always falls short of its real goal. It involves both the wonder of aspiring toward the Truth and the distress of falling short of that Truth. In this way, philosophy can be characterized as wondrous distress.” - John Marmysz

32. “...we should be remembered for the things we do. The things we do are the most important things of all. They are more important than what we say or what we look like. The things we do outlast our mortality. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honour heroes after they've died. They're like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honour the Pharaohs. Only instead of being made out of stone, they're made out of the memories people have of you. That's why your deeds are like your monuments. Built with memories instead of with stone.” - R.J. Palacio

33. “Oh Moon, sweet, sweet Moon, I want to be naked on you. I want to be like a flower growing on your surface, unique and mysterious, at home in the wonder of you, as if my naked body would be something growing out of your soil, something precious, a lovely gift on your landscape.” - James Lusarde

34. “Oh, do you understand what I mean? Have you ever felt that about the Moon? Have you ever ached with the sheer beauty of it?” - James Lusarde

35. “Until the longing came again, like the longing that you hear in the whistle of a train that is going far away. But the longing isn't really in the whistle, the longing is in you—for the wonder and the loveliness that is in the world, and everywhere.” - Meindert DeJong

36. “What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.” - G.K. Chesterton

37. “Dickens writes that an event, "began to be forgotten, as most affairs are, when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.” - Charles Dickens

38. “A puddle repeats infinity, and is full of light; nevertheless, if analyzed objectively, a puddle is a piece of dirty water spread very thin on mud.” - G.K. Chesterton

39. “I shouldn't wonder if you didn't wonder much too much!” - P.L. Travers

40. “But I should not have to explain to you how important it is for science and simplicity to coexist. One must not fear to be a little child again, when times of wonder are at hand.” - Jody Lynn Nye

41. “It's these little things, they can pull you underLive your life filled with joy and wonderI always knew this altogether thunderWas lost in our little lives” - R.E.M Sweetness Follows

42. “Children live in a world of dreams and imagination, a world of aliveness… There is a voice of wonder and amazement inside all of us; but we grow to realize we can no longer hear it, and we live in silence. It isn’t that God stopped speaking; it is that our lives became louder.” - Mike Yaconelli

43. “You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.” - Oswald Chambers

44. “I've wandered through the real world, and written myself through the darkness of the streets inside me. I see people walking through the city and wonder where they've been, and what the moments of their lives have done to them. If they're anything like me, their moments have held them up and shot them down.Sometimes I just survive.But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.That's when the stories show up in me.They find me all the time.They're made of underdogs and fighters. They're made of hunger and desire and trying to live decent.The only trouble is, I don't know which of those stories comes first.Maybe they all just merge into one.We'll see, I guess.I'll let you know when I decide.” - Markus Zusak

45. “In the strange dreams of man, there are stories that are unknowingly being built by them. Mine are among the billions that remain untold.” - Brandon Benevides

46. “Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.” - Baruch de Spinoza

47. “The true joy and wonder of life can only be yours if you follow your own intuition aiming to achieve your bliss.” - Steven Redhead

48. “...it's not the medium that's the message - it's consciousness - the wonder of being able to wonder ...” - John Geddes

49. “Wonder is always difficult until you forgive whoever destroyed your love of surprises.” - Edmond Manning

50. “You're a thousand small wonders, Kylie, love, adding up to one grand miracle.” - Dorien Kelly

51. “To boast wonder takes great courage. Being left speechless with joy is not for the weak. We forget to be surprised by everyday miracles, like toast springing up, the mesmerizing blue in the sky, or even simple friendships. To touch and remember this delicate sense of wonder, we travel. We deliberately let ourselves become tourists to welcome in this unique delight.” - Edmond Manning

52. “The book did not say anything about a statue, valuable or otherwise, and so I stopped reading about the Bombinating Beast and got interested in the chapter about the Stain'd witches, who had ink instead of blood in their veins. I wondered what they kept in their pens.” - Lemony Snicket

53. “...I've discovered why you fascinate - you keep the mystery and as Carlyle noted, Wonder is the basis of worship...” - John Geddes

54. “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

55. “In very different ways, the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, and the opposite possibility that we are totally alone, are equally exciting. Either way, the urge to know more about the universe seems to me irresistible, and I cannot imagine that anybody of truly poetic sensibility could disagree.” - Richard Dawkins

56. “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

57. “Todo el mundo debería recibir una ovación del público puesto en pie al menos una vez en su vida, porque todos vencemos al mundo.” - R.J. Palacio