Awe Quotes

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. (Immanuel Kant)
Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me. View quote
Immanuel Kant
During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man. View quote
Thomas Hobbes
One to destroy, is murder by the law; and gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; to murder thousands, takes a specious name, 'War's glorious art', and gives immortal fame. View quote
Edward Young
LOVE He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead his eyes are closed. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) View quote
Albert Einstein
We're all talking about the same thing, whether it's religious people or New Age spiritual people or Buddhists or scientists. We're all talking about having a sense of awe and wonder at something grander than ourselves. View quote
Michael Shermer
Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them. View quote
Thomas Paine
No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he. View quote
William Hazlitt
Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity. View quote
George Eliot
The highest point a man can obtain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe! View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
Not Chaos, not The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out By help of dreams -- can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man. (William Wordsworth)
If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church. View quote
Charles Simic
Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world. View quote
John Milton
Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. View quote
Thomas Aquinas
I married my best friend. I was still in awe after more than four years of being around her at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was. And I really hoped that her choosing me and rejecting my advice to pursue her own career was a decision she would never regret. View quote
Bill Clinton
She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep--only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky--before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway. View quote
George Eliot
Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe ... I don't think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul. View quote
Derek Walcott
The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology. View quote
James Frazer
Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilization, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school. View quote
Yehudi Menuhin
I am not religious, but I am a pious man... A religious man has a definite religion. He says "God is there" or "God is there," "God is there." "Your god is not my god, and that's all." But the pious man, he just looks out with awe, and says, "where is God?" And "well, I don't understand it and I would like to know what this creation really means." That is a pious man, who is really touched by the greatness of nature and of the creation. View quote
Albert Szent-Györgyi
Is it not possible that the chimpanzees are responding to some feeling like awe? A feeling generated by the mystery of water; water that seems alive, always rushing past yet never going, always the same yet ever different. Was it perhaps similar feelings of awe that gave rise to the first animistic religions, the worship of the elements and the mysteries of nature over which there was no control? Only when our prehistoric ancestors developed language would it have been possible to discuss such internal feelings and create a shared religion. (Jane Goodall)
People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be... When I look at a sunset, I don't find myself saying, "Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner"... I don't try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds. View quote
Carl Rogers
That men should live honestly, quietly, and comfortably together, it is needful that they should live under a sense of God's will, and in awe of the divine power, hoping to please God, and fearing to offend Him, by their behaviour respectively. View quote
Isaac Barrow
Children, Fear God; that is to say, have an holy awe upon your minds to avoid that which is evil, and a strict care to embrace and do that which is good. View quote
William Penn
While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe. View quote
Friedrich Schiller