The virtue of reverence has been fading out of our conscious lives. We have not lost our capacity for reverence. [or the feeling of awe at ideas such a truth and justice which leads to a respect for other people]. The capacity for virtue belongs to all of us as human beings. What we are losing is a language of behavior — a self-conscious sort of ceremony — that best expresses reverence in daily life; and, along with self-conscious ceremony, we are losing many of the occasions on which people used to find ways to be reverent.
— Paul Woodruff, Reverence