Quotes About Awe

our daily diary studies in different countries, it was other people who were most likely to bring our participants everyday awe—actions of strangers, roommates, teachers, colleagues at work, people in the news, characters on podcasts, and our neighbors and family members. On

I was now planning on replacing "bull in a china shop" with "dragon sees a new hoard.

The magnificent strength of Ella Cahill took his breath away.

The other study examined the effect of awe. Awe lives "in the upper reaches of pleasure and on the boundary of fear," as two scholars put it. It "is a little studied emotion . . . central to the experience of religion, politics, nature, and art."19 It has two key attributes: vastness (the experience of something larger than ourselves) and accommodation (the vastness forces us to adjust our mental structures).

Hence the dazzling mountain scene that takes our breath away should not provoke us to try to seize and freeze the moment, but to give thanks and look ahead to the beauty of the new heaven and the new earth, of which this world's finest beauty is but a miniscule glimpse. We delight in the world's beauty as we lament its transience.

Viewing the earth from above gives you this sense of how special the planet is that we live on.

To be five years old is to be surprised by life. I'm amused by my children's awe at quotidian things - a toy helicopter, a bubble bath, the visible tentacles on a plate of calamari. And I'm envious of their ability to attain something I often can't: a state of transcendence induced by art.

In the twilight, it was a vision of power.

When I first came to Wakefield Cathedral, I thought, 'How does man conceive to build something like this?' It's a building that has transcended time over the centuries, and you appreciate the magnitude of humankind's power and vision. When you're inside, you feel as though the rest of the world doesn't exist.

It's really amazing to stand in front of a work you haven't seen before and be almost overwhelmed by its beauty and the vision and execution of the artist.

As Paul Hawken keenly observed, Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course.… We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.1

A God who is beyond out ability to fully describe or imagine, yet someone we are privileged to know, love, and embrace.

I want my life to defy human explanation.

Lord, everywhere I look I see signs of how great You are. Thank You for Your amazing creation, including me!

and his heart soared. He looked over the

he walked back home, pausing to marvel at the stars. Many of which no longer existed. Just their light." Chapter 10 · Page 87 · Location 1533

For Humanity sweeps onward: where today the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing. Lucille Clifton

thunder and lightning and our world is another place no day will ever be the same no blood untouched

For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.

Who knew that when you cut a slit in the belly of the night sky, it bled color?

There was a time when I could see God in a single crumb.

O how beautiful, look at the crimson snow! And up there on the rocks there are ever so many roses!

How strange a thing it was to be here, animate and conscious, on this ball of mud and brine as it whirled through the illimitable depths of space.