Wonder

Oh, there were all sorts of things to wonder about, but the truth was simple: here stood this door alone on an endless stretch of beach, and it was for only one of two things: opening or leaving closed.

‘Yes, even as you see us.’ Wide wonder came into Éomer’s eyes.

The Mule conquered the Galaxy, but, queerly enough, he made Kalgan his headquarters, and it occurs to me to wonder if he was conqueror or, perhaps, tool.

When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at the miracle of such a product from such a soil.

I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life.” “I would wish not to be hasty in censuring anyone; but I always speak what I think.” “I know you do; and it is that which makes the wonder.

And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn’t even bother to do anything when the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding …” He shuddered, “Sometimes I wonder if he wasn’t born dead.

I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them-all cockeyed, naturally-what it meant, and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days.

Once a man has seen a dragon in flight, let him stay at home and tend his garden in content, someone had written once, for this wide world has no greater wonder.

Meadows sweet where flames are under, And a giggle at a wonder; Visage sage at pantomime; Funeral, and steeple-chime; Infant playing with a skull; Morning fair, and shipwreck’d hull; Nightshade with the woodbine kissing; Serpents in red roses hissing; Cleopatra regal-dress’d With the aspic at her breast; Dancing music, music sad, Both together, sane and mad; Muses bright, and muses pale; Sombre Saturn, Momus hale;— Laugh and sigh, and laugh again; Oh, the sweetness of the pain!

The longer she lived, the more experience and observation she had of life, the greater was her wonder at the shortsightedness of men who seek enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling, and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary, sinful happiness.

The profusion of them was still a wonder to his eyes, accustomed as they were to East Texas, where.the roadside flora had nothing like this variety.

As his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth it was), of rifting and knitting itself into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions—as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high.

“How strange that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enough to wonder at the near-?ideal nitrogen-?oxygen-?CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of plant cover.

And now the Sorting Hat is here And you all know the score: I sort you into Houses Because that is what I’m for, But this year I’ll go further, Listen closely to my song: Though condemned I am to split you Still I worry that it’s wrong, Though I must fulfill my duty And must quarter every year Still I wonder whether Sorting May not bring the end I fear.

Is it my eyes, I wonder, or is it my soul that is bruised?” “Mama,” says Iris.

And while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers, snatched food and drink, and gripping hands and blows, without, in the pitiless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder, the unfamiliar routine of the Martians in the pit.

“Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back?

Some may wonder how it can happen that Agathocles, and his like, after infinite treacheries and cruelties, should live for long secure in his country, and defend himself from external enemies, and never be conspired against by his own citizens; seeing that many others, by means of cruelty, have never been able even in peaceful times to hold the state, still less in the doubtful times of war.

Also the air would be full of steam, from the hot water and the hot blood, so that you could not see five feet before you; and then, with men rushing about at the speed they kept up on the killing-beds, and all with butcher-knives, like razors, in their hands—well, it was to be counted as a wonder that there were not more men slaughtered than cattle.

This new portent the seer with wonder views, Then pausing, thus his prophecy renews: “The nymph, who scatters flaming fires around, Shall shine with honour, shall herself be crown’d; But, caus’d by her irrevocable fate, War shall the country waste, and change the state.” Latinus, frighted with this dire ostent, For counsel to his father Faunus went, And sought the shades renown’d for prophecy Which near Albunea’s sulph’rous fountain lie.

I wonder what you're going to do when you fail to pass the Boneli test.

Lines Written by a Bear of Very Little Brain On Monday, when the sun is hot I wonder to myself a lot: “Now is it true, or is it not, “That what is which and which is what?” On Tuesday, when it hails and snows, The feeling on me grows and grows That hardly anybody knows If those are these or these are those.

239 The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so much respect by men as at present—this belongs to the tendency and fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to old age—what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of this respect?

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

It’s a wonder they ever find anyone to marry them.” “Say,” said Bill, “do you know that gang of Pilgrim Fathers have cornered the dining-car until half past three this afternoon?” “How do you mean?

↩︎ A fair parallel of the then unknown aphorism of Kant: “Two things fill the soul with wonder and reverence, increasing evermore as I meditate more closely upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” (Kritik Derpraktischen Vernunfe, 1788).

When he was smaller, he used to wonder what it would be like to live in such a place; to sleep every night with a roof over your head, and wake every morning with the same walls wrapped around you.

“Ah, you have a noble heart,” said the count; “so much the better.” This exclamation, which corresponded to the count’s own thought rather than to what Albert was saying, surprised everybody, and especially Morrel, who looked at Monte Cristo with wonder.

It always happens so in this vale of tears; there is an inevitability about such things which we can only wonder at, deplore, and bear as we best can.

Sometimes he tells such lies that you wonder why he is doing it.

Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next.

But you were pitiless in getting yourself killed like this, I shall not even grieve over your death, do you understand, you assassin?” At that moment, Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still dimmed by lethargic wonder, rested on M. Gillenormand.

Do you know, Jane, I sometimes wonder whether I ever did really fly.” “Yes, you did.” “The dear old days when I could fly!” “Why can’t you fly now, mother?” “Because I am grown up, dearest.

For years afterward, people in the apartment complex would wonder how someone had seared the impressions of a five-year-old’s hands an inch deep into solid wood.

I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South.

“Words,” said Denis at last, “words—I wonder if you can realise how much I love them.

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches, Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself, But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not, And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss, And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room, It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, (For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,) Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love; For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space, Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, I know very well I could not.

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button?

Is it not said that many years ago, In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran With torches through the midnight, and began To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw Dice for the garments of a wretched man, Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?

For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing.

It comes into his mind to wonder why she is always so alert in his presence.

Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ.

I wonder if I could come down and see you, and we could drink and talk and remember.’ He was unenthusiastic.

Here were the Arabs believing me, Allenby and Clayton trusting me, my bodyguard dying for me: and I began to wonder if all established reputations were founded, like mine, on fraud.

Apprehensively, Witwer asked: “What is it?” “Once I say it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t invent it.

I am diminished.” Luyseyal spoke up: “This can only reinforce thoughts of oppression.” “I wonder why so few ever thought of the Bene Gesserit as oppressors?” Leto asked.

Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan.” “Sir,” said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly possessing, “you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I hear you with no very strong impression of belief.

He’ll wake when the sun wakes, Push out his vigorous limbs and rub his eyes, And wonder what has ailed him these twelve months.’ I cowered back upon the wall in terror, But that sweet-sounding voice ran on: ‘Woman, I was your husband when you rode the air, Danced in the whirling foam and in the dust, In days you have not kept in memory, Being betrayed into a cradle, and I come That I may claim you as my wife again.’ I was no longer terrified, his voice Had half awakened some old memory, Yet answered him: ‘I am King Eochaid’s wife And with him have found every happiness Women can find.’ With a most masterful voice, That made the body seem as it were a string Under a bow, he cried: ‘What happiness Can lovers have that know their happiness Must end at the dumb stone?

Then Shere Khan would flatter them and wonder that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a dying wolf and a man’s cub.

With a shock it was revealed to him: “Gosh, I wonder if she was right—if she was partly right?” Overwork must have flayed him to abnormal sensitiveness; it was one of the few times in his life when he had queried his eternal excellence; and he perceived the summer night, smelled the wet grass.

And Major Blunt, I should say, is not good at concealments.” “Sometimes,” I said, “I wonder if we haven’t rather jumped to conclusions on one point.” “What is that?” “We’ve assumed that the blackmailer of Mrs. Ferrars is necessarily the murderer of Mr. Ackroyd.

I wonder at this haste, that I must wed Ere he that should be husband comes to woo.

It is a truly wonderful fact—the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity—that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other in groups, subordinate to groups, in the manner which we everywhere behold—namely, varieties of the same species most closely related, species of the same genus less closely and unequally related, forming sections and subgenera, species of distinct genera much less closely related, and genera related in different degrees, forming subfamilies, families, orders, subclasses, and classes.

No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.

“Do you ever wonder if this is all there is?” “What?” Richard gestured vaguely, taking in everything.

“Get changed.” I’m starting to wonder if Tyler and Marla are the same person.

If then, whatever the time may be when thou shalt be near to thy departure, neglecting everything else thou shalt respect only thy ruling faculty and the divinity within thee, and if thou shalt be afraid not because thou must some time cease to live, but if thou shalt fear never to have begun to live according to nature—then thou wilt be a man worthy of the universe which has produced thee, and thou wilt cease to be a stranger in thy native land, and to wonder at things which happen daily as if they were something unexpected, and to be dependent on this or that.

Meanwhile Minerva with instinctive fires Thy soul, Penelope, from Heaven inspires; With flattering hopes the suitors to betray, And seem to meet, yet fly, the bridal day: Thy husband's wonder, and thy son's to raise; And crown the mother and the wife with praise.

His head had been rubbed so often and so vigorously that it was a wonder he wasn’t bald.

Yes,” he went on, seeing the colonel look up in some wonder, “the whole of this tale turns on a black coat.

Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

Busy wonder and keen shame Were driving him, and little thoughts like bees Followed and pricked him on and left no ease.

Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause.

As when a scout, Through dark and desert ways with peril gone All night, at last by break of cheerful dawn Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill, Which to his eye discovers unaware The goodly prospect of some foreign land First seen, or some renowned metropolis With glistering spires and pinnacles adorned, Which now the rising sun gilds with his beams: Such wonder seized, though after Heaven seen, The Spirit malign, but much more envy seized, At sight of all this World beheld so fair.

Those whom I have inspired with love by letting them see me, I have by words undeceived, and if their longings live on hope—and I have given none to Chrysostom or to any other—it cannot justly be said that the death of any is my doing, for it was rather his own obstinacy than my cruelty that killed him; and if it be made a charge against me that his wishes were honourable, and that therefore I was bound to yield to them, I answer that when on this very spot where now his grave is made he declared to me his purity of purpose, I told him that mine was to live in perpetual solitude, and that the earth alone should enjoy the fruits of my retirement and the spoils of my beauty; and if, after this open avowal, he chose to persist against hope and steer against the wind, what wonder is it that he should sink in the depths of his infatuation?

After all,’ said General Peckem with his low, well-modulated chuckle, ‘if dropping bombs on the enemy isn’t a special service, I wonder what in the world is.

No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them.

In such circumstances the wonder is, not that he was sometimes obliged to yield, but that he ever was able to resist.