Astonishment Quotes

• I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Past, Looks, Sometimes

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Carl Wildman (1953). “Zorba the Greek”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

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• Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.

  Ellis Peters

  Nature, Spring, Contentment

  Ellis Peters (2014). “The Summer Of The Danes”, p.115, Head of Zeus

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• Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Motivational

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• Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

  Paul Tillich

  Philosophy, Roots, Tree

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• We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Science, Survival

  1976 The Selfish Gene, ch.2.

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• There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.

  Mike Nichols

  Falling In Love, Fall, Discovering

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• Live in a perpetual great astonishment.

  Theodore Roethke

  Perpetual

  Theodore Roethke (2006). “Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63”, p.175, Copper Canyon Press

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• Gratitude is the proper response for the absolute astonishment of getting to be alive, and aware, and an essential part of this crazy, sprawling story.

  John Green

  Gratitude, Crazy, Essentials

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• We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

  Ronald Reagan

  Stars, Military, War

  A Time for Choosing (aka "The Speech"), Air date 27 October 1964, Los Angeles, CA

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• I am all astonishment.

  Jane Austen

  Jane Austen (2005). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.33, Prestwick House Inc

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• A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow.

  Djuna Barnes

  Men, Shadow, Accounts

  Djuna Barnes (1995). “Nightwood: The Original Version and Related Drafts”

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• Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Gateways, Explanation

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• Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications.

  Hermann von Helmholtz

  Taken, Curiosity, Facts

  Hermann von Helmholtz, David Cahan (1995). “Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays”, p.97, University of Chicago Press

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• Retain, even in opposition, your capacity for astonishment.

  Thaddeus Stevens

  Capacity, Opposition

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• The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment.

  Celia Green

  Women, Memorable, Science

  The Decline and Fall of Science Aphorisms (p. 1)

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• I find to my mixed astonishment that I do dream, but I didn't know it.

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Dream, Knows

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• Egypt, the Egypt of antiquity, at a later time, exercised a mysterious fascination over me. I recognized a picture of it immediately, without hesitation and astonishment, in an illustrated magazine.

  Pierre Loti

  Egypt, Fascination, Magazines

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• I've been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that's a job where I don't think sex plays much part.

  Nadia Boulanger

  Music, Jobs, Sex

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I have been accused of having believed when I wrote Sex and Temperament that there are no sex differences... This, many readers felt, was too much. It was too pretty. I must have found what I was looking for. But this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what anthropology means, of the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder, that which one would not have been able to guess.

  Margaret Mead

  Science, Air, Listening

  Preface of Margaret Mead "Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies" (p. 26), 1950 edition.

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• The politics of surprise leads through the Gates of Astonishment into the Kingdom of Hope.

  Max Lerner

  Kingdoms, Surprise, Gates

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• I requested the gentlemen to put on their hats, and the ladies their shawls, to avoid catching cold, and then had the windows widely opened. This proceeding caused some astonishment and alarm at first; for the Americans generally have a dread of cold air.

  George Combe

  Fear, Air, Gentleman

  George Combe (1841). “Notes on the United States of North America: During a Phrenological Visit in 1838-9-40”, p.85

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• I must be informed, that one of my great duties was, to obey the priests in all things; and this I soon learnt, to my utter astonishment and horror, was to live in the practice of criminal intercourse with them.

  Maria Monk

  Practice, Criminals, Horror

  Maria MONK, William MONK (pseud?.), Rev. J. J. SLOCUM (1837). “Awful Disclosures ... Second edition, revised by the Rev. J. J. Slocum”, p.47

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• Magic is not about having a puzzle to solve. It's about creating a moment of awe and astonishment. And that can be a beautiful thing.

  David Blaine

  Beautiful, Creating, Magic

  Time Out Interview with Brett Martin, April 1, 1999.

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• The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Baby, Children, Lying

  "The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

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• I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves "Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment."

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Practice, Disorder, Disorganized

  "A Man Without a Country". Book by Kurt Vonnegut, 2005.

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