Awe Quotes - Page 8

• Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.

  Edward Steichen

  Vision, Feels, Seeing

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• Is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fun, Vision, Dull

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• God was gone; it was the silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn't know what was happening to me, and I suddenly realized it was only the tea that we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. It made me think that everything was about to arrive - the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever.

  Jack Kerouac

  New York, Night, Thinking

  Jack Kerouac (2007). “Road Novels 1957-1960”

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• Then the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer simply transcribed what was given, and trembled in awe of the hand that was guiding him.

  Mark Helprin

  Beautiful, Hands, Play

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.433, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.

  Carl Sagan

  Knowledge, Science, Wish

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 332, 1980.

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• Speaking psycho-analytically, it may be laid down that any "great ideal" which people mention with awe is really an excuse for inflicting pain on their enemies. Good wine needs no bush, and good morals need no bated breath.

  Bertrand Russell

  Pain, Wine, People

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.240, Routledge

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• Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world…Try walking around with a child who’s going, ‘Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!’ And the child points, and you look, and you see, and you start going, ‘Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!’ I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world – present and in awe.

  Anne Lamott

  Dog, Baby, Children

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• Let's be in awe which doesn't mean anything but the courage to gape like fish at the surface breaking around our mouths as we meet the air.

  Mark Nepo

  Mean, Air, Mouths

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• They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.

  Tim O'Brien

  Bears, Silent, Terrible

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.7, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.

  David Mamet

  Art, Expression, Accomplishment

  David Mamet (2011). “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor”, p.24, Vintage

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• Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung...We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by “we” I mean society—in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Mean, Opportunity, Thinking

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n.

  Alexander Pope

  Eye, Men, Vision

  Alexander Pope, John Wilson Croker (1871). “The Works: Including Several Hundred Unpublished Letters, and Other New Materials”, p.363

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• I think there's a difference between the type of folk music that people put into the box of "folk music" and then there's the kind of folk music that I aspire to and am in awe of, and that is the kind of folk music where it's very limited tools - in most cases a guitar, in a self-taught style that is idiosyncratic and particular to that musician.

  Christopher Paul Stelling

  Thinking, People, Style

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• He walked down the corridor, lined with his soldiers, who looked at him with love, with awe, with trust. Except Bean, who looked at him with anguish. Ender Wiggin was not larger than life, Bean knew. He was exactly life-sized, and so his larger-than-life burden was too much for him. And yet he was bearing it. So far.

  Orson Scott Card

  Soldier, Too Much, Larger Than Life

  Orson Scott Card (2013). “Ender's Game Boxed Set: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow”, p.349, Macmillan

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• We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.

  Konrad Adenauer

  Positive, Hope, Attitude

  The Atlantic Community Quarterly, Volume 14-15, p. 200, 1976-1978.

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• Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it.

  Thaddeus Golas

  Change, Confidence, Perspective

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• Life hath more awe than death.

  Philip James Bailey

  Life, Life Death

  "Festus. Scene Wood and Water". Poem by Philip James Bailey, 1839.

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• I cannot tell what you and other men
  Think of this life; but, for my single self,
  I had as lief not be as live to be
  In awe of such a thing as I myself.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Men, Thinking

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 1, sc. 2, l. 92

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• There are an awful lot of scientists today who believe that before very long we shall have unraveled all the secrets of the universe. There will be no puzzles anymore. To me, it'd be really, really tragic because I think one of the most exciting things is this feeling of mystery, feeling of awe, the feeling of looking at a little live thing and being amazed by it and how it has emerged through these hundreds of years of evolution and there it is and it is perfect and why.

  Jane Goodall

  Nature, Believe, Thinking

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• Fieldes have eies and woods have eares.

  John Heywood

  Music, Nature, Silence

  "Proverbs". Book by John Heywood, 1546.

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• Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help.

  Nhat Hanh

  Buddhist, Meditation, Vision

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