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"What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?"
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Exlpore more Wonder quotes
"Life is a bit like a sweet & toy & art & curiosity shop - all in one - only the best bits are free. If you look at all the things you can cherish it helps to balance everything else. Cherish the fabulous, the fantastic, the beautiful, the graceful, the moments of abandon, laughter, quirkiness. Cherish the tiny incredible details, the gigantic & varied display, and the infinite depths - of life."
"The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears."
"The curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be weary of wonders. If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the hundredth time we call it, in the hideous and blasphemous phrase of Wordsworth, "the light of common day." We are inclined to increase our claims. We are inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to demand a green sun. Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. Until we understand that original dark, in which we have neither sight nor expectation, we can give no hearty and childlike praise to the splendid sensationalism of things."
"Tell me where the swans go in the winterI need to know if the mute ones can sing.Tell me why stars fall from the skyI need to know if it is luck they bring.Tell me why feathers land near youI need to know if you've injured your wing.Now, tell me where you end, my angelFor I no longer know where I begin."
"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."
Explore more quotes by Henry David Thoreau
"It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course."
"Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man - a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit."
"Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them."
"Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are."
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