Astonishing Quotes - Page 12

A man will do astonishing things for a woman he is ardent about.

Celeste Bradley

Men, Ardent

Celeste Bradley (2008). “Duke Most Wanted”, p.129, Macmillan

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It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.

Alexander Hamilton

Simple, Men, Path

Alexander Hamilton (1831). “The Federalist on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788, with an Appendix Containing the Letters of Pacificus and Helvidius on the Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793”, p.58

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I'm grateful for the opportunity to live on this beautiful and astonishing planet Earth. In the morning, I wake up with a sense of gratitude.

Earl Nightingale

Beautiful, Gratitude, Morning

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If the great story of the last century was the conflict among various political ideologies-communism, fascism and democracy-then the great narrative of this century will be the changes wrought by astonishing scientific breakthroughs

Cynthia Tucker

Change, Communication, Science

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When the aggregate amount of solid matter transported by rivers in a given number of centuries from a large continent, shall be reduced to arithmetical computation, the result will appear most astonishing to those...not in the habit of reflecting how many of the mightiest of operations in nature are effected insensibly, without noise or disorder.

Charles Lyell

Science, Rivers, Numbers

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There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. ... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.

Voltaire

Math, Science, Imagination

Voltaire (2016). “Voltaire – The Philosophical Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato’s Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable, Zadig…: From the French writer, historian and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of expression”, p.1187, e-artnow

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I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this-never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be-usually is, in fact-a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.

Alexander Fleming

Science, Fate, Discovery

"Molecular cloning: a laboratory manual". Book by Joseph Sambrook, Vol. 1, 153, 2001.

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As my body lay dead on that stretcher (he later recovered from being struck by lightning attracted by his cell phone), I was reliving every moment of my life, including my emotions, attitudes, and motivations. The depth of emotion I experienced during this life review was astonishing. Not only could I feel the way both I and the other person had felt when an incident took place, I could also feel the feelings of the next person they reacted to. I was in a chain reaction of emotion, one that showed how deeply we affect one another.

Dannion Brinkley

Suicide, Motivation, Attitude

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Not everything about me is cute." "That's true, some things are cute. The rest are sexy. Astonishing, agonizingly sexy. It's a wonder I can get anything done at all, when all I ever think about is the way your lips taste or how your fingertips feel on my skin or how your legs are..." "Adrian, shut up.

Richelle Mead

Cute, Sexy, Thinking

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ASTONISHING, said Death. REALLY ASTONISHING. LET ME PUT FORWARD ANOTHER SUGGESTION: THAT YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LUCKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LANGUAGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ONE ANOTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRUIT WAS.

Terry Pratchett

Order, Trying, Suggestions

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Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.

Anne Lamott

Revelations, Given, Materials

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An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation

Steven Levitt

Keys, Incentives, Bullets

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner (2006). “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything”, p.22, Penguin UK

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Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.

Anne Lamott

Expectations, Ponds, Attention

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How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.

Jack Gilbert

Mean, Doe, Language

Jack Gilbert (2012). “Collected Poems”, p.125, Knopf

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Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights...sexual intercourse!...His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.

Mark Twain

Sex, Men, Giving

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It was the drawing that led me to architecture, the search for light and astonishing forms.

Oscar Niemeyer

Light, Drawing, Architecture

"Oscar Niemeyer Talks About Brasilia, Communism, Regrets". Interview with Michael Luongo, www.bloomberg.com. December 7, 2012.

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It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.

Charles Caleb Colton

People, May, Medical

Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time—now, too, I suppose—actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.

Gore Vidal

Thinking, Two, People

FaceBook post by Gore Vidal from Mar 09, 2012

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Astonishing times. Who would have imagined that the Crazy Gang would yield a Hollywood film star (Vinny Jones), a British television ever-present (John Fashanu) and now a televised African dance champion?

Giles Smith

Soccer, Football, Stars

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Not only in geometry, but to a still more astonishing degree in physics, has it become more and more evident that as soon as we have succeeded in unraveling fully the natural laws which govern reality, we find them to be expressible by mathematical relations of surprising simplicity and architectonic perfection. It seems to me to be one of the chief objects of mathematical instruction to develop the faculty of perceiving this simplicity and harmony.

Hermann Weyl

Beauty, Art, Reality

Hermann Weyl (1950). “Space, Time, Matter”, p.23, Courier Corporation

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It is astonishing, how many difficulties clear up without any effort when the inner life gets straightened out. If half the time we spend trying to fix up outward things were spent in getting our hearts right, we would be delighted with the result. Strange as it may seem, harmony within our hearts depends mostly upon our getting into harmony with God.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

Heart, Effort, Trying

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Gabriel Levin's book is a journey through time and through entrenched animosities of the Middle East. What's astonishing and refreshing is his ability to combine the reporter's perspective with a deep knowledge of poetry, including pre-Islamic Arab poems. A brilliant poet is at work here-a poet in the rugged landscape of conflict and pain.

Adam Zagajewski

Pain, Book, Islamic

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First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.

Stephen Greenblatt

Volcanoes, Eruption, Firsts

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Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.

Philip K. Dick

Religious, Real, Writing

"How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later". Speech by Philip K. Dick, published in "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (book by Philip K. Dick), 1978.

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The Noonday Demon explores the subterranean realms of an illness which is on the point of becoming endemic, and which more than anything else mirrors the present state of our civilization and its profound discontents. As wide-ranging as it is incisive, this astonishing work is a testimony both to the muted suffering of millions and to the great courage it must have taken the author to set his mind against it.

W. G. Sebald

Taken, Mirrors, Civilization

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