Great Throughts Treasury

"If we imagine ourselves as being every bit as huge, deep, mysterious, and awe-inspiring as the night sky, we might begin to appreciate how complicated we are as individuals, and how much of who we are is unknown not only to others but to ourselves." - Thomas Moore

"No wise man can have a contempt for 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." - William Hazlitt

"Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe: our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell; if not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell. " - William Shakespeare

"Is the universe dead or alive at it's foundation? This is a powerful question. Be prepared for strong points of view; people often have an immediate response. Some people view the universe as non-living at the foundations, see space as empty, matter as inert, and believe that we as living creatures have evolved from empty space and inert matter. “It is nothing more than fantasy and superstition to think the whole universe is alive.” Other people respond instantly, saying, “Of course it's alive, how could you think otherwise? It is incomprehensible that the experiences of awe evoked by the universe could arise unless the universe around us is alive" - Duane Elgin

" Worship is the soul searching for its counterpart. It is a thirsty land crying out for rain. It is a candle in the act of being kindled. It is a drop in quest of the ocean. It is a man listening through a tornado for a Still Small Voice. It is the voice in the night calling for help. It is a sheep lost in the wilderness, pleading for rescue by the Good Shepherd. It is the same sheep nestling in the arms of the Rescuer. It is the Prodigal Son running to his Father. It is a soul standing in awe before the mystery of the Universe. It is a poet enthralled by the beauty of a sunrise. It is a workman pausing for a moment to listen to a strain of music. It is a hungry heart seeking for love. It is Time flowing into Eternity… It is man climbing the altar stairs to God." - Dwight Bradley

"We feel God present in nature, whether in its awe or its beauty; and in human history, whether in its justice or its weird mysteriousness; and in the life of a good man, or the circumstances of a generous or noble act. Most of all we feel Him near when conscience, His inward messenger, speaks plainly and decisively to us." - Henry Parry Liddon

"Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world. " - John Milton

"Critics are the eunuchs of literature. They stand by in envious awe while the whole man and his partner demonstrate the art of living." - John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck

"We fail to wonder... This is the tragedy of every man... Life is routine, and routine is resistance to the wonder. Awe is an act of insight into a meaning greater than ourselves... The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe... Awe is a way of being in rapport with the mystery of all reality... Awe precedes faith; it is at the root of faith. We must grow in awe in order to reach faith... The ineffable inhabits the magnificent and the common, the grandiose and the tiny facts of reality alike... Slight and simple things may be a glimpse of God? kinship with the spirit of being? an eternal flash of a will?" - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"A moment of awe is a moment of self-consecration. They who sense the wonder share in the wonder. They who keep holy the things that are holy shall themselves become holy." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Fear is the anticipation of evil or pain, as contrasted with hope which is the anticipation of good. Awe, on the other hand, is the sense of wonder and humility inspired by the sublime or felt in the presence of mystery. Fear is “a surrender of the succors which reason offers”; awe is the acquisition of insights which the world holds in store for us. Awe, unlike fear, does not make us shrink from the awe-inspiring object, but, on the contrary, draws us near to it. This is why awe is compatible with both love and joy." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The beginning of wisdom is awe. Ultimate meaning and ultimate wisdom are not found within the world but in God, and the only way to wisdom is… through our relationship to God. That relationship is awe. Awe, in this sense, is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding. Awe is itself an act of insight into a meaning greater than ourselves." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"No sight that human eyes can look upon is more provocative of awe than is the night sky scattered thick with stars." - Llewelyn Powys

"Science always has effects, but they are opposing effects one that is destructive and one that is constructive. Science ruled by the intellect will splinter the view of the world into a chaos of details, losing connection to the Whole in the process. Science ruled by spirit, however, turns into wisdom, since it will be deeply moved by the wondrous overall scheme of things and feel respect and awe for the great mind felt to be at work behind it. Such is the difference between learnedness and wisdom. " - Max Bircher-Benner, fully Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner

"Instead of a bottom-line based on money and power, we need a new bottom-line that defines productivity and creativity as where corporations, governments, schools, public institutions, and social practices are judged as efficient, rational and productive not only to the extent they maximize money and power, but to the extent they maximize love and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and our capacities to respond with awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation." - Michael Lerner

"The adventure of composition is a mystery. The muse has her ways, she hides from you, comes for you in the middle of the night, at midday, at dawn. You must believe wholeheartedly in this divine power. Its an elusive gift that can appear at any time, anywhere. Artists are in awe of it." - Mickey Hart, born Michael Steven Hartman

"D.H. Lawrence was very much against your so-called education — it is not education, it is mis-education. Real education can only be based on love, not on knowledge. Real education cannot be utilitarian, real education cannot be of the marketplace. Not that real education will not give you knowledge; first, real education will prepare your heart, your love, and then whatever knowledge is needed to pass through life will be given to you, but that will be secondary. And it will never be overpowering; it will not be more valuable than love. And whenever there is a possibility of any conflict between love and knowledge, real education will help you to be ready to drop your knowledge and move with your love; it will give you courage, it will give you adventure. It will give you space to live, accepting all risks, insecurities; it will help you to be ready to sacrifice yourself if love demands it. It will put love not only above knowledge but even above life, because life is meaningless without love. Love without life is still meaningful; even if your body dies it makes no difference to your love energy. It continues, it is eternal, it is not a time phenomenon. To have a loving heart, you need a little less calculating head. To be capable of loving you need to be capable of wondering. That’s why, Nur, I always say that awe and childlike innocence are deeply related with the energy called love. In fact they are different names for the same thing." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

"Language became a colorless and as indistinct as the business suit which is now worm by everyone, by the scholar, by the businessman, by the professional killer. Being accustomed to a dry and dreary norm and sees in it an obvious sign of arrogance and aggression; viewing authority with almost religious awe he gets into a frenzy when he sees someone pluck the beard of his favorite prophet." - Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend

"There was once a lady who was arrogant and proud. Determined to attain enlightenment, she asked all the authorities how to go about it. She was told, ‘Well, if you climb to the top of this very high mountain, you'll find a cave there. Sitting inside that cave is a wise old woman. She will tell you.’ Having endured great hardships, the lady finally found this cave. Sure enough, sitting there was a gentle spiritual-looking old woman in white clothing, who smiled beatifically. Overcome with awe and respect, the lady prostrated at the feet of this woman and said, I want to attain enlightenment. Show me how. This wise woman looked at her and asked sweetly, Are you sure you want to attain enlightenment? And the woman said, Of course I'm sure. Whereupon the smiling woman turned into a demon, stood up brandishing a great big stick, and started chasing her, saying, Now! Now! Now! For the rest of her life, that lady could never get away from the demon who was always saying, Now! Now--that's the key. Mindfulness trains us to be awake and alive, fully curious, about now. " - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it. " - Albert Einstein

"One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity." - Albert Einstein

"Every time I went to a family gathering, I was the boy who made it. I was a Professor at Harvard and everybody stood around in awe and listened to my every word, and all I felt was that horror that I knew inside that I didn't know. Of course, it was all such beautiful, gentle horror, because there was so much reward involved." - Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert

"The level of awe that you get by contemplating the modern scientific view of the universe: deep time (by which I mean geological time), deep space, and what you could call deep complexity, living things... that level of awe is just orders of magnitude greater and more awe-inspiring than the sort of pokey medieval world-view which the church still actually has. I mean, they sort of pay lip-service to the scientific world-view, but if you listen to what they say on Thought For The Day [a religious radio program] and things like that, it is medieval. It's a small world, a small universe, with the sky up there, very little advance since that time. So I yield to nobody in my awe for the universe and for life, but I also have a deep desire to understand it, in terms of what makes it work, what makes it tick, and not to take refuge in spurious non-explanations like I just believe it because I believe it, that sort of thing." - Richard Dawkins

"I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say look how beautiful it is, and I'll agree. Then he says I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing, and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

"I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It's difficult to describe because it's an emotion. It's analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there's a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run behind the scenes by the same organization, the same physical laws. It's an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It's a feeling of awe " - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

"Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

"There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

"Let anyone who possesses a vivid imagination and a highly-wrought nervous system, even now, in this century, with all the advantages of learning and science, go and sit among the rocks, or in the depths of the wood, and think of immortality, and all that that word really means, and by-and-by a mysterious awe will creep into the mind, and it will half believe in the possibility of seeing or meeting something -- something -- it knows not exactly what." - Richard Jefferies, fully John Richard Jefferies

"It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life." - Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright

"My mother's suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful, baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the restless moving, the futile seeking, the uncertainty, the fear, the dread; the meaningless pain and the endless suffering. Her life set the emotional tone of my life, colored the men and women I was to meet in the future, conditioned my relation to events that had not yet happened, determined my attitude to situations and circumstances I had yet to face. A somberness of spirit that I was never to lose settled over me during the slow years of my mother's unrelieved suffering, a somberness that was to make me stand apart and look upon excessive joy with suspicion, that was to make me keep forever on the move, as though to escape a nameless fate seeking to overtake me. At the age of twelve, before I had one year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering. At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful. It made me want to drive coldly to the heart of every question and it open to the core of suffering I knew I would find there. It made me love burrowing into psychology, into realistic and naturalistic fiction and art, into those whirlpools of politics that had the power to claim the whole of men's souls. It directed my loyalties to the side of men in rebellion; it made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life." - Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright

"The Trial By Existence - Even the bravest that are slain Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign, Even as on earth, in paradise; And where they sought without the sword Wide fields of asphodel fore’er, To find that the utmost reward Of daring should be still to dare. The light of heaven falls whole and white And is not shattered into dyes, The light for ever is morning light; The hills are verdured pasture-wise; The angel hosts with freshness go, And seek with laughter what to brave;— And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff-top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The trial by existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet cry For its suggestion of what dreams! And the more loitering are turned To view once more the sacrifice Of those who for some good discerned Will gladly give up paradise. And a white shimmering concourse rolls Toward the throne to witness there The speeding of devoted souls Which God makes his especial care. And none are taken but who will, Having first heard the life read out That opens earthward, good and ill, Beyond the shadow of a doubt; And very beautifully God limns, And tenderly, life’s little dream, But naught extenuates or dims, Setting the thing that is supreme. Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in its nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth’s unhonored things Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun; And the mind whirls and the heart sings, And a shout greets the daring one. But always God speaks at the end: ’One thought in agony of strife The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life; But the pure fate to which you go Admits no memory of choice, Or the woe were not earthly woe To which you give the assenting voice.’ And so the choice must be again, But the last choice is still the same; And the awe passes wonder then, And a hush falls for all acclaim. And God has taken a flower of gold And broken it, and used therefrom The mystic link to bind and hold Spirit to matter till death come. ‘Tis of the essence of life here, Though we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close, Bearing it crushed and mystified." - Robert Frost

"It's good the great green earth to roam, Where sights of awe the soul inspire; But oh, it's best, the coming home, The crackle of one's own hearth-fire! You've hob-nobbed with the solemn Past; You've seen the pageantry of kings; Yet oh, how sweet to gain at last The peace and rest of Little Things! Perhaps you're counted with the Great; You strain and strive with mighty men; Your hand is on the helm of State; Colossus-like you stride . . . and then There comes a pause, a shining hour, A dog that leaps, a hand that clings: O Titan, turn from pomp and power; Give all your heart to Little Things. Go couch you childwise in the grass, Believing it's some jungle strange, Where mighty monsters peer and pass, Where beetles roam and spiders range. 'Mid gloom and gleam of leaf and blade, What dragons rasp their painted wings! O magic world of shine and shade! O beauty land of Little Things! I sometimes wonder, after all, Amid this tangled web of fate, If what is great may not be small, And what is small may not be great. So wondering I go my way, Yet in my heart contentment sings . . . O may I ever see, I pray, God's grace and love in Little Things. So give to me, I only beg, A little roof to call my own, A little cider in the keg, A little meat upon the bone; A little garden by the sea, A little boat that dips and swings . . . Take wealth, take fame, but leave to me, O Lord of Life, just Little Things." - Robert Service, fully Robert William Service

"FOR A MARRIAGE - Send to the prince’s daughter Her ruddy, fair-eyed king, Like a fruitful branch he blossoms, Transplanted to a spring. Thy Torah has his worship, He runs, to taste its charms, Before Thee like a warrior, Accoutred in his arms. I day by day am waiting Salvation’s promised day, Enquiring how and whence it Will come to be my stay. Restore the tortured People To the friend of her youth divine, And bring the two together To the house of joy and wine." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"As the servant longs for the master’s hand, so craves the cantor’s soul, O extend Thy mercy upon him, rend his debt-recording scroll. "Unto Me return, then will I to thee"—were this Thy word unsaid, Like a captain humbled while at his post he now would droop his head. To Thy servant, Lord, Thou wilt surely ope the penitential way, May his fruit be sweet as he stands to lead our prayers to Thee to-day. As we watch our brother, behold, we note the grey that streaks his hair, And his heart a-swim in a sense of sin as praying stands he there. Let the fervent breath of Thy suppliant be witness for his heart, Let him but return to Thee this once, he never will depart." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"Strayed in mid-youth, rouse up, nor sleep, for lo! The days of youth like clouds of smoke will pass. Ere evening falls, thou shalt be withered grass, Though morning saw thee like a lily blow. Why waste on ancestors a heated breath, Or note which progeny was Abraham’s? Whether his food be herbs or Bashan rams, Man, wretched wight, is on his way to death." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"My heart craves to praise Thee, But I am unable. Would my understanding Were as spacious as Solomon’s. Without it my wisdom As yet ill suffices For expounding Thy wonders And Thy deeds of beneficence Wrought for me and all mankind. Without Thee all’s hopeless, And where is the rock Sustaining, suspending The weight of the world? I am as one orphaned; Nay, on Thee I am cast. What then can I do But look to Thee, wait on Thee, In whose hand is the spirit Of all that is living, In whose hand is the breath Of all the creation?" - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"There is no knowledge that is not impoverished, however rich it should be; but heaven and earth cannot contain the treasures of faith." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"The argument of the long view may be correct in some meaninglessly abstract sense, but it represents a fundamental mistake in categories and time scales. Our only legitimate long view extends to our children and our children's children's children—hundreds or a few thousands of years down the road. If we let the slaughter continue, they will share a bleak world with rats, dogs, cockroaches, pigeons, and mosquitoes. A potential recovery millions of years later has no meaning at our appropriate scale." - Stephan Jay Gould

"God doth not govern the world only by his will as an absolute monarch, but by his wisdom and goodness as a tender father. It is not his greatest pleasure to show his sovereign power, or his inconceivable wisdom, but his immense goodness, to which he makes the other attributes subservient." - Stephen Charnock

"There is an ultimate wildness in all this, for the universe, as existence itself, is a terrifying as well as a benign mode of being. If it grants us amazing powers over much of its functioning we must always remember that any arrogance on our part will ultimately be called to account. The beginning of wisdom in any human activity is a certain reverence before the primordial mystery of existence, for the world about us is a fearsome mode of being. We do not judge the universe." - Thomas Berry

"Consider the end of God’s decrees – and this is no other than His own glory. Every rational agent acts for an end; and God being the most perfect agent, and His glory the highest end, there can be no doubt but all His decrees are directed to that end. “For to Him are all things.”" - Thomas Boston

"A judicious man uses statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted upon him." - Thomas Carlyle

"The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection." - Thomas Paine

"The Purposes of the United Nations are: To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace; To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace; To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends." - United Nations NULL

"His head, not yet by time completely silver'd o'er, bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth, but strong for service still, and unimpair'd." - William Cowper

"I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

"That [haunting fear of being wrong] is the fate of those who break without knowing clearly that Communism is wrong because something else is right, because to the challenge: God or Man?, they continue to give the answer: Man… They are witnesses against something; they have ceased to be witnesses for anything." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

"When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, books only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow." - Washington Irving

"What little man has to accomplish must be done quickly, at the place that is assigned to him and within the time that is allotted to him. And, man has such a formidable task before him; it is to fulfill it that he has come as man, exchanging for this human habitat all the merit he has acquired during many past lives. The task is no less than the manifestation of the Divinity latent in man." -

"Most comic writers like to think they could play it straight if only their public would let them. Waugh is able to be grave without difficulty for he has always been comic for serious reasons. He has his own, almost romantic sense of propriety." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett