Astonishment Quotes - Page 7

• Central to everything I am and believe and have written is my astonishment, naive as it seems to people, that you can use human speech both to bless, to love, to build, to forgive and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate.

  George Steiner

  Hate, Believe, People

  Interview with D.J.R. Bruckner, www.nytimes.com. 1982.

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• A fool who has a flash of wit creates astonishment and scandal, like hack-horses setting out to gallop.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Horse, Scandal, Fool

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• People who relate what they believe to be new and startling information like to have such information received with exclamations of astonishment and admiration.

  Barbara Mertz

  Believe, People, Information

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• Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter theunion, the smaller and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul, he will go up and down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Soul, Secret

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1527, Delphi Classics

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• There were certainly those who rubbed their eyes in astonishment. But when we held a company discussion forum with Joschka Fischer, interest was high. Six hundred senior managers came to the meeting. In the end, there was tremendous applause for Fischer, because he offered a precise analysis of the challenges our industry faces worldwide.

  Norbert Reithofer

  Senior, Eye, Challenges

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The ideas are secondary to the primary premise of people's potential. I'm always in wonder and astonishment.

  Jean Houston

  Ideas, People, Wonder

  "Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations for the New Millennium". Book by David Jay Brown, Rebecca McClen Novick, mavericksofthemind.com. 1993.

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• For how smart we think we are, how facile with words, we don't have a word for this feeling, the feeling of being blessed by belonging. If the universe is an unfolding bud, then I am a part of its creative surge, along with the flowing of water and the growing of pines. I can find a kind of camaraderie in this universe, once I recover from the astonishment of it. Or maybe not camaraderie exactly. What is the opposite of loneliness?

  Kathleen Moore

  Smart, Loneliness, Blessed

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• Discipline, as understood by a warrior, is creative, open, and produces freedom. It is the ability to face the unknown, transforming the feeling of knowing into reverent astonishment; of considering things that exceed the scope of our habits, and daring to face the only war that is worthwhile: The battle for awareness.

  Carlos Castaneda

  War, Knowing, Discipline

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• I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me, I discovered that He had simply given me a different voice to praise the inexhaustible beauty of the made world.

  Pat Conroy

  Writing, Voice, World

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• A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all.

  William Sansom

  Lying, Writing, Evil

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

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• Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Voice, Interesting

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.82, Canongate Books

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• The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted [in the federal convention], and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.

  James Madison

  Real, Reflection, Men

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2003). “The Federalist: With Letters of Brutus”, p.173, Cambridge University Press

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• ...there is a fine line between wishing to produce child-like astonishment and treating people like infants.

  Derren Brown

  Children, People, Magic

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• To my utter astonishment I saw an airship descending over my cow lot. It was occupied by six of the strangest beings I ever saw. They were jabbering together, but we could not understand a word they said.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Together, Cows, Saws

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• One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.

  James A. Baldwin

  Blow, One Day, Kegs

  "Fifth Avenue, Uptown" by James A. Baldwin, www.esquire.com. July 1960.

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• I have a professional acquaintance whose recent eyelid job has left her with a permanent expression of such poleaxed astonishment that she looks at all times as if she had just read one of my books.

  Florence King

  Jobs, Book, Expression

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• In alarming proportions the following words have disappeared from architectural publications: beauty, inspiration, magic, sorcery, enchantment, and also serenity, mystery, silence, privacy, astonishment. All of these have found a loving home in my soul.

  Luis Barragan

  Inspiration, Home, Silence

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• When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.

  Joseph Addison

  Beautiful, Kings, Tombstone

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes ...”, p.83

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• How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment.

  James Madison

  Land, Hurtful, Atheism

  James Madison (1867). “1769-1793”, p.154

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• The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, People, Selfishness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.14

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• The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Stars, Children, Humorous

  "The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, A Defence of Baby-Worship, 1901.

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• The habits of craft, developed day in and day out over a working lifetime, create moments of astonishment, sublime and magical effects, precisely because the writer is not thinking overtly about making art.

  Philip Gerard

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  Philip Gerard (2000). “Writing a Book That Makes a Difference”, Story Press

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• Almost one half of our time is spent in telling and hearing evil of one another ... and every hour brings forth something strange and terrible to fill up our discourse and our astonishment.

  Laurence Sterne

  Evil, Hearing, Half

  Laurence Sterne (1853). “Works ...”, p.588

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• The shortness of life, which we all discuss, but which is very clear to me at the moment, makes keeping and spreading a joyful peace more crucial than ever before. Let us keep our minds on what matters, which is our work, which is astonishment and gratitude. From this quiet magic comes a power for all other new years wishes to come true.

  Martha Beck

  New Year, Gratitude, What Matters

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• Every sky with its varied tints and every feather of each bird were coloured by hand; and when it is considered that nearly two hundred and eighty thousand illustrations in the present work have been so treated, it will most likely cause some astonishment to those who give the subject a thought.

  John Gould

  Book, Sky, Two

  John Gould (1873). “An Introduction to the Birds of Great Britain”, p.4

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