Astonishment Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• 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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• 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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• Every time an article is written about me or any of my contemporaries who's had the fortune and discipline to look good at a certain age, I am struck by the tone of astonishment, and the certainty that something is being done secretively to beat the devil.

  Joan Collins

  Discipline, Devil, Age

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• I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know. This painless birth, like an unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure, and with neither toil nor certainty but the joy of frank astonishment I follow the pen that is guiding and supporting me.

  Muriel Barbery

  Teaching, Giving, Joy

  "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". Book by Muriel Barbery, September 2, 2013.

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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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• Later, she would remember these years, and realize with astonishment that she had, by fifteen, decided on most of the assumptions she would carry for the rest of her life: that people were essentially not evil, that perfection was death, that life was better than order and a little chaos good for the soul. Most important, this life was all. Unfortunately, she forgot these things, and had to remember them the hard way.

  Marilyn French

  Order, Years, People

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• I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feelings save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator--our very self-consciousness--is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends.

  Annie Dillard

  Beautiful, Country, Memories

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.80, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Gordon Way's astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing compared to his astonishment at what happened next.

  Douglas Adams

  Way, Next, Shots

  Douglas Adams (2014). “Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

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• One thing he discovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held for him more then just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of Creation. What the music said was that there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and drift, but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument that life did not just happen.

  Charles Frazier

  Powerful, Air, Comforting

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• Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads. (from “Mysteries, Yes”)

  Mary Oliver

  Inspirational, Distance, Thinking

  Mary Oliver (2009). “Evidence: Poems”, p.62, Beacon Press

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• Travel is the art form available to Everyman. You sit in the coffee shop in a strange city and nobody knows who you are, or cares, and so you shed your checkered past and your motley credentials and you face the day unarmed ... And onward we go and some day in the distant future, we will stop and turn around in astonishment to see all the places we've been and the heroes we were.

  Garrison Keillor

  Travel, Art, Hero

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• Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. 'There were stars,' He said. 'They burned my eyes.’ ...from a Himmel street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.

  Markus Zusak

  Stars, Eye, Fire

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• From his soft fur, golden and brown, Goes out so sweet a scent, one night I might have been embalmed in it By giving him one little pet. He is my household's guardian soul; He judges, he presides, inspires All matters in his royal realm; Might he be fairy? or a god? When my eyes, to this cat I love Drawn as by a magnet's force, Turn tamely back upon that appeal, And when I look within myself, I notice with astonishment The fire of his opal eyes, Clear beacons glowing, living jewels, Taking my measure, steadily.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Sweet, Eye, Cat

  Charles Baudelaire, James N McGowan (2008). “The Flowers of Evil”, p.105, Oxford Paperbacks

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• So you got rid of your astonishment that someone could write so much more dynamically than you. You stopped cherishing your aloneness and poetic differentness to your delicately flat little bosom. You said: she's to good to forget. How about making her a friend and competitor — you could learn alot from her. So you'll try. So maybe she'll laugh in your face. So maybe she'll beat you hollow in the end. So anyhow, you'll try, and maybe, possibly, she can stand you. Here's hoping!

  Sylvia Plath

  Writing, Laughing, Trying

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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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• 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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• I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty.

  Jon Krakauer

  Mind, Despair, Facts

  Jon Krakauer (2013). “Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith”, p.304, Pan Macmillan

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• When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Wake Up, Being Myself

  Jorge Luis Borges (1998). “Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations”, p.184, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• For a moment Clary thought she might fall; she felt as if something essential had been torn away from her, an arm or a leg, and she stared at Jace in blank astonishment-- what did he feel, did he feel nothing? She didn't think she could bear it if he felt nothing.

  Cassandra Clare

  Fall, Thinking, Bears

  Cassandra Clare (2009). “City of Ashes”, p.182, Simon and Schuster

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• If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage." As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips. "Are you dying for him?" she whispered. "And his wife and child. Hush! Yes." "Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?" "Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.

  Charles Dickens

  Children, Eye, Hands

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• “Simon,” she whispered, vaguely surprised that she had just used his first name, for she had never used it even in the privacy of her thoughts. Moistening her dry lips, she tried once more, and to her astonishment, she did it again. “Simon…” “Yes?” A new tension had entered his long, hard body, and at the same time, his hand moved over the shape of her skull in the softest caress possible. “Please… take me to my room.” Hunt tilted her head back gently and regarded her with a sudden faint smile playing on his lips. “Sweetheart, I would take you to Timbuktu if you asked.“

  Lisa Kleypas

  Hands, Names, Skulls

  "Secrets of a Summer Night". Book by Lisa Kleypas, 2004.

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• But what we can never do is change the story that has made us what we are. It's a story completely dictated by the accumulation of life's manifold complexities—its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what has happened to us.

  Douglas Kennedy

  Light, Profound, Darkness

  "The Moment: A Novel".

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