Astonishing Quotes - Page 4

• When I compare life to a dream I do not mean to denigrate it as some sort of meaningless fantasy. Life is too wonderful to be called an "illusion" unless we whisper the word in amazement, as we might when witnessing the most astonishing magic trick. What could be more magnificent than this glorious universe, in all its multifarious extravagance? Its awesome vastness and delicate detail. Its impersonal precision and intimate intensity. Its harsh necessities and lush sensuality. This dream of life is truly marvelous.

  Timothy Freke

  Dream, Mean, Gnosis

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• This dogged, same track approach (by the NCI) is even more astonishing.

  George McGovern

  Dark, Track, Age

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• People are actually very good at being communists in the sense that they instantly abandon capitalism, that they love these relationships of mutual aid, because the astonishing thing about disasters is that people are often weirdly joyous in them, because they've recovered a sense of agency, a sense of power, etc.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Agency, People, Etc

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Either the men of Galilee were men of superlative wisdom, and extensive knowledge and experience, and of deeper skill in the arts of deception than any and all others, before them or after them, or they have truly stated astonishing things which they saw and heard.

  Simon Greenleaf

  Art, Men, Skills

  Simon Greenleaf (1847). “An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice: With an Account of the Trial of Jesus”, p.47

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• An astonishing number of kisses are flying about! I see a whole crowd of them. Ha! Ha! I have just caught three - They are delicious... I kiss you millions of times.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Kissing, Emotional, Numbers

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• Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.

  Guy de Maupassant

  Government, People, Politics

  "On the Water". Short story by Guy de Maupassant, 1888.

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• The very fact that a holy, eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, merciful, fair, and just God loves you and me is nothing short of astonishing.

  Francis Chan

  Powerful, Love You, Knowing

  Francis Chan (2013). “Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God”, p.62, David C Cook

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• Many fantasy novels - 'Lord of the Rings', for instance, or 'Lavondyss' by Robert Holdstock - are beautifully written. Geoff Ryman's 'The Child Garden' is exquisite and utterly beguiling. Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast' trilogy is an astonishing piece of multi-faceted storytelling. So quality of writing does not condemn the genre.

  David Gemmell

  Children, Writing, Garden

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• An India free from exploitation from within and without must prosper with astonishing rapidity.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  India, Exploitation

  Mahatma Gandhi (1931). “Young India”

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• You and I are made of stardust. We are the stuff of exploded stars. We are therefore, at least 1 way that the Universe knows itself. That, to me, is astonishing.

  Bill Nye

  Stars, Stuff, Way

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• The idea that the snapshot would be thought of as a cult or movement is very tiresome to me and, I'm sure, confusing to others. It's a swell word I've always liked. It probably came about because it describes a basic fact of photography. In a snap, or small portion of time, all that the camera can consume in breadth and bite and light is rendered in astonishing detail: all the leaves on a tree, as well as the tree itself and all its surroundings.

  Lee Friedlander

  Photography, Light, Ideas

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• Constitutional democracy has created astonishing and apparently irreversible social progress. All we're interested in is talking about when government doesn't work.

  Tony Kushner

  Democracies Have, Government, Talking

  "Tony Kushner, Radical Pragmatist". Interview with Ben Greenman, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2003.

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• I got an amazing 10-CD set, it's the music that Alan Lomax recorded in Haiti in 1936. And what's incredible is how fantastic the drummers are and how off-the-grid they are. The liveliness is astonishing; they're just totally alive, these recordings. It's very interesting, to me, to be reminded of that, that there was a time when things were not that tight.

  Brian Eno

  Cds, Interesting, Alive

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Memoirs have dominated the literary scene now for ten or 20 or even 30 years: most of them seem to use the conventions of fiction and it's astonishing how in so many of these books people seem to be able to remember conversations that took place when they were five years old and give three pages of coherent dialogue, which is utterly impossible.

  Paul Auster

  Book, Years, Giving

  Interview with Lotte Hansen, www.timeout.com.

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• There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics.

  Voltaire

  Math, Science, Imagination

  Voltaire (2016). “Voltaire – The Philosophical Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato’s Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable, Zadig…: From the French writer, historian and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of expression”, p.1187, e-artnow

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• Tom Kealey might be my favorite short story writer and this astonishing collection is long overdue.

  Stephen Elliott

  Long, Story Writers, Stories

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• I always make the business case for sustainability. It's so compelling. Our costs are down, not up. Our products are the best they have ever been. Our people are motivated by a shared higher purpose - esprit de corps to die for. And the goodwill in the marketplace - it's just been astonishing.

  Ray Anderson

  Business, People, Esprit De Corps

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• Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital.

  Sara Sheridan

  Girl, Writing, Character

  "Historic Edinburgh fashion at the City Art Centre" by Sara Sheridan, www.theguardian.com. May 5, 2011.

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• Difficult situations breed astonishing results.

  Jeffrey Veen

  Difficult Situations, Results, Difficult

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• It's an astonishing skill that people can read, and read well. Very few people can read well. For instance, I have to be very careful with irony, saying something while meaning the exact opposite.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Opposites, Skills, People

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. June 12, 2003.

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• We have not made cricket and football [soccer] professional because of any astonishing avarice or new vulgarity. We have made them professional because we would have them perfect. We have dedicated men to them as to some god of inhuman excellence. We care more for football than for the fun of playing football.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Soccer, Sports, Football

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• Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of "eccentricity" it will stand from anybody who takes the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Thinking, Fearless, Bulls

  "A Woman's Thoughts About Women" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, (Ch. 9), 1858.

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• It is astonishing that Monod's Les Adieux are not better known. This courageous French Reformed pastor was both passionate in his care for people and singular in his devotion to God.

  William Edgar

  People, Devotion To God, Passionate

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• Is it not astonishing that the love of repose keeps us in continual agitation?

  Stanisław I Leszczyński

  Agitation, Repose, Uneasiness

  François duc de La Rochefoucauld, Stanisław I Leszczyński (King of Poland) (1851). “Moral Reflections, Sentences and Maxims of Francis, Duc de la Rochefoucauld”, p.164

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• . . .the most astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvelous, the most miraculous. . . the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, the most private till today. . . I cannot bring myself to tell you: guess what it is.

  Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne

  Today, Common, Surprising

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