Wonders

Wonders are things that causes amazement or awe, or are astonishing and seemingly inexplicable.

Quotes

• He shall have chariots easier than air,
  That I will have invented;… And thyself,
  That art the messenger, shalt ride before him
  On a horse cut out of an entire diamond.
  That shall be made to go with golden wheels,
  I know not how yet.
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, A King and No King (1611; 1619), Act V.

• A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto II (1812), Stanza 2.

• "Never see … a dead post-boy, did you?" inquired Sam…. "No," rejoined Bob, "I never did." "No!" rejoined Sam triumphantly. "Nor never vill; and there's another thing that no man never see, and that's a dead donkey."
  • Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers (1836), Chapter LI.

• Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.
  • Jesus, as quoted in Gospel of John 4:48

• O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act III, scene 2, line 201.

• O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 5, line 164.

• Can such things be,
  And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
  Without our special wonder?
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 4, line 110.

• Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 4, line 123.

• 'Twas strange, 'twas passing strange;
  'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act I, scene 3, line 160.

• We nothing know, but what is marvellous;
  Yet what is marvellous, we can't believe.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VII.

• Nothing but what astonishes is true.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IX.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 897-98.

• Mira cano; sol occubuit;
  Nox nulla secuta est.
  • Wonders I sing; the sun has set; no night has followed.
  • Burton, quoting from a reference to a phrase of Giraldus Gambrensis, found in Camden, Epigrammes.

• If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself … that a tiger is an optical illusion—well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive.
  • G. K. Chesterton.

• The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of onder.
  • G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles.

• We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise,
  And the door stood open at our feast,
  When there passed us a woman with the West in her eyes,
  And a man with his back to the East.
  • Mary E. Coleridge, Unwelcome.

• Long stood the noble youth oppress'd with awe,
  And stupid at the wondrous things he saw,
  Surpassing common faith, transgressing nature's law.
  • John Dryden, Theodore and Honoria, line 217.

• Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Works and Days.

• This wonder lasted nine daies.
  • John Heywood, Proverbs, Part II, Chapter I. Nine days wonder. Roger Ascham, Scholemaster. Title of book by Kemp. Massinger, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Act IV, scene 2.

• The things that have been and shall be no more,
  The things that are, and that hereafter shall be,
  The things that might have been, and yet were not,
  The fading twilight of joys departed.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christus, Divine Tragedy, First Passover, III. Marriage in Cana.

• Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this.
  • Plato, Theætetus, XXXII. Cary's translation.

• Pretty! in amber to observe the forms
  Of hairs, of straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!
  The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
  But wonder how the devil they got there.
  • Alexander Pope, Prologue to the Satires, line 169.

• Out of our reach the gods have laid
  Of time to come th' event,
  And laugh to see the fools afraid
  Of what the knaves invent.
  • Sir Charles Sedley, Lycophron.

• There's something in a flying horse,
  There's something in a huge balloon.
  • William Wordsworth, Peter Bell. Prologue, Stanza 1.