Shock Quotes - Page 29

• Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Iron, Hatred, Scorpions

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.46

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• To die: - to sleep: No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Sleep, Heart

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 1, l. 56

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• Mr. [Aldous] Huxley has been the alarming young man for a long time, a sort of perpetual clever nephew who can be relied on to flutter the lunch party. Whatever will he say next? How does he think of those things? He has been deplored once or twice, but feeling is in his favor: he is steadily read. He is at once the truly clever person and the stupid person's idea of the clever person; he is expected to be relentless, to administer intellectual shocks.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Clever, Stupid, Party

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• I don't know how to tell it--but ef such a thing could be
  As the angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me--
  I'd want to 'ccommodate 'em--all the whole-in-durin' flock--
  When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

  James Whitcomb Riley

  Angel, Frost, Ems

  James Whitcomb Riley, “When The Frost Is On The Punkin”

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• The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him stupid is severe.

  Cyril Connolly

  Stupid, Intelligent, Thinking

  Cyril Connolly (1960). “Enemies of promise and other essays: an autobiography of ideas”

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• Laughter lifts our spirits, surprises and sometime shocks our expectations, allows us to cross boundaries, reorders our priorities, and gives us access to ideas and associations we rarely ever thought to have.

  Jean Houston

  Laughter, Ideas, Giving

  Jean Houston (1996). “A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story”, Harpercollins

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• Humor is the shock absorber of life; it helps us take the blows.

  Peggy Noonan

  Humor, Blow, Shock Absorber

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• In the name of equal rights, women are being stripped of the protections of the family and given no place except the perverse competition of a sexual market in which increasingly shock, deviation, and aggressiveness command a premium . . .

  R.J. Rushdoony

  Rights, Names, Competition

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• Shock equals discovery, and if I narrated my past, you'd be pretty grossed out too, I bet - same as if you narrated yours. Aren't we all composed of our past mistakes? Isn't that part of emerging into an adult awareness of the world?

  D. T. Max

  Mistake, Past, Discovery

  Interview with Samuel Cohen, logger.believermag.com. September 11, 2012.

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• There is very little sense that anybody really knows what works or why. But that's not a shock. And I don't think market research would solve that.

  Charlie Huston

  Thinking, Research, Littles

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• It is true fortitude to stand firm against
  All shocks of fate, when cowards faint and die
  In fear to suffer more calamity.

  Philip Massinger

  Fate, Suffering, Coward

  Philip Massinger, William Gifford, John Ferriar (1813). “The Plays of Philip Massinger: The bandman. The renegado. The parliament of love. The Roman actor. The great Duke of Florence”, p.375

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• With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thought to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology.

  Dervla Murphy

  Country, Years, Two

  Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.76, The Overlook Press

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• Mister Cameron - I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me.

  Mercedes Lackey

  Latin, Historical, Greek

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• Only one pair was still battling, apparently unaware of the new arrival. Harry saw Sirius duck Bellatrix's jet of red light: he was laughing at her. 'Come on, you can do better than that!' he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room. The second jet of light hit him squarely in the chest. The laughter had not quite died from his face, but his eyes widened in shock.

  J. K. Rowling

  Laughter, Eye, Light

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• There were now and then, though rarely, the hours that brought the welcome shock, pulled down the walls and brought me back again from my wanderings to the living heart of the world. Sadly and yet deeply moved, I set myself to recall the last of these experiences. It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two of three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart.

  Hermann Hesse

  Wall, Pain, Heart

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• But-" Maia, still looking at Alec and Magnus, broke off and rasied her eyebrows. Simon turned to see what she was looking at - and stared. Alec had his arms around Magnus and was kissing him full on the mouth. Magnus, who appeared to be in a state of shock, stood frozen. Several groups of people - Shadowhunters and Downworlders alike - were staring and whispering. Glancing to the side, Simon saw the Lightwoods, their eyes widen, gaping at the display. Maryse had her hand over her mouth. Maia looked perplexed. "Wait a second," she said. "Do we all have to do that, too?

  Cassandra Clare

  Eye, Kissing, Hands

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• God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.

  Sylvia Plath

  Loneliness, Party, Grief

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.19, Anchor

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• This may come as a shock to some of you, but I have a slightly volatile personality. I don’t suffer fools well.

  Tucker Max

  Personality, Suffering, May

  Tucker Max (2012). “Hilarity Ensues”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

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• The snow has quietness in it; no songs, no smells, no shouts or traffic. When I speak my own voice shocks me.

  Anne Sexton

  Song, Voice, Smell

  Anne Sexton (1964). “Selected poems”

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• Jared glared balefully at the old man, his eyes full of the shock and pain of the betrayed. I had only human comparisons for such a look. Caesar and Brutus, Jesus and Judas.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Jesus, Pain, Eye

  Stephenie Meyer (2009). “The Host”, p.217, Hachette UK

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• With another shock of excitement, Harry saw Sirius give James the thumbs-up. Sirius was lounging in his chair at his ease, tilting it back on two legs. He was very good-looking, his dark hair fell into his eyes with a sort of casual elegance neither James's nor Harry's could ever have achieved, and a girl sitting behind him was eyeing him hopefully, though he didn't seem to have noticed.

  J. K. Rowling

  Girl, Eye, Dark

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• I've always considered myself a good person. I've never done anything to purposely hurt anyone. I was in shock that this happened to me, and because it did, I turned into this vengeful person. I've never truly hated anyone, but I was glad when I saw him lying there on the floor.

  Maya Banks

  Hurt, Lying, Done

  Maya Banks (2011). “Hidden Away”, p.151, Penguin

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• They were not friends. They didn't know each other. It struck Tom like a horrible truth, true for all time, true for the people he had known in the past and for those he would know in the future: each had stood and would stand before him, and he would know time and time again that he would never know them, and the worst was that there would always be the illusion, for a time, that he did know them, and that he and they were completely in harmony and alike. For an instant the wordless shock of his realization seemed more than he could bear.

  Patricia Highsmith

  Past, People, Realization

  Patricia Highsmith (1999). “Talented Mr. Ripley ; Ripley under ground ; Ripley's game”, Random House, Inc.

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• Must have been quite the culture shock, going there.” “Yes it was.” Idris doesn’t say that the real culture shock has been in coming back.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Real, Culture, Coming Back

  Khaled Hosseini (2013). “And the Mountains Echoed”, p.163, A&C Black

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• I'm one, too," he said. "What?" He spit a wad of blood and mucus into the dirt. "A virgin." What a shock. "What makes you think I'm a virgin?" I asked. "You wouldn't have hit me if you weren't.

  Rick Yancey

  Thinking, Blood, Make You Think

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