Surprising Quotes - Page 9

• Blumenthal goes straight to the heart in these poems. Gorgeously wrought, surprising, true, wise, elegiac, they leave me with a sense of having listened to Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus. Who could ask for more?

  Lynn Freed

  Wise, Heart, Leaving Me

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• It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were OK, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that that simply wasn't so.

  Gillian Flynn

  Night, Daylight, Hours

  Gillian Flynn (2009). “Dark Places: A Novel”, p.108, Broadway Books

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• Most good writing is clear, vigorous, honest, alive, sensuous, appropriate, unsentimental, rhythmic, without pretension, fresh, metaphorical, evocative in sound, economical, authoritative, surprising, memorable, and light.

  Ken Macrorie

  Memorable, Writing, Light

  Ken Macrorie (1985). “Telling Writing”, Boynton/Cook

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• The pornographers are not a deviation from the norm. Their presence in the mainstream shouldn't be surprising, because they represent mainstream values: The logic of domination and subordination that is central to patriarchy, hyper-patriotic nationalism, white supremacy, and a predatory corporate capitalism.

  Robert Jensen

  Patriotic, White, Logic

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• So it's possible that someday, by understanding a little bit more about how the world works, it will come back to help us in some other way that will be surprising

  Saul Perlmutter

  Understanding, World, Littles

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• Manlius ... took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and smaller. Caius Valerius, powerful member of a powerful family, had never even heard of Plato. A hundred, even fifty years before, such an absurdity would have been inconceivable. Now it was surprising if such a man did know anything of philosophy, and even if it was explained, he would not wish to understand.

  Iain Pears

  Dream, Powerful, Plato

  Iain Pears (2003). “Dream of Scipio”, p.18, Penguin

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• Abundance flows into my life in surprising and miraculous ways every day.

  Cheryl Richardson

  Way, Flow, Abundance

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• Surprising, I know. Everyone thinks I'm older.

  Sarah J. Maas

  Thinking, Knows

  Sarah J. Maas (2012). “The Assassin and the Underworld: A Throne of Glass Novella”, p.331, A&C Black

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• Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?

  Michel Foucault

  School, Prison, Factories

  Michael Kelly, Michel Foucault (1994). “Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate”, p.176, MIT Press

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• No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic

  Richard Dawkins

  Children, Fun, Believe

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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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• The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

  Robert Henri

  Real, Artist, Surprise

  Robert Henri (1960). “The art spirit”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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• Pro-choice and pro-life activists live in different worlds, and the scope of their lives, as both adults and children, fortifies them in their belief that their own views on abortion are the more correct, the more moral, and more reasonable. When added to this is the fact that should 'the other side' win, one group of women will see the very real devaluation of their lives and life resources, it is not surprising that the abortion debate has generated so much heat and so little light.

  Kristin Luker

  Children, Real, Winning

  Kristin Luker (1985). “Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood”, p.215, Univ of California Press

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• The more the climate is forced to change, the more likely it is to hit some unforeseen threshold that can trigger quite fast, surprising and perhaps unpleasant changes.

  Richard Alley

  Climate, Triggers, Threshold

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• Cut through the ridicule and search for factual information in most of the skeptical commentary and one is usually left with nothing. This is not surprising. After all, how can one rationally object to a call for scientific examination of evidence? Be skeptical of the skeptics.

  Bernard Haisch

  Cutting, Examination, Information

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• Playing Lissa was the most thrilling, terrifying, uplifting, fulfilling, surprising, and experience of my life.

  Lucy Fry

  Uplifting, Fulfilling, Thrilling

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• There also exists another alliance - at first glance a strange one, a surprising one - but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists. This alliance is not new. ... We observe continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West of the Soviet Communist leaders.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Thinking, Communist Leaders, Support

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• They that go down to the sea in ships' see strange things, but what they tell is oft-times stranger still. A faculty for romancing is imparted by a seafaring life as readily and surely as a rolling gait and a weather-beaten countenance. A fine imagination is one of the gifts of the ocean-witness the surprising and unlimited power of expression and epithet possessed by the sailor. And a fine imagination will frequently manifest itself in other ways besides swear words.

  Gertrude Bacon

  Inspirational, Funny, Ocean

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• I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thanksgiving, Grateful, Existence

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.373, Penguin

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• Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself.

  Seamus Heaney

  Wise, Needs, Variation

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996”, p.420, Macmillan

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• Women get consumed. Not surprising, considering the sheer amount of traffic a woman's body experiences. Tampons and speculums. Cocks, fingers, vibrators and more, between the legs, from behind, in the mouth.

  Gillian Flynn

  Body, Legs, Mouths

  Gillian Flynn (2012). “The Novels of Gillian Flynn: Sharp Objects, Dark Places”, p.198, Broadway Books

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• Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.

  William Zinsser

  Numbers, Purpose, Paper

  William Zinsser (2012). “On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, p.12, Harper Collins

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• I simply cannot get over what a surprising and wonderful life God has given me.

  Stanley Hauerwas

  Wonderful, Given, Get Over

  Stanley Hauerwas (2012). “Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir”, p.165, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• Solos are like sex, so it's surprising to me that there aren't more guys playing them

  Richie Sambora

  Music, Sex, Guy

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• Imperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter's conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how the democratic citizen could 'participate' substantively in imperial politics; hence it is not surprising that the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates. No major politician or party has so much as publicly remarked on the existence of an American empire.

  Chalmers Johnson

  Party, Elements, Empires

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