Astonishment Quotes - Page 3

• In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock aswell as from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common, with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Spiritual, Stars, Night

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.454, Modern Library

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• Is it not better to intimate our astonishment as we pass through this world if it be only for a moment ere we are swallowed up in the yeast of the abyss? I will lift up my hands and say Kosmos.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Hands, World

  "Emerson: The Mind on Fire". Book by Robert D. Richardson, p. 122, March 6, 1995.

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• I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and silent content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life.

  Rupert Brooke

  Life, Pain, Heart

  Rupert Brooke (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Rupert Brooke (Illustrated)”, p.43, Delphi Classics

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• The only thing that should astonish us is that anything can yet astonish us.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Surprise, Should

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• What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of Days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infant's bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Lying, Simple, Men

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• Therefore, no matter how the world makes out in the next few centuries, a large class of readers at least will not be too surprised at anything. They will have been through it all before in fictional form, and will not be too paralyzed with astonishment to try to cope with contingencies as they arise.

  L. Sprague de Camp

  Class, Trying, World

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• It is recorded how towards the end of the eighteenth century a Muslim visitor to England was taken to see the House of Commons at work. He later wrote of his astonishment at finding the that the British Parliament actually made laws and fixed punishments for their infraction - because unlike Muslims the English had not accepted a divine law revealed from heaven and therefore had to resort to such unsatisfactory expedients. Muslims still understand the expression 'the rule of law' very differently than do most Westerners.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Taken, Expression, Law

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• If there be a skeptical star I was born under it. Yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment.

  William Macneile Dixon

  Stars, Born, Skeptical

  William Macneile Dixon (1937). “The human situation”

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• I am interested only in the unknown and I work for my own astonishment.

  Roberto Matta

  My Own

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• The portion of some is to have their afflictions by drops, now one drop and then another; but the dregs of the cup, the wine of astonishment, like a sweeping rain that leaveth no food, did the Lord prepare to be my portion.

  Mary Rowlandson

  Rain, Wine, Suffering

  Mary Rowlandson (2014). “Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”, p.105, Diderot Publishing

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• Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language. Kierkegaard too saw that there is this running up against something, and he referred to it in a fairly similar way (as running up against paradox). This running up against the limits of language is ethics.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Running, Men, Thinking

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• I find to my astonishment that an unhappy marriage goes on being unhappy when it is over.

  Rebecca West

  Divorce, Unhappy, Happy Marriage

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• We look back, already, with astonishment, at the daring outrages committed by despotism, on the reason and rights of man; we look forward with joy, to the period, when it shall be despoiled of all its usurpations, and bound forever in the chains, with which it had loaded its miserable victims.

  James Madison

  Men, Rights, Joy

  James Madison (1867). “1829-1836”, p.467

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• This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration and awe- - that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Flames, Lightning, Admiration

  Oliver Goldsmith (1856). “The Miscellaneous Works: The bee. Essays. An inquiry into the present state of polite learning in Europe. Prefaces and introductions”, p.131

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• Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement.

  Charles Darwin

  Attention, Graduates, Surprise

  Charles Darwin (1872). “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals”, p.278

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• How many men are like trees, already strong and full grown, which are transplanted into some gardens, to the astonishment of those people who behold them in these fine spots, where they never saw them grow, and who neither know their beginning nor their progress!

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Strong, Men, Garden

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• I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Ideas, People

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• She looked at the crowd and she felt simultaneously astonishment that they should stare at her when this event was so personally her own that no communication about it was possible and a sense of fitness that they should be here that they should want to see it. Because the sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being could offer to others.

  Ayn Rand

  Communication, Sight, Achievement

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.176, Penguin

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• Constant reminding ourselves that we not see with our eyes but with our synergetic eye-brain system working as a whole will produce constant astonishment as we notice, more and more often, how much of our perceptions emerge from our preconceptions.

  David Eagleman

  Eye, Perception, Brain

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• You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the law; I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first, else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely undeceived.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Believe, Silly, Men

  Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Carl Schurz, Joseph Choate, Francis F. Browne (2017). “LINCOLN – Complete 7 Volume Edition: Biographies, Speeches and Debates, Civil War Telegrams, Letters, Presidential Orders & Proclamations: Including the Introduction by Theodore Roosevelt & 3 Biographies: The Every-day Life of the President, Lincoln by Carl Shurz and Abraham Lincoln by Joseph H. Choate”, p.805, Madison & Adams Press

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• My reaction to your news is delighted astonishment that Lanark has been judged more popular than a book by Ian Rankin, and only regret that this wonderful honour had no money attached to it!

  Christopher Brookmyre

  Regret, Book, News

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• People travel to marvel at the mountains, seas, rivers and stars and they pass right by themselves without astonishment.

  Saint Augustine

  Stars, Sea, Rivers

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• Rome is an astonishment!

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Rome

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (2016). “Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe: Compiled From Her Letters and Journals by Her Son Charles Edward Stowe”, p.234, Library of Alexandria

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• A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment.

  William Sansom

  States

  'Blue Skies, Brown Studies' (1961) 'From a Writer's Notebook'

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• Most of the time I am sunk in thought, but at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time astonishment, the amazing complex delicacy of the words, the casual ease with which elemental things come together to form a composition that is—whatever the season, wherever I put my besotted gaze—perfect.

  Bill Bryson

  Perfect, Together, Firsts

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