Josiah Gilbert Holland Quotes

While the sciences are hugely important, let us not leave behind a child's imagination.

When I'm an audience member I do not want to go and see something that I already know, I want to see something that I don't know. I want to be surprised and stimulated to think about something. I want the magic. I want to be in a situation of uncertainty; that's what excites me.

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

The world is so different for a child, waking in the mornings, wide-eyed and ready to take it all in.

If there wasn't mystery, people wouldn't have anything to ponder. If you already knew everything, you wouldn't have anything to think about and life would just be really boring.

Young children have no sense of wonder. They bewilder well, but few things surprise them. All of it is new to young children, after all, and equally gratuitous.

I think a lot of people also have kids to reclaim thу innocence and experience it over again. I think it's about staying curious and not losing the sense of wonder.

The eyes of childhood are magnifying lenses.

Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I can STOP when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult.

Children are the closest we have to wisdom and they become adults the moment that final drop of everything mysterious is strained from them.

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

What are so mysterious as the eyes of a child?

I think I still keep my sense of wonder, which I call childlike, not childish, childlike. I still have a vivid imagination, and I like to try a lot of new things.

The sense of wonder, that is our sixth sense.

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. It is the source of all true art and science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.

Opening a door to the mysteries, hoping to shed a little dark on all the stuff we think we know.

As children, our imaginations are vibrant, and our hearts are open... Everything amazes us, and we think anything is possible. We continuously experience life with a sense of newness and unbridled curiosity.

Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know.

People inspire me. Curiosity inspires me. Mystery inspires me.

I had a teacher in Paris, who said that if an actor forgot what it's like to play as a child he shouldn't be an actor. I've always loved being with children. It's marvellous to see the fresh ways they see the world. Watching them look at a tree or a river helps you to understand something that's very important.

You learn a lot as a kid, like you don't know anything. I didn't know what was gonna happen if I opened the door. I thought I was gonna be in another world somehow.

As long as a thing is unknown, it belongs to us in a way that well-known things do not. For we have the opportunity to fill the empty, unknown spaces for ourselves, and in them there is room for imagination and for hope.

I spy with my little eye a great story.

Think and wonder, wonder and think.

Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.