Surprise Quotes - Page 13

• When one would make a surprise attack on the enemy, he should avoid the major roads and seek out the lesser ones. Then attack.

  Takeda Nobushige

  War, Enemy, Should

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• If you take a man by surprise, and behave with sufficient arrogance, he will generally do what you ask. -Emerson

  Barbara Mertz

  Men, Arrogance, Behave

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• Marriage is a lot like the army, everyone complains, but you'd be surprise at the large number that re-enlist.

  James Garner

  Best Love, Army, Numbers

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• Just like the breakthroughs, the bad stuff always takes you by surprise. (121)

  Gail Giles

  Stuff, Breakthrough, Bad Stuff

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• He's out here, somewhere, and he wants you dead,' she said. 'Him as killed your family. Us in the graveyard, we wants you to stay alive. We wants you to surprise us and disappoint us and impress us and amaze us. Come home, Bod.

  Neil Gaiman

  Home, Alive, Want

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• Can't stay long, Mother," he said. "I'm up front, the prefects have got two compartments to themselves-" "Oh, are you a prefect, Percy?" said one of the twins, with an air of great surprise. "You should have said something, we had no idea." "Hang on, I think I remember him saying something about it," said the other twin. "Once-" "Or twice-" "A minute-" "All summer-" "Oh, shut up," said Percy the Prefect.

  J. K. Rowling

  Summer, Mother, Thinking

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• The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.

  Samuel Johnson

  Essence, Poetry, Delight

  Samuel Johnson (1819). “The lives of the most eminent English poets, with critical observations on their works”, p.201

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• The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass.

  Tennessee Williams

  Glasses, Cities, Pieces

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.97, New Directions Publishing

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• But perhaps this is all to the good. Perhaps it’s best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself, to put at risk everything that’s dear to you. Who reminds you of the distances we have to bridge to begin to know anything about one another. Who reminds you that what seems to be—even about yourself—may not be. That like him, you need to be forgiven.

  Sue Miller

  Distance, Bridges, Risk

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• Who I am, and what I am capable of doing has always managed to surprise me.

  Jodi Picoult

  Who I Am, Surprise Me, Capable

  Jodi Picoult (2007). “Vanishing acts”, p.369, Simon and Schuster

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• Love is the one surprise.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Love Is

  Madeleine L'Engle (2009). “The Ordering of Love: The New & Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle”, p.206, WaterBrook

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• I can't explain the alchemy that transmuted one evening into the equivalent of years held lightly in common. The only way I can put it is that we recognized, too surely even for surprise, that we shared the same currency.

  Tana French

  Years, Way, Evening

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• The future is a trickster rabbit, full of surprises. Only the past is predictable. -Bobby Goodspeed

  James Howe

  Past, Rabbits, Tricksters

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• What surprises you in life? The marvel of consciousness -- that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidts the night of non-being.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Night, Landscape, Consciousness

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• That the sum of a man's life was not where he wound up but in the details that brought him there. That we made mistakes. I closed my eyes, sick of the riddles, and to my surprise all I could see were dandelions-as if they had been painted on the fields of my imagination, a hundred thousand suns. And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.

  Jodi Picoult

  Mistake, Eye, Men

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #4: Change of Heart, Handle with Care, and House Rules”, p.107, Simon and Schuster

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• All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist

  Nicole Krauss

  Parent, World, Made

  Nicole Krauss (2006). “The History of Love: A Novel”, p.10, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Apparently with no surprise To any happy Flower The Frost beheads it at its play -- In accidental power -- The blonde Assassin passes on -- The Sun proceeds unmoved To measure off another Day For an Approving God.

  Emily Dickinson

  Flower, Play, Blonde

  Emily Dickinson (1994). “The Works of Emily Dickinson”, p.98, Wordsworth Editions

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• Did not you? I did for you. But that is one great difference between us. Compliments always take you by surprise, and me never.

  Jane Austen

  Differences, Compliment

  Jane Austen (2016). “Pride and Prejudice (Fourth Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.13, W. W. Norton & Company

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• In life's last scene what prodigies surprise,
  Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise!
  From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
  And Swift expires a driveller and a show.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Wise, Eye

  Samuel Johnson (1820). “The Poems of Dr. Samuel Johnson. To which is Prefixed, a Life of the Author”, p.39

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• I see you brought along your violent little girlfriend. What a nice surprise!" - Saint Dane (The Reality Bug)

  D. J. MacHale

  Girlfriend, Nice, Reality

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• Sara: "You are so brave," I tell her, and then I smile. "When I grow up, I want to be just like you." To my surprise, Kate shakes her head hard. Her voice is a feather, a thread. "No Mommy," she says. "You'd be sick.

  Jodi Picoult

  Growing Up, Voice, Sick

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “My Sister's Keeper - Movie Tie-In: A Novel”, p.70, Simon and Schuster

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• Even I make mistakes." I put on my brash, overconfident face. "I know it's hard to believe—kind of surprises me myself—but I guess it has to happen. It's probably some kind of karmic way to balance out the universe. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair to have one person so full of awesomeness.

  Richelle Mead

  Mistake, Believe, Balance

  Richelle Mead (2008). “Shadow Kiss: A Vampire Academy Novel”, p.46, Penguin

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• Alice thought to herself, 'Then there's no use in speaking.' The voices didn't join in this time, as she hadn't spoken, but to her great surprise, they all thought in chorus (I hope you understand what thinking in chorus means--for I must confess that I don't), 'Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!

  Lewis Carroll

  Mean, Thinking, Voice

  Lewis Carroll “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, Lulu.com

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• Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Simple, Data, Knowing

  Pope Benedict XVI (2009). “Charity in Truth”, p.151, Ignatius Press

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• THE NOTE said the first clue was "in the big one." I looked at the jumble of letters that followed, and I saw no pattern. Not such a surprise, since I was missing the puzzle chromosome and couldn't do puzzles designed for nine-year-olds.

  Janet Evanovich

  Years, Missing, Letters

  Janet Evanovich (2007). “More Plums in One: Four to Score, High Five, and Hot Six”, p.25, Macmillan

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