Spiritual Awe Quotes

It's perfectly clear to me that religion is a myth. It's something we have invented to explain the inexplicable. My religion and the spiritual side of my life come from a sense of connection to the humankind and nature on this planet and in the universe. I am in overwhelming awe of it all: It is so fantastic, so complex, so beyond comprehension. What does it all mean -- if it has any meaning at all? But how can it all exist if it doesn't have some kind of meaning? I think anyone who suggests that they have the answer is motivated by the need to invent answers, because we have no such answers.

To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.

I am more lost in wonder than ever.

If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.

When I think of God I feel like an ant crawling into a computer.

I fear God and next to God I mostly fear them that fear him not.

Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature.

Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us. I don't know of any deeper spiritual feeling than what that brings upon me.

The awe of God is wisdom.

I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books, and praying over, if possible, every line and word...I would be so overpowered with a sense of God's Infinite Majestey, that I would be contrained to throw myself on the ground, and offer my soul as a blank in His hands, to write on it what He pleased.

When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I'm lost, in wonder, love and praise.

The power that holds the sky's majesty wins our worship.

As one sits here in summertime and listens to the cuckoo and all the other bird songs, the crackling and buzzing of insects, as one gazes at the shining colors of flowers, doth one become dumbstruck before the Kingdom of the Creator.

As we come closer to Him, we not only "stand all amazed"-we even kneel all amazed!

A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge.

We have grown so accustomed to the idea of divine love...that we no longer sense the awe that God's coming should awaken in us.

In spite of the fact that religion looks backward to revealed truth while science looks forward to new vistas and discoveries, both activities produce a sense of awe and a curious mixture of humility and arrogance in their practitioners. All great scientists are inspired by the subtlety and beauty of the natural world that they are seeking to understand. Each new subatomic particle, every unexpected object, produces delight and wonderment. In constructing their theories, physicists are frequently guided by arcane concepts of elegance in the belief that the universe is intrinsically beautiful.

The elements and majestic forces in nature, Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire, and Frost, were regarded with awe as spiritual powers, but always secondary and intermediate in character.

Our sense of wonder is a blessing from God, given so that we would be continually amazed at His beauty and creation.

Man should tremble, the world should vibrate, all heaven should be deeply moved when the Son of God appears on the altar in the hands of the priest.

The universe is filled with the evidence of God's greatness. In awesome wonder we can consider the worlds He has made.

Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.

The clearest sensation that a human being has when he experiences the holy is an overpowering and overwhelming sense of creatureliness. That is, when we are in the presence of God, we are humbled and become most aware of ourselves as creatures. This is the opposite of Satan's original temptation, "You shall be as gods.

To me the Bible is not God, but it is God's voice, and I do not hear it without awe

A Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the universe evokes far more awe for creation than light streaming through a stained glass window in a cathedral.