Sermon quotes on wonder
Thomas Aquinas
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.
Neil Armstrong
Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.
Augustine of Hippo
Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.
G.K. Chesterton
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
Charles Dickens
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
A Tale of Two Cities
Immanuel Kant
Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.
Timothy Keller
In the original language, ‘Fear the Lord’ doesn’t mean be afraid. It means sustaining a joyful, astonished awe, and wonder before Him.
C.S. Lewis
There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.
Eugene Peterson
It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.
William Shakespeare
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”
Julius Caesar
Gerry Spence
I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.
W.B. Yeats
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
Albert Einstein
He . . . who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
Living Philosophies (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931)
G.K. Chesterton
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
Tremendous Trifles (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1910)
John Calvin
There is not one little blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make men rejoice.
Sermon No. 10 on 1 Corinthians
Bernice Johnson Reagon
If every moment is sacred and if you are amazed and in awe most of the time when you find yourself breathing and not crazy, then you are in a state of constant thankfulness, worship and humility.
Mike Cosper
This is an age where our sense of spiritual possibility, transcendence, and the presence of God has been drained out. What’s left is a spiritual desert, and Christians face the temptation to accept the dryness of that desert as the only possible world.
Taken from Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World by Mike Cosper. Copyright (c) 2017, p.43. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
John Calvin
[Every human being is] “formed to be a spectator of the created world and given eyes that he might be led to its author . . . first [to] cast our eyes upon the very beautiful fabric of the world in which [God] wishes to be seen by us. . . . As soon as we acknowledge God to be the supreme architect, who has erected the beauteous fabric of the universe, our minds must necessarily be ravished with wonder at His infinite goodness, wisdom and power.”
Taken from William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 103.
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