A Quote by Gary A. Kowalski

Religion, according to Alfred North Whitehead, is a phenomenon that begins in wonder and ends in wonder. Feelings of awe, reverence, and gratitude are primary, and these can never be learned from books. We gain them from sitting high on a cliff side, gazing at the sea, lost in reverie and listening to the laughter of children.

Gary A. Kowalski

Quote Topics

According Awe Begins Books Children Cliff Ends Feelings Gain Gazing Gratitude High Laughter Learned Listening Lost Never North Phenomenon Primary Religion Reverence Reverie Sea Side Sitting Them Wonder

Quote Author

Gary A. Kowalski
American - Author
Born: 1953

Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder. I believe it also ends in wonder. The ultimate way in which we relate to the world as something sacred is by renewing our sense of wonder. That's why I'm so opposed to the kind of miracle-mongering we find in both new-age and old-age religion. We're attracted to pseudomiracles only because we've ceased to wonder at the world, at how amazing it is.

Sam Keen

My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.

Oliver Sacks

By cutting ourselves off from the rest of creation, we are left bereft of awe and wonder and therefore of reverence and gratitude. We violate our very beings, and we have nothing but trivia to teach our young.

Matthew Fox

Wonder, connected with a principle of rational curiosity, is the source of all knowledge and discover, and it is a principle even of piety; but wonder which ends in wonder, and is satisfied with wonder, is the quality of an idiot.

Samuel Horsley

I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed, which is still a child.

Leo Lionni

We are here to feel, wonder and gaze in awe at the world. Instead of just teaching our children how to use things and do things, I suggest we nourish their sense of wonder.

Bernie Siegel

My books have three W's on them, which are "words," "wisdom," and "wonder." Words inevitably lead to wisdom, and wisdom inevitably leads to wonder and awe at this phenomenal world around us.

Julie Andrews

Religion is not based on belief or faith: religion is based on awe, religion is based on wonder. Religion is based on the mysterious that is your surround. To feel it, to be aware of it, to see it, open your eyes and drop the dust of the ages. Clean your mirror! and see what beauty surrounds you, what tremendous grandeur goes on knocking at your doors. Why are you sitting with closed eyes? Why are you sitting with such long faces? Why can't you dance? and why can't you laugh?

Rajneesh

In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends, and admiration fill up the interspace; but the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.

Carl Sagan

Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves us to great wonder, and so on. That is the religious impulse, and it is part of our psychological makeup -- of everyone's psychological makeup.

Philip Pullman

The Highest to which people can attain is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes them wonder, let them be content; nothing higher can it give them, and nothing further should they seek for behind it; there is the limit.