Astonishing Quotes - Page 2

• I find nothing in fables more astonishing than my experience in every hour. One moment of a man's life is a fact so stupendous as to take the luster out of fiction.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Men, Fiction

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Lectures and biographical sketches”

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• If it happens that the human race doesn't make it, then the fact that we were here once will not be altered, that once upon a time we peopled this astonishing blue planet, and wondered intelligently at everything about it and the other things who lived here with us on it, and that we celebrated the beauty of it in music and art, architecture, literature, and dance, and that there were times when we approached something godlike in our abilities and aspirations. We emerged out of depthless mystery, and back into mystery we returned,and in the end the mystery is all there is.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Art, Race, Blue

  James Howard Kunstler (2007). “The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Cent”, p.21, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

  James A. Baldwin

  Mirrors, Order, People

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• And so, it is not astonishing that, though the patient enters therapy insisting that he wants to change, more often than not, what he really wants is to remain the same and to get the therapist to make him feel better. (4)

  Sheldon B. Kopp

  Feel Better, Want, Patient

  SHELDON B KOPP (1972). “IF YOU MEET THE BUDDHA ON THE ROAD KILL HIM THE PILGRIMAGE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY PATIENTS”

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• I moistened my lips. His gaze fixed on them. I think I stopped breathing. He jerked so sharply away that his long dark coat sliced air, and turned his back to me. “Was that an invitation, Ms.Lane?” “If it was?” I asked, astonishing myself. What did I think I was doing? “I don’t do hypotheticals. Little girl.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Girl, Dark, Thinking

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.619, Dell

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• If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws, and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples, dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Eye, Mean, Army

  "Histoire de la Turquie", Volume 1, (p. 277), 1854.

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• Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Miracle, World, Admiration

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1845). “Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments”, p.55

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• The beautiful always retains the freshness of novelty, while the astonishing soon grow tiresome.

  August Bournonville

  Beautiful, Dance, Novelty

  August Bournonville (1979). “My theatre life”, Wesleyan

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• We tend to focus our attention at Christmas on the infancy of Christ.
  The greater truth of the holiday is His deity.
  More astonishing than a baby in the manger is the truth that this promised baby
  is the omnipotent Creator of the heavens and the earth!

  John F. MacArthur

  Christmas, Baby, Holiday

  John F. MacArthur (2006). “Truth for Today: A Daily Touch of God's Grace”, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.' It is astonishing, moreover, how many people are unable to understand that 'X is comforting' does not imply 'X is true'.

  Richard Dawkins

  People, Comforting, Doe

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the ground on which realists stand.

  Kathleen Norris

  Heart, Persistence, Resilience

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• One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

  J. K. Rowling

  Reality, People, Greek

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• It was astonishing that for some considerable distance around the mould growth the staphococcal colonies were undergoing lysis. What had formerly been a well-grown colony was now a faint shadow of its former self...I was sufficiently interested to pursue the subject.

  Alexander Fleming

  Distance, Science, Self

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• Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.

  Carl Sagan

  Dream, Spiritual, Atheist

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• While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice.

  Robert S. Mulliken

  Future, Science, Past

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• astonishing splashes of colour

  James M. Barrie

  Colour

  James M. Barrie (2015). “Peter Pan: Top 100 Classic Novels”, p.4, 谷月社

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• It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself compared with him.

  Emily Bronte

  Feels, Sociable

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.373, Penguin

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• During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trip was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out how to break free. But trying to escape would have been instant suicide.

  Tahir Shah

  Suicide, Work Out, Mind

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• It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves.

  John Bulwer

  Love, Romantic, Valentines Day

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• It's been the most astonishing year because I've been having a marvelous adventure, and yet I kind of sympathize with people who have to live in exile, because I've so missed England.

  Richard Griffiths

  Travel, Adventure, Years

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• Nevertheless, just as I believe that the Book of Scripture illumines the pathway to God, so I believe that the Book of Nature, with its astonishing details-the blade of grass, the Conus cedonulli, or the resonance levels of the carbon atom-also suggest a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less a scientist.

  Owen Gingerich

  Believe, Book, Thinking

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• It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association

  William James

  Educational, Philosophy, Literature

  William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.42, Courier Corporation

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• Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Children, Light, Rose

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• Having observed the forces of all things natural and celestial and having examined by painstaking investigation the sympathy among those things, brings into the open powers hidden and stored away in nature; thus, magic links lower things (as if they were magical enticements) to the gifts of higher things...so that astonishing miracles thereby occur.

  Giambattista della Porta

  Inspiration, Addiction, Miracle

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• Love." She looked at me with those blue eyes. "Isn't it astonishing how confused and complicated such a small,simple word is? It attracts so many other things, doesn't it, that stick to it like barnacles on rock...fear, guilt. Need. You can't even see the rock anymore. I imagine love in its purest form is a rare thing.

  Deb Caletti

  Confused, Eye, Simple

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