Awe Quotes

I stood there, battered by the raw power and sheer magnificence of a land I'd never known

~ Don George

The best journeys are the ones that answer questions that at the outset you never even thought to ask.-Rick Ridgeway

~ Susan Magsamen

Wonder isn't about finding answers, it's about becoming more comfortable with questions.

~ Leigh Ann Henion

When God is our Holy Father, sovereignty, holiness, omniscience, and immutability do not terrify us; they leave us full of awe and gratitude. Sovereignty is only tyrannical if it is unbounded by goodness; holiness is only terrifying if it is untempered by grace; omniscience is only taunting if it is unaccompanied by mercy; and immutability is only torturous if there is no guarantee of goodwill.

~ Ravi Zacharias

No one can help but stare at the monster, because horror is a cousin to awe.

~ Ilsa J. Bick

Congratulations, he said. That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen. His expression was a mix of awe and disbelief. Ever.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

These aren't still shots; the camera is always moving. And the scene is always just slipping out of sight, as if in spite of myself I were always descending a hill, rounding a corner, stepping into the street with a companion who urges me on, while I look back over my shoulder at the sight which recedes, vanishes. The present of my consciousness is itself a mystery which is also always just rounding a bend like a floating branch borne by a flood. Where am I? But I'm not. I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more. . . .

~ Annie Dillard

Newt shook his head, his face a mixture of anger and awe. “What you did was half brave and half bloody stupid. Seems like you’re pretty good at that.

~ James Dashner

I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!” - The Narrator.

~ Nikos Kazantzakis

There are in life a few moments so beautiful,that even words are a sort of profanity.

~ Diana Palmer

I gaze out, to the stars. I remember the first time I saw real stars, through the hatch window. They were beautiful then, but now, seeing them here, all around me, beautiful feels like an inadequate word. I see the stars as a part of the universe, and having spent my life behind walls, suddenly having none fills me with both awe and terror. Emotion courses through my veins, choking me. I feel so insignificant, a tiny speck surrounded by a million stars.A million suns.Centuries away is Sol. Circling around it is Sol-Earth, the planet Amy came from. And one of these other stars is the Centauri binary system, where the new planet spins, waiting for us.And here we are, in the middle, surrounded by a sea of stars.Any of them could hold a planet. Any of them could hold a home.But all of them are out of reach.

~ Beth Revis

There is nothing like taking someone's breath away.

~ Erika Lance

It would be very difficult to draw a line between holy wonder and real worship; for when the soul is overwhelmed with the majesty of God's glory, though it may not express itself in song, or even utter its voice with bowed head in humble prayer, yet it silently adores.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

There is pride, too, though - pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That's how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane.

~ Anthony Doerr

What can we make of the inexpressible joy of children? It is a kind of gratitude, I think—the gratitude of the ten-year-old who wakes to her own energy and the brisk challenge of the world. You thought you knew the place and all its routines, but you see you hadn’t known. Whole stacks at the library held books devoted to things you knew nothing about. The boundary of knowledge receded, as you poked about in books, like Lake Erie’s rim as you climbed its cliffs. And each area of knowledge disclosed another, and another. Knowledge wasn’t a body, or a tree, but instead air, or space, or being—whatever pervaded, whatever never ended and fitted into the smallest cracks and the widest space between stars.

~ Annie Dillard

Thank God I have seen an orange sky with purple clouds. How easy it is to forget that we have the privilege of living in God's art gallery.

~ Erica Goros

Thank God I have seen an orange sky with purple clouds.

~ Erica Goros

Who can be astonished at anything, when he has once been astonished at the manger and the cross? What is there wonderful left after one has seen the Saviour?

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I seek to sensitize and clarify the essential elements of my soul. I will leave striving for the flags of fame and fortune behind and go where the soul beckons without fearing the decisive outcome. I will travel in a world without boundaries and embrace danger and awe. I will stand as a witness to comedy, beauty, and tragedy and apply the principles of artistic and ascetic forms of awareness to overcome the inherent frustration of enduring a fundamentally painful human existence.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The match I struck shall not run deadYou’re my first inhale, my last cigarette.

~ Mie Hansson

It was hard to accept, but when the heart-shed of a faded sparkle was tallied, a dim fullness came over me. Maybe some things are just meant to be cherished the way they are: Unfinished, left unturned, wondering what could be and could have been.

~ Kevin Focke

Sometimes you can't stand the sound of her voice and other times you wonder how you'd even breathe if she wasn't there. That's marriage, and she'll feel the same way.

~ Shannon Stacey

Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence.

~ Paracelsus

Mary.” Turning at the soft sound of her name, she glanced behind herself. Then frowned. “Lassiter?” “I’m over here.” “Where?” She looked all around. “Why is your voice echoing?” “Chimney.” “What?” “I’m stuck in the fucking chimney.” She raced over to the fireplace and got on her hands and knees. Looking up into the dark flue, she shook her head. “Lass? What the hell are you doing up there?” His voice emanated from somewhere above her. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” “What are you—” An arm came down. A very sooty arm that was encased in a red sleeve that had white trim. Or what had been white trim and which was now smudged with ash. “You’re stuck!” she exclaimed. “And thank God no one lit this fire!” “You’re telling me,” he muttered in his disembodied voice. “I had to blow out Fritz’s match like a hundred times before he gave up. Fuck, that sounds dirty. Anyway, just remind me never to try to be Santa for your kid, okay? I’m not doing this again, even for her.” Mary stretched a little farther in, but the logs on the hearth stopped her. “Lassiter. Why can’t you free yourself by dematerializing—” “I’m impaled on a hook that’s iron. I can’t go ghost. And will you just take this?” “Wha

~ J.r. Ward

Having in our childhood felt primal awe for the spectacle of the holiday, we are told to age into feeling sullen and resentful. You are supposed to proclaim Santa dead like preadolescent Nietzsches and decry the whole month as an orgy of crass commercialism.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

I’ve never really had a party before.” “Why did you have one now?” I say, just to keep him talking. He gives a half laugh. “I thought if I had a party, you would come.

~ Lauren Oliver

I could hold you prisoner here for the rest of the day and list everything I love about you, but that’s only half of it,” he explained, turning toward me. “The other half is something I can’t put into words. Something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. It’s something that ties me to you, and you to me. Call it chemistry, call it fate, call it whatever you want. All I know is that I’m yours just as much as you’re mine, Luce. That’s the surest thing I’ve ever known.

~ Nicole Williams

I know you deserve better than me. You think I don’t know that? But if there was any woman made for me … it’s you.

~ Jamie Mcguire

When her daughter was frightened of a thunderstorm, the author pointed out the verse which declares the Heavens reveal the glory of God. When another storm occurred, her daughter ran to the window. Mommy, God's really showing off today!

~ Beth Moore

Wonder at God's merciful love is a very practical emotion. Holy wonder will lead you to grateful worship and heartfelt thanksgiving. It will cause within you godly watchfulness, you will be afraid to sin against such a love as this.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

What are you smiling about?” she asked. He drew back a few inches, cupping her face with both hands. “How did you know I was smiling?” “I could feel it on my lips.” He brought a finger to those lips, tracing the outline, then running the edge of his fingernail along the plump skin. “You make me smile,” he whispered. “When you don’t make me want to scream, you make me smile.”-Sophie & Benedict

~ Julia Quinn

Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a distance one upon another, but this action is so slight at great distances that their trajectories are rectilineal; nevertheless, from time to time, two of them may come near enough together to be deviated from their course, like a comet that passed too close to Jupiter. In a word, in the eyes of a giant, to whom our Suns were what our atoms are to us, the Milky Way would only look like a bubble of gas.

~ Henri Poincaré

...when you look at the stars, you should tremble - only dullards have become callous to this frisson ...

~ John Geddes

Standing before costly objects of technological beauty, we may be tempted to reject the possibility of awe, for fear that we could grow stupid through admiration. We may feel at risk of becoming overimpressed by architecture and engineering, of being dumbstruck by the Bombardier trains that progress driverlessly between satellites or by the General Electric GE90 engines that hang lightly off the composite wings of a Boeing 777 bound for Seoul. And yet to refuse to be awed at all might in the end be merely another kind of foolishness.

~ Alain De Botton

And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine, but it's too late, I'm slipping, I'm gone, he's gone, and the moment curls away and back on itself like a flower folding up for the night.

~ Lauren Oliver

Once you've caught a glimpse of the cosmos through the back doors of your church, it doesn't seem like such a big deal to suggest to a sweet young couple that they quit sleeping with other people.

~ Richard Lischer

Cinders patter, falling with the snow. We creep infinitesimally northward through the dirty chaos of a world in the process of making itself. Praise then Creation unfinished!

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The prosaic fact of the universe's existence alone defeats both the pragmatist and the romantic.

~ Stephen King

There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habitutation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways.

~ Richard Dawkins

But the irony: Don't I often want to desperately wriggle free of the confines of a small life? Yet when I stand before immensity that heightens my smallness--I have never felt sadness. Only burgeoning wonder. Is it because within each frame of finite flesh lies the likeness of infinite God? In all things large and spectacular, we recognize glimpses of home and the call to our own deeper chemistry. Do we writhe to peel out of our smallness and into the big life because that fits our inborn God-image?

~ Ann Voskamp