Reverence Quotes

“In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world - to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity - our own capacity for life - that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the creation itself is stifled.
We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.”
― Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House

“Let parents then bequeath to their children not riches but the spirit of reverence.”
― Plato

“You will treat my underwear with the reverence it deserves. Next time, you will stop and appreciate--hell, you'll marvel at the miracle of my ass clad in silk.”
― Molly Harper, How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

“Bond is stronger than blood. The family grows stronger by bond.”
― Itohan Eghide, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“Reverence is an emotion that we can nurture in our very young children, respect is an attitude that we instill in our children as they become school-agers, and responsibility is an act that we inspire in our children as they grow through the middle years and become adolescents.”
― Zoe Weil, Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times

“Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.”
― Gerald Durrell

“Authentic faith leads us to treat others with unconditional seriousness and to a loving reverence for the mystery of the human personality. Authentic Christianity should lead to maturity, personality, and reality. It should fashion whole men and women living lives of love and communion. False, manhandled religion produces the opposite effect. Whenever religion shows contempt or disregards the rights of persons, even under the noblest pretexts, it draws us away from reality and God.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

“Three coins into the sea, Captain. One for the stars, one for the sky and one for the ocean" he says.
"what need have they for money?"
"It's not about need, it's about showing reverence”
― Tricia Levenseller, Daughter of the Siren Queen

“Carrying little Kunta in his strong arms, he walked to the edge of the village, lifted his baby up with his face to the heavens, and said softly, “Fend kiling dorong leh warrata ka iteh tee.” (Behold—the only thing greater than yourself.)”
― Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family

“The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Mind the little things.
Appreciate them.
Revere them, too.”
― Shellen Lubin

“Reverence reduces hostility.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“He’d never really given religion much thought himself. It was just there, one of the basic fundamentals of life and living; Heaven is generally good and one should aspire to end up there, and Hell is decidedly foul and one should generally direct their enemies there.”
― T. A. Miles, Raventide

“How was it possible that he could handle Swiss bankers, West End impresarios, senior partners and seasoned solicitors, but was a quivering wreck in the presence of this man?”
― Jeffrey Archer, A Prisoner of Birth

“By the external appearance of your knowledge, you have attained (high) ranks and reverence with the people! So seek with Allah higher ranks and closeness by virtue of your hidden good deeds. And know that these two ranks, one cancels out the other.”
― Wuhayb ibn al-Wird

“MLK was not generally revered during his lifetime;
He was decried and vilified by the mainstream (white) media.
MLK had Cassandra vision,
and was unstoppable even in death.
Less stoppable in death.

For MLK Day today,
please let's read his most challenging proclamations
and let us revere him for them.”
― Shellen Lubin

“We were two of a kind, the only difference being that he was reverential before all the traditional word magic, and I would steal it if I could. He came to the tradition as a pilgrim, I as a pickpocket.”
― Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

“When once your foot enters the church, be bare.
God is more there, than thou: for thou art there
Only by his permission. Then beware,
And make thyself all reverence and fear.
Kneeling ne’er spoil’d silk stocking: quit thy state
All equal are within the church’s gate.”
― George Herbert, From the Temple

“Without the aid of sacred ceremony or costume, her feelings had turned this man, only a few years older than herself, into a priest, a sort of trust less rare than the fidelity that guards it. Young reverence for one who is also young is the most coercive of all: there is the same level of temptation, and the higher motive is believed in as a fuller force--not suspected to be a mere residue from weary experience.

But the coercion is often stronger on the one who takes the reverence. Those who trust us educate us. And perhaps in that ideal consecration of Gwendolen's, some education was being prepared for Deronda.”
― George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

“For nothing on earth so dulls the soul, or inflicts on it such speedy and sure harm, as when it sees and learns that all the things that ought to be expressed only on bended knee and with the full surrender of oneself, are also being continually expressed without this surrender, and without this bending of the knee.”
― Gertrud von le Fort, El velo de Verónica

“The steadfast practice of being with what is real is one of the truest ways I have come to understand the nature of reverence.”
― Jeanette LeBlanc

“You can learn from a bad example as well as a good one. A discerning person sees clearly the difference between warning and reverence.”
― Aegelis, Sophizo

“After all my childhood years of watching him silently and revering him unquestionably, I took my twenties to spin out against him__not to refute him, but to scream out I was equal to him, a person who was just as funny, just as smart, and just as worthy of talking to.”
― Caitlin Connors, Irishman Dies from Stubbornness: Unbelievable Truths Behind the Life That Launched the Viral Obituary of Christopher Clifford Connors

“Your footprints are a tale of reverence or a record of ignorance.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Herodotus knew to tell a story, you had to respect it first.”
― Fariha Róisín, Survival Takes a Wild Imagination: Poems

“What words could suffice for the tempest within me, for the unbridled storm of thought and breath that swells at the mention of your name?”
― Rise Visuals

“Cultural difference, therefore, is predicated not only across space but also across time. The colonial ideology of progress includes the drive for technological process, and figures time as linear, with technologically progressive societies pushing forward and leaving others behind. The dynamic of past and future is therefore complicated and folded over on itself; the colonised are seen almost literally as not only figures from history but as figures from the colonizer's own past, objects of simultaneous reverence and scorn as primitives.”
― Jessica Langer, Postcolonialism and Science Fiction

“The Almighty is not only at the mountaintops or in the grandeur of galaxies, but in the smallest of details. The rhythm of a heart that beats without our command. The rain that falls unbidden upon thirsty soil. ... To see with eyes of reverence is to see that nothing is ordinary; everything is a sign”
― Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"