Astonishment Quotes - Page 2

• A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself - and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?

  Djuna Barnes

  Men, Shadow, Wells

  "Nightwood" by Djuna Barnes, (Ch. 6), 1936.

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• Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Taken, Ignorance, Mean

  "The Bold Truth" by Lazima Tutashinda, (p. 266), January 1, 1997.

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• It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.

  Charles Darwin

  Ideas, Giving, Feelings

  Philip Parker King, Sir Francis Darwin, Robert Fitzroy, Charles Darwin (1839). “Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle: Between the Years 1826 and 1836 ...”, p.29

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• Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before.

  Lewis Thomas

  Learning, Science, Realization

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• Wonder [admiratio astonishment, marvel] is a kind of desire for knowledge. The situation arises when one sees an effect and does not know its cause, or when the cause of the particular effect is one that exceeds his power of understanding. Hence, wonder is a cause of pleasure insofar as there is annexed the hope of attaining understanding of that which one wants to know. ... For desire is especially aroused by the awareness of ignorance, and consequently a man takes the greatest pleasure in those things which he discovers for himself or learns from the ground up.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

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• The unphilosophical and philosophical attitudes can be very sharply distinguished (with scarcely any intermediate forms) by the fact that the first accepts everything that happens as regards its general form, and finds occasion for surprise only in that special content by which something that happens here today differs from what happened there yesterday; whereas for the second, it is precisely the common features of all experience, such as characterise everything we encounter, which are the primary and most profound occasion for astonishment.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Attitude, Philosophical, Yesterday

  "My View of the World" by Erwin Schrodinger, (p. 10), 1961.

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• The overwhelming astonishment, the queerest structure we know about so far in the whole universe, the greatest of all cosmological scientific puzzles, confounding all our efforts to comprehend it, is the earth.

  Lewis Thomas

  Knowledge, Science, Effort

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; they heed not thy vexation. How ludicrous and outlandish is astonishment at anything that may happen in life.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Life, Acceptance, Vex

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• If at first you don't succeed, try hard work.

  William Feather

  Success, Perseverance, Hard Work

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• If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.

  William Edward Hickson

  Inspirational, Success, Perseverance

  "Try and Try Again". Poem by William Edward Hickson,

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• If at first you don't succeed, try management.

  Stephen Hawking

  Success, Perseverance, Persistence

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• I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing but faith and a belief in astonishment.

  Pat Conroy

  Knowing Nothing, Bottles, Passionate

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Lords of Discipline: A Novel”, p.171, Open Road Media

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• The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

  Isaac Asimov

  Inspirational, Funny, Motivational

  "Betting On a Bass That Belts Them Out; Singing Fish Becomes Season’s Unlikely Hit" by Darragh Johnson, The Washington Post, July 30, 2000.

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• We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose-that horse-shoe mouth-that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart-of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress-of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant-of that forked chin-and, above all, of the expression diffused over the whole-that mixture of malice, astonishment, and melancholy. Let the reader, if he can, figure to himself this combination.

  Victor Hugo

  Horse, Eye, Expression

  Victor Hugo (18??). “The Novels of Victor Hugo: Profusely Illustrated with Elegant Wood Engravings”

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• Realism falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Love, Dream, Fall

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• A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.

  Terry Eagleton

  People, Toil, Socialism

  Terry Eagleton (1991). “Ideology: An Introduction”, p.82, Verso

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• At first he was very discouraging, to my astonishment then, but now I fancy he did it as a forlorn hope to check me; he said the whole idea was so disgusting that he could not entertain it for a moment.

  Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

  Hope, Ideas, Fancy

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• The knights of the theater represented to me not only the pinnacle of the profession but the esteem in which the profession was held. To find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me.

  Patrick Stewart

  Knights, Theater, Pinnacle

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• Of all the marvelous works of God, perhaps the one angels view with the most supreme astonishment, is a proud man.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  God, Angel, Pride

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• The wayfarer, Perceiving the pathway to truth, Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds. "Ha," he said, "I see that none has passed here In a long time." Later he saw that each weed Was a singular knife. "Well," he mumbled at last, "Doubtless there are other roads.

  Stephen Crane

  Weed, Truth, Knives

  Stephen Crane (2016). “War Is Kind and Other Poems”, p.33, Courier Dover Publications

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• To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it.

  Alan Watts

  Wise, Technology, Men

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• The history of a man's soul, even the pettiest soul, is hardly less interesting and useful than the history of a whole people; especially when the former is the result of the observations of a mature mind upon itself, and has been written without any egotistical desire of arousing sympathy or astonishment. Rousseau's Confessions has precisely this defect – he read it to his friends.

  Mikhail Lermontov

  Men, People, Interesting

  "A Hero of Our Time". Book by Mikhail Lermontov, 1841.

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• For men, I think, love is a thing formed of equal parts lust and astonishment. The astonishment part women understand. The lust part they only think they understand.

  Stephen King

  Love Is, Men, Thinking

  Stephen King (1999). “Bag Of Bones: A Novel”, p.583, Simon and Schuster

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• I have not professionally dealt in truth. Many when they come to die have spent all the truth that was in them, and enter the next world as paupers. I have saved up enough to make an astonishment there.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Truth, World

  Mark Twain (2010). “Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review”, p.42, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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• If you aren't constantly astonished at God's grace in your solitude, there's no way it can happen in public.

  Timothy Keller

  Grace, Solitude, Way

  Timothy Keller (2015). “Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism”, p.168, Penguin

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