Quotes About Awe

I wanted to write about a postapocalyptic world where our civilization was not looked back on with awe and admiration, as it is in so many books of the genre, but disdained as the fuckwits we are, who wrecked a perfect biosphere because we couldn't be bothered not to.

She is…" Death turned her head, considering. "She is like a party dress I wear when I want to impress visiting dignitaries. Like your friend Betsy, I too am a Terrible Engine. I too have occasional need of awe. But between us, I think, there is no need of finery.

Everyone cried when the creature first spoke to them. No, not cried. They wept. They wept like the cavemen of Lascaux suddenly transported into the Sistine Chapel just in time for a live performance of Phantom of the Opera as sung by Tolkien's elves. Their senses simply were not built for this, weren't meant to come anywhere near this kind of velvet-barreled sensory shotgun, loaded for bear.

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

omne ignotum pro magnifico est).

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.

a gigantic phantom rose suddenly out of the sea. I started backwards from a tall figure projected against a wall of ice. The wall was an iceberg—and the phantom, I slowly realised, was my own reflection, enormously enlarged.

Stop now and always wonder. Press forward and tap the wonder.

O mundo, que está cheio de orgulhosos, também está cheio de admiradores. O mistério dissipa-se, quando se descobre que a admiração é a maneira mais nobre e pudica de afirmar a superioridade daquele que admira.

IL LAMPO E cielo e terra si mostrò qual era: la terra ansante, livida, in sussulto; il cielo ingombro, tragico, disfatto: bianca bianca nel tacito tumulto una casa apparì sparì d'un tratto; come un occhio, che, largo, esterrefatto, s'aprì si chiuse, nella notte nera.

The shudder of awe is humanity's highest faculty, even though this world is forever altering values.

Only when life is explored in awe, enjoyed in abundance and appreciated to its fullest can we say we have truly lived.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend only a little of this mystery every day.

A millennium without air or light pollution made for pitch-black skies. The stars didn't just appear anymore. They exploded. Diamonds on black velvet. You couldn't tear your eyes away.

Surely no child, and few adults, have ever watched a bird in flight without envy.

I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all that... It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was a very tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.

Horses — if God made any creature more beautiful, He kept it for himself.

The world is a place of marvels

Beauty inspires love; so it is said, in Terre d'Ange. Was it done that we might find this world worthy of loving?

Take care of her," he bid his servants, weariness and profound satisfaction draining his voice, shrugging into silk robes, bowing in my direction. "Treat her gently." They did, I trust; I don't remember it, in truth. I saw faces approach, awe-stricken. They understand, in Kusheth, what it is to serve Kushiel. I hurt, in every part of me. And I was content. I closed my eyes, then, and let the deeper tide of unconsciousness claim me.

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever. Jacques Yves Cousteau

I swam across the rocks and compared myself favorably with the sars. To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.)

There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.

a forehead so high that it can make you think of cathedrals.