Surprise Quotes - Page 16

• No matter that you anticipate a thing; you get so used to it as part of the future that its actuality, its arrival, its force and presence, startles you, takes you by surprise, as would a ghost suddenly appearing in the room wearing familiar perfume and boots.

  Lorrie Moore

  Boots, Matter, Rooms

  FaceBook post by Lorrie Moore from Sep 11, 2014

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• The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

  Jean Rostand

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Jean Rostand (1962). “The substance of man”

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• The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Laughing, Interesting

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• Adults can take a simple holiday for Children and screw it up. What began as a presentation of simple gifts to delight and surprise children around the Christmas tree has culminated in a woman unwrapping six shrimp forks from her dog, who drew her name.

  Erma Bombeck

  Christmas, Dog, Children

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• Compare the emotional vocabulary available to a leader (confidence, satisfaction, indignation) with the emotions not permitted (regret, embarrassment, dread, angst, mortification, anger, surprise, wonder, doubt), and it becomes apparent why perfectly normal people, upon entering public life, transform into cartoons - because they are not free to express what a normal person would feel in their situation.

  John MacLachlan Gray

  Regret, Emotional, Vocabulary

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• History is full of surprises.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Life, History

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• Jake leaned on the horn, swearing loudly. Gina covered her eyes. Doc flung his arms around me, burying his face in my lap, and Dopey, to my great surprise, began to scream like a girl, very close to my ear.

  Meg Cabot

  Girl, Eye, Jake

  Meg Cabot (2009). “Mean Spirits”, p.158, Pan Macmillan

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• You gave me back the paradise That I thought I lost for good You helped me find the reasons why It took me by surprise that you understood You knew all along What I never wanted to say Until I learned to love myself I was never ever lovin' anybody else.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Paradise, Reason Why, Love Myself

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• That I had never heard of such a bird did not surprise me.... But others more experienced also did not know of the Carolina Parakeet. The more I spoke of the bird, the more it seemed that, somehow, its existence had been a chimera. Admittedly, my survey was small and unscientific, but intelligent people who could reel off the names of various dinosaurs and identify sparrows at epic distances could not name the forgotten parakeet. I realized, forcefully, what I suppose I knew abstractly: Histories, like species, can go extinct.

  Christopher Cokinos

  Distance, Epic, Intelligent

  Christopher Cokinos (2009). “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds”, p.12, Penguin

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• I could feel myself begin to recede, to tip and lose balance, slide toward the deeper darkness that had crept in from outside. It happened so quickly and took me by surprise; sometimes I just turned around and found it there-ah, camarade-unaware it had been waiting for me for days.

  Bryan Mealer

  Depression, Waiting, Darkness

  Bryan Mealer (2008). “All Things Must Fight to Live: Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo”, Bloomsbury USA

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• The work is primarily subject-driven.  All decisions flow from there. The photographs are all made in response to a unique subject, in particular context, at a specific moment in time. The thoughtful preparedness that defines my working method actually facilitates spontaneity and allows me to embrace surprise. I always have a game plan but view it as merely the jumping off point.

  Gregory Heisler

  Thoughtful, Unique, Jumping

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• Admiration is one of the most bewitching, enthusiastic passions of the mind; and every common moralist knows that it arises from novelty and surprise, the inseparable attendants of imposture.

  William Warburton

  Respect, Passion, Mind

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• Agape's object is always the concrete individual, not some abstraction called humanity. Love of humanity is easy because humanity does not surprise you with inconvenient demands. You never find humanity on your doorstep, stinking and begging.

  Peter Kreeft

  Life, Humanity, Doe

  "Love". Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics, www.peterkreeft.com. 1988.

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• You have not looked at the poor woman for years, for the simple reason that marriage makes things so certain. Marriage makes things so dead and dull. Marriage takes all surprise and wonder away. Marriage makes you take your wife for granted, your husband for granted. What is the need to look at your wife? She will be there tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and forever. You look at people when you know you may not be able to look at them again. Marriage kills; it makes something tremendously beautiful very ugly.

  Rajneesh

  Marriage, Beautiful, Husband

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• ~One surprise of motherhood for me was how little control I have. I thought it would be a blissful romance with me at the helm, cuddling this little creature. It's been bittersweet and humbling to let her lead and to not try to be perfect myself.~

  Amanda Peet

  Parenting, Motherhood, Cuddling

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• War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.

  Karl Kraus

  Hope, Peace, War

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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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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• No other area offers richer opportunities for successful innovation than the unexpected success.

  Peter Drucker

  Success, Opportunity, Innovation

  Peter Drucker (2014). “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, p.53, Routledge

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• I like the most provocative and most surprising partnerships on stage. Intensity and surprise.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Dance, Partnership, Provocative

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• It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that the Internet has evolved into a force strong enough to reflect the greatest hopes and fears of those who use it. After all, it was designed to withstand nuclear war, not just the puny huffs and puffs of politicians and religious fanatics.

  Denise Caruso

  Funny, Sarcastic, Religious

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• The greatest surprise of human evolution may be that the highest form of selfishness is selflessness.

  Robert E. Ornstein

  Motivational, Selfishness, May

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• If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

  Muriel Spark

  Death, Practice, Eggs

  "The prime of Miss Jean Brodie; The comforters; The only problem; The driver's seat; Memento mori".

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• I find no change of consequence in grown people, I do not miss the dead. It does not surprise me to hear that this friend or that friend died at such and such a time, because I fully expected that sort of news. But somehow I had made no calculation on the infants. It never occurred to me that infants grow up...These unexpected changes, from infancy to youth, and from youth to maturity, are by far the most startling things I meet with.

  Mark Twain

  Growing Up, Maturity, People

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• One thing we may be sure of, however: For the believer all pain has meaning; all adversity is profitable. There is no question that adversity is difficult. It usually takes us by surprise and seems to strike where we are most vulnerable. To us it often appears completely senseless and irrational, but to God none of it is either senseless or irrational. He has a purpose in every pain He brings or allows in our lives. We can be sure that in some way He intends it for our profit and His glory.

  Jerry Bridges

  God, Religious, Jesus

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• The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes And gaping mouth, that testified surprise.

  John Dryden

  Stupid, Eye, People

  John Dryden (1855). “The Poetical Works”, p.464

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