Astonishment Quotes - Page 5

• In extraordinary events ignorance of their causes produces astonishment.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Ignorance, Causes, Events

  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Charles Duke Yonge (1853). “The Treatises of M.T. Cicero: On the Nature of the Gods; On Divination; On Fate; On the Republic; On the Laws; and On Standing for the Consulship”, p.220, London : H.G. Bohn

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• Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Wings, Justice, Diversity

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• So you got rid of your astonishment that someone could write so much more dynamically than you. You stopped cherishing your aloneness and poetic differentness to your delicately flat little bosom. You said: she's to good to forget. How about making her a friend and competitor — you could learn alot from her. So you'll try. So maybe she'll laugh in your face. So maybe she'll beat you hollow in the end. So anyhow, you'll try, and maybe, possibly, she can stand you. Here's hoping!

  Sylvia Plath

  Writing, Laughing, Trying

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• “Simon,” she whispered, vaguely surprised that she had just used his first name, for she had never used it even in the privacy of her thoughts. Moistening her dry lips, she tried once more, and to her astonishment, she did it again. “Simon…” “Yes?” A new tension had entered his long, hard body, and at the same time, his hand moved over the shape of her skull in the softest caress possible. “Please… take me to my room.” Hunt tilted her head back gently and regarded her with a sudden faint smile playing on his lips. “Sweetheart, I would take you to Timbuktu if you asked.“

  Lisa Kleypas

  Hands, Names, Skulls

  "Secrets of a Summer Night". Book by Lisa Kleypas, 2004.

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• If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage." As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips. "Are you dying for him?" she whispered. "And his wife and child. Hush! Yes." "Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?" "Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.

  Charles Dickens

  Children, Eye, Hands

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• I doubt that the phenomenon was any terrestrial reflection, because... nothing of the kind has ever appeared before or since... I was so unprepared for such a strange sight that I was really petrified with astonishment.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Reflection, Sight, Doubt

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• There is that unique moment when one confronts something new and astonishment begins.

  Diane Ackerman

  Weekend, Unique, Moments

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• I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Thinking, Machines, Sometimes

  "Mysterious World (Strange Skies)". TV Series, November 18, 1980.

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• Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.

  E. Lockhart

  Hours, Should, Spending

  E. Lockhart (2014). “We Were Liars”, p.46, Delacorte Press

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• At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Art, Brain

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• Although the constant shadow of certain death looms over everyday, the pleasures and joys of life can be so fine and affecting that the heart is nearly stilled in astonishment.

  Dean Koontz

  Motivational, Heart, Joy

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• Those who have past much of their lives in this great city, look upon its opulence and its multitudes, its extent and variety, with cold indifference; but an inhabitant of the remoter parts of the kingdom is immediately distinguished by a kind of dissipated curiosity, a busy endeavour to divide his attention amongst a thousand objects, and a wild confusion of astonishment and alarm.

  Samuel Johnson

  Past, Cities, Confusion

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.41

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• I can still recall vividly how Freud said to me, "My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark" ... In some astonishment I asked him, "A bulwark-against what?" To which he replied, "Against the black tide of mud"-and here he hesitated for a moment, then added of occultism.

  Carl Jung

  Science, Promise, Black

  Carl Gustav Jung (1973). “Memories, dreams, reflections”, Random House Inc

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• In the aftermath of the recent wave action in the Indian Ocean, even the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williamson [sic], proved himself a latter-day Voltairean by whimpering that he could see how this might shake belief in a friendly creator. Williamson is of course a notorious fool, who does an almost perfect imitation of a bleating and frightened sheep, but even so, one is forced to rub one's eyes in astonishment. Is it possible that a grown man could live so long and still have his personal composure, not to mention his lifetime job description, upset by a large ripple of seawater?

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Jobs, Ocean

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• A lot of what I am looking for is a moment of astonishment, he says. Those moments of pure consciousness when you involuntarily inhale and say 'Wow!'

  Joel Meyerowitz

  Wow, Photographer, Consciousness

  "Joel Meyerowitz: 'brilliant mistakes ... amazing accidents'". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. November 10, 2012.

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• There are some women who seem to be born without fear, just as there are people who are born without the ability to feel pain. The painless ones go around putting their hands on hot stoves, freezing their feet to the point of gangrene, scalding the lining of their throats with boiling coffee, because there is no warning anguish. Evolution does not favour them. So too perhaps with the fearless women, because there aren't very many of them around. ... Providence appears to protect such women, maybe out of astonishment.

  Margaret Atwood

  Pain, Fear, Coffee

  Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The fearsome blessing of that hard time continues to work itself out in my life in the same way we're told the universe is still hurtling through outer space under the impact of the great cosmic explosion.... I think grace sometimes explodes into our lives like that-sending our pain, terror, astonishment hurtling through inner space until by grace they become Orion, Cassiopeia, Polaris to give us our bearings, to bring us into something like full being at last.

  Frederick Buechner

  Pain, Thinking, Hard Times

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• A day will come when man will discover an alphabet in the eyes of the chalcedonies, in the marking of the moth, and will learn in astonishment that every spotted snail has always been a poem.

  Alejo Carpentier

  Eye, Men, Alphabet

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• That`s an astonishment that we`re waiting to find out what the [Donald Trump] policy is, that was the central plank, the central rationale for his candidacy.

  Michelle Goldberg

  Waiting, Trump, Rationale

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our own souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue and knowledge, such inexhaustible sources of perfection. We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for it.

  Joseph Addison

  Heart, Perfection, Soul

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• There were certainly those who rubbed their eyes in astonishment. But when we held a company discussion forum with Joschka Fischer, interest was high. Six hundred senior managers came to the meeting. In the end, there was tremendous applause for Fischer, because he offered a precise analysis of the challenges our industry faces worldwide.

  Norbert Reithofer

  Senior, Eye, Challenges

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: "I know nothing, I want nothing." Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all my knowledge is ignorance, that "I do not know" is the only true statement the mind can make....I do not claim to know what you do not. In fact, I know much less than you do.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Ignorance, Knowing, Mind

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• Astonishment is the proper response to reality.

  Terence McKenna

  Reality, Response

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• Rich men are resolved to be astonished at nothing. When they see a masterpiece, they must needs at one glance recognize some flaw to dispense them from admiration, a vulgar emotion.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Needs, Emotion

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• The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.

  George Sarton

  Acceptance, Simple, Ideas

  George Sarton (1952). “A History of Science: Ancient science through the Golden Age of Greece”

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