Tracy Kidder Quotes

The ocean, to me, is one of the most terrifying things on the planet.

Compared with the awesome might and eternal power of the ocean, no human being can fail to be reminded of their own insignificance.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

Mountains terrify me - they just sit about; they are so proud.

My favourite thing about being in nature is that I feel so small and kind of insignificant.

Whenever you wonder about yourself, look up at the stars swirling around in the heavens and just realize how tiny and puny they are. They're supposed to be gigantic explosions and they're just these insignificant little dots. If you step back from things far enough you realize how important and powerful you are.

What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

If you ever want to see how small you are in the plan of God, just stand at the edge of an ocean.

For the ocean is big and my boat is small. Find the courage.

The tiger is humbled by memories of prey.

Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance until they have.

The universe does not care what we want.

The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.

The more you care about the powerless, the more power you have. The more you serve those with no influence, the more influence God gives you. The more you humble yourself, the more you're honored by others.

Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe

Human beings any one of us, and our species as a whole are not all-important, not at the center of the world. That is the one essential piece of information, the one great secret, offered by any encounter with the woods or the mountains or the ocean or any wilderness or chunk of nature or patch of night sky.

Lord I do fear / Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.

...and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself negligible.

I think no virtue goes with size;The reason of all cowardiceIs, that men are overgrown,And, to be valiant, must come downTo the titmouse dimension.

Even great men bow before the Sun; it melts hubris into humility.

It is not easy to measure the ocean, but we can be measured by it, confront it, and be in it.

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.

I see in Nature a magnificent structure... that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility.

I'm always happy when I'm surrounded by water, I think I'm a Mermaid or I was a mermaid. The ocean makes me feel really small and it makes me put my whole life into perspective… it humbles you and makes you feel almost like you’ve been baptized. I feel born again when I get out of the ocean.