Awe Quotes - Page 17

• One who returns to a place sees it with new eyes. Although the place may not have changed, the viewer inevitably has. For the first time things invisible before become suddenly visible.

  Louis L'Amour

  Eye, Vision, May

  Louis L'Amour (2004). “Bendigo Shafter”, p.281, Bantam

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• Respectful communication under conflict or opposition is an essential and truly awe-inspiring ability.

  Bryant H. McGill

  Communication, Essentials, Conflict

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• God is in the mountains. Impassive, immovable, jagged giants, separating the celestial from the terrestrial with eternal diagonal certainty. As if silently monitoring the beating heart of the creator from the universe's perfect birth. Stood in the thin air and the awe, one inhales God, involuntarily acknowledging that we are but fragments of a whole, a higher thing. The mountains remind me of my place, as a servant to truth and wonder. Yes, God is in the mountains. Perhaps the pulpit too and even in the piety of an atheist's sigh. I don't know; but I feel him in the mountains.

  Russell Brand

  Atheist, Heart, Air

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• He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.

  Craig Ferguson

  Dog, Animal, Sheep

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• The light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it inflamed.

  Umberto Eco

  Heart, Eye, Light

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• The artist and the mother are vehicles, not originators. They don't create the new life, they only bear it. This is why birth is such a humbling experience. The new mom weeps in awe at the little miracle in her arms. She knows it came out of her but not from her, through her but not of her.

  Steven Pressfield

  Mom, Mother, Artist

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• She was gorgeous and fearless and I was in awe.

  Patrick Carman

  Fearless, Gorgeous

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• Oui, oui, he snapped with an obvious lack of awe. "Ding dong the demon's dead, now can we admire our delightful handiwork someplace where the ceiling is not about to cave in and your oh-so-handsome vampire is not about to become a dust bunny? (Levet)

  Alexandra Ivy

  Dust, Vampire, Ceilings

  Alexandra Ivy (2007). “Embrace the Darkness”, p.128, Zebra Books

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• 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

  Real, Quality, Stories

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

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• It's better not to see than to see wrongly.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Vision, Seeing

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• After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes. Often it is awe or admiration, sometimes it is repulsion, once or twice it has been fury hurled directly at me for reasons I remain unsure of.

  Alice Sebold

  Eye, Facts, Lovers

  Alice Sebold (2009). “Lucky”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

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• How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of one’s place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond oneself. . . . Does scientific explanation of the world diminish its spiritual beauty? I think not. Science and spirituality are complementary, not conflicting; additive, not detractive. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades. (158-159)

  Michael Shermer

  Spiritual, Thinking, Doe

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• He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

  George Santayana

  Believe, Thinking, Vision

  George Santayana (2013). “Scepticism and Animal Faith”, p.201, Courier Corporation

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• It skims in through the eye, and by means of the utterly delicate retina hurls shadows like insect legs inward for translation. Then an immense space opens up in silence and an endlessly fecund sub-universe the writer descends, and asks the reader to descend after him, not merely to gain instructions but also to experience delight, the delight of mind freed from matter and exultant in the strength it has stolen from matter.

  John Updike

  Mean, Eye, Space

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• Our normal expectations about reality are created by a social consensus. We are taught how to see and understand the world. The trick of socialization is to convince us that the descriptions we agree upon define the limits of the real world. What we call reality is only one way of seeing the world, a way that is supported by social consensus.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Real, Agree Upon, Agreement

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• Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom, and behold it (as it were) for the first time; in its right, authentic colors; without making comparisons. Cherish and burnish this faculty of seeing crudely, simply, artlessly, ignorantly; of seeing like a baby or a lunatic, who lives each moment by itself and tarnishes by the present no remembrance of the past.

  Arnold Bennett

  Baby, Memories, Past

  Arnold Bennett, Sir Newman Flower (1932). “Delenda est * BOD : staff use only”

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• It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance ... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beauty, Hair, Vision

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861”, p.349, New York Review of Books

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• The heart has eyes which the brain knows nothing of.

  Charles Henry Parkhurst

  Trust, Truth, Heart

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• The temptation is to stay inside; to subside into the kind of recluse whom neighborhood children regard with derision and little awe; to let the hedges and weeds grow up, to allow the doors to rust shut, to lie on my bed in some gown-shaped garment and let my hair lengthens and spread out over the pillow and my fingernails to sprout into claws, while candle wax drips onto the carpet. But long ago I made a choice between classicism and romanticism. I prefer to be upright and contained—an urn in daylight.

  Margaret Atwood

  Weed, Children, Growing Up

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• Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend later in life. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.

  Walter Isaacson

  Children, Light, Later In Life

  Walter Isaacson (2008). “Einstein: His Life and Universe”, p.40, Simon and Schuster

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• Isn't it a riddle . . . and awe-inspiring, that everything is so beautiful? Despite the horror. Lately I've noticed something grand and mysterious peering through my sheer joy in all that is beautiful, a sense of its creator . . . Only man can be truly ugly, because he has the free will to estrange himself from this song of praise. It often seems that he'll manage to drown out this hymn with his cannon thunder, curses and blasphemy. But during this past spring it has dawned upon me that he won't be able to do this. And so I want to try and throw myself on the side of the victor.

  Sophie Scholl

  Beautiful, Song, Spring

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• I'm so alive. As I stand facing the beauty of the never-ending Pacific Ocean, a late afternoon breeze blows down from the hills behind. As always, it is a beautiful day. The sun is making its final descent. The magic is about to begin. The skies are ready to burn with brilliance, as it turns from a soft blue to a bright orange. Looking towards the West, I stare in awe at the hypnotic power of the waves. A giant curl begins to take form, then breaks with a thundering clap as it crashes on the shore.

  Dave Pelzer

  Beautiful, Ocean, Blow

  Dave Pelzer (2010). “A Child Called It”, p.53, Hachette UK

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• The only people who are not in awe of Emerson's powerful voice and well-nigh superhuman strength are the members of his own family. He is aware of this, and often complains about it; so from time to time I like to put on a little show of being intimidated. 'Proceed, my dear,' I said apologetically.

  Barbara Mertz

  Powerful, Voice, People

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• Well, I can’t help going to see Sibyl play, even if it is only for an act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am filled with awe." "You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can’t you?" He shook his head. "To night she is Imogen," he answered, "and tomorrow night she will be Juliet." "When is she Sibyl Vane?" "Never." "I congratulate you.

  Oscar Wilde

  Night, Thinking, Play

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.40, Wordsworth Editions

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• Content is a glimpse.

  Willem de Kooning

  Vision, Glimpse, Seeing

  Willem De Kooning (2001). “Willem De Kooning: Vellums : March 21-April 21, 2001”, Mitchell-Inness & Nash

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