Surprise Quotes - Page 30

• That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Perpetual

  Rabindranath Tagore (2007). “Stray Birds”, p.6, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• The only way of enduring one disaster after the next is to love the very idea of disaster: if we succeed, there are no further surprises, we are superior to whatever occurs, we are invincible victims.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Ideas, Way, Next

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

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• Tom’s aunt Georgie spoke to me first, and Tom found me through her. At the time, I didn’t actually think Tom was a big enough character to carry a story. If it had to be anyone from Saving Francesca, I thought, it would be Will Trombal or Tara. But the line in Francesca, ‘I want to be the first male in the Mackee family to reach 40 and still have a liver’ stuck with me, and in the end, Tom has been one of the biggest surprises. I’m glad I didn’t kick him out of my head.

  Melina Marchetta

  Character, Aunt, Thinking

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• It surprises me what the girls are capable of doing for me.

  Enrique Iglesias

  Girl, Surprise Me, Capable

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• Are you a person—with volition and maybe some stubbornness and at least the capacity if not the actual determination to do something surprising—or are you a tool? A tool just serves its user. It’s only as good as the skill of its user, and it’s not good for anything else. So if you want to accomplish something special—something more than you can do for yourself—you can’t use a tool. You have to use a person and hope the surprises will work in your favor. You have to use something that’s free to not be what you had in mind.

  Stephen R. Donaldson

  Determination, Skills, Mind

  Stephen R. Donaldson (1982). “The One Tree”, Del Rey

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• Climate helps to shape the character of peoples, certainly no people more than the English. The uncertainty of their climate has helped to make the English, a long-suffering, phlegmatic, patient people rather insensitive to surprise, stoical against storms,. slightly incredulous at every appearance of the sun, touched by the lyrical gratitude of someone who expects nothing and suddenly receives more than he dreamed.

  H. E. Bates

  Dream, Gratitude, Character

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• Where will I be five years from now? I delight in not knowing. That's one of the greatest things about life its wonderful surprises.

  Marlo Thomas

  Life, Years, Knowing

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• Once they are through the process of education, most people lose the capacity of wondering, of being surprised. They feel they ought to know everything, and hence that it is a sign of ignorance to be surprised or puzzled by anything.

  Erich Fromm

  Education, Ignorance, People

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• If you have put your faith in Christ and have spent significant time in the Word of God, the tough times can be like a magnet that draws you to the Lord Jesus. Nothing is going to happen - ever - that will catch Jesus Christ by surprise. He is able to help His children work through anything, and not a single thing is going to happen in the future that can change that fact.

  David Jeremiah

  Christian, Jesus, Children

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• While you don't need a formal written contract before you get married, I think it's important for both partners to spell out what they expect from each other. . . . There are always plenty of surprises- and lots of give and take-once you're married.

  Muriel Fox

  Marriage, Thinking, Giving

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• Went up from my feet to my head,
  With little chills after it stealing-
  And my hands got as numb as the dead.
  A moment, and then it was over:
  The diamond blazed up in my eyes,
  And I saw in the face of my lover
  A questioning, strange surprise.
  Maybe 'twas the scent of the flowers,
  That heavy with fragrance bloomed near,
  But I didn't feel natural for hours;
  It was odd now, wasn't it, dear?
  Write soon to your fortunate Clara
  Who has carried the prize away,
  And say you'll come on when I marry;
  I think it will happen in May.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Flower, Eye, Writing

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.637, Delphi Classics

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• I am absolutely over the moon. The baby's due next June. But I haven't found out the sex of the child and doubt I will. I want it to be a surprise. on news of her pregnancy

  Angela Griffin

  Baby, Sex, Children

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• Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise.

  Jeffery Deaver

  Book, Garden, Twists

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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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• 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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• The mathematician may be compared to a designer of garments, who is utterly oblivious of the creatures whom his garments may fit. To be sure, his art originated in the necessity for clothing such creatures, but this was long ago; to this day a shape will occasionally appear which will fit into the garment as if the garment had been made for it. Then there is no end of surprise and delight.

  George Dantzig

  Art, Math, Science

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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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• To learn is to incur surprise-I mean really learning, not just refreshing our memory or adding a new fact. And to invent is to bestow surprise-I mean really inventing, not just innovating what others have done.

  John H. Lienhard

  Memories, Mean, Science

  John H. Lienhard (2006). “How Invention Begins: Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines”, p.227, Oxford University Press

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• People who think they know what is going to happen next are fools. Surprises - or what the brilliant author Nassim Taleb calls 'Black Swans' - are inevitable. Some are likely to be desperately unpleasant too

  Martin Wolf

  Ignorance, Thinking, Swans

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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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• In Because, Joseph Riippi says he wants this book to be ‘a love letter, a prayer, a purge’ but it actually becomes even more than that. It’s a bursting-at-the-seams dream that cradles so many wishes and passions into its wide scope that it constantly surprises with unexpected turns and brilliant thoughts. It transcends its simple mantra-like structure and becomes a reverberating world of beauty and wonder.

  Kevin Sampsell

  Dream, Prayer, Book

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• Perhaps that is the real surprise of love; it exists, but one may not attribute causes and effects to it. The existence may appear to be a mere fallacy to the minds of some, and by the time they realise what hit them, they would already be down and dead.

  Faraaz Kazi

  True Love, Real, Mind

  Faraaz Kazi (2012). “Truly, Madly, Deeply!: Memoirs of a Broken Heart's First Love!”, p.35, Faraaz Kazi

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