Awe Quotes - Page 21

• If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.

  Charles Simic

  Believe, Dark, Night

  Charles Simic (1997). “Orphan Factory: Essays and Memoirs”

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• When I used to go to the Manhattan Chess Club back in the fifties, I met a lot of old-timers there who knew Capablanca, because he used to come around to the Manhattan club in the forties - before he died in the early forties. They spoke about Capablanca with awe. I have never seen people speak about any chess player like that, before or since.

  Bobby Fischer

  Player, People, Manhattan

  Radio Interview, www.geocities.jp. October 16, 2006.

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• Academic disciplines are subject to being overtaken by attacks of "knowingness"- a state of mind and soul that prevents shudders of awe and makes one immune to enthusiasm.

  Richard Rorty

  Discipline, Soul, Intellectual

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• The Magi are filled with awe by what they see; heaven on earth and earth in heaven; man in God and God in man; they see enclosed in a tiny body the One whom the entire world cannot contain.

  Peter Chrysologus

  Faith, Inspiration, Men

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• He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.

  Tad Williams

  Wise, Heart, Men

  Tad Williams (2005). “The Dragonbone Chair: Book One of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn”, p.16, Penguin

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• Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be 'given' in the facts of experience.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Facts, Morality

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “The Problem of Pain”, p.11, HarperCollins UK

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• The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose ... We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct apprehension of this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Communication, Men, Sea

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• I can't make head or tail of Life. Love is a fine thing, Art is a fine thing, Nature is a fine thing; but the average human mind and spirit are confusing beyond measure. Sometimes I think that all our learning is the little learning of the maxim. To laugh at a Roman awe-stricken in a sacred grove is to laugh at something today.

  Wallace Stevens

  Love, Art, Thinking

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.86, Univ of California Press

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• O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!

  William Shakespeare

  Brave New World, People, Wonder

  'The Tempest' (1611) act 5, sc. 1, l. 182

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• 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

  Religious, Moving, Makeup

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• I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

  Douglas Adams

  Inspirational, Life, Atheist

  Douglas Adams, Stephen Fry (2012). “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time”, p.87, Pan Macmillan

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• The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.

  William Shakespeare

  Kings, Rain, Heart

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 4, sc. 1, l. [182]

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• Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission. No committee decides who may enter, no crisis of body or spirit must accompany the entrant. No tuition is charged, no oath sworn, no visa demanded. Of the monuments humans build for themselves, very few say - touch me, use me, my hush is not indifference, my space is not barrier. If I inspire awe, it is because I am in awe of you and the possibilities that dwell in you.

  Toni Morrison

  Civilization, Space, Inspire

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• We mothers of grown-up daughters tend to view them with a mixture of love, exasperation, irritation and awe.

  Anne Robinson

  Daughter, Mother, Irritation

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• Every tradition grows continually more venerable, and the more remote its origins, the more this is lost sight of. The veneration paid the tradition accumulates from generation to generation, until it at last becomes holy and excites awe.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Sight, Experience, Generations

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• Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.

  Alexander Smith

  Memories, Fire, Echoes

  Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.122

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• Worship is a believer's response to God's revelation of Himself. It is expressing wonder, awe, and gratitude for the worthiness, the greatness, and the goodness of our Lord. It is the appropriate response to God's person, His provision, His power, His promises, and His plan.

  Nancy Leigh DeMoss

  Gratitude, Greatness, Promise

  Nancy Leigh DeMoss (2009). “A Place of Quiet Rest: Finding Intimacy with God Through a Daily Devotional Life”, p.211, Moody Publishers

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• If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude.

  A. E. Housman

  Science, Men, Inspire

  Marcus Manilius, A. E. Housman (2011). “Astronomicon”, p.19, Cambridge University Press

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• 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

  Eye, Mirrors, Faith Religion

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• There are many sources of spirituality; religion may be the most common, but it is by no means the only. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades.

  Michael Shermer

  Mean, Doe, May

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• The individual human is still the creature who can wonder, who can be enchanted by a sonata, who can place symbols together to make poetry to gladden our heart, who can view a sunrise with a sense of majesty and awe.

  Rollo May

  Heart, Views, Sunrise

  Rollo May (2015). “The Discovery of Being”, p.10, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The emotional reaction in the peak experience has a special flavor of wonder, of awe, of reverence, of humility and surrender before the experience as before something great.

  Abraham Maslow

  Humility, Emotional, Special

  Abraham H. Maslow (2013). “Toward a Psychology of Being”, p.89, Simon and Schuster

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• The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self- education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Museums, Self, Intellectual

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• Take back your light. Know that when you're in awe of someone else's greatness, you're really seeing yourself. Identify what you most admire or love about others and see how you can nourish those qualities and bring them out in yourself. Instead of fixating on someone else's brilliance, find ways to develop and demonstrate your own.

  Debbie Ford

  Love Yourself, Greatness, Light

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• Call it "womb awe" or even "womb worship" but it's not simple envy. I don't remember even wanting to be a woman. But each of the three times I have been present at the birth of one of my children, I have been overwhelmed by a sense of reverence... It was quite suddenly, the first day of creation; the Goddess giving birth to a world... Like men since the beginning of time I wondered: What can I ever create that will equal the magnificence of this new life?

  Sam Keen

  Children, Father, Simple

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