Astonishment Quotes - Page 6

• once, when I was a young lady and on a night express ... I was awakened by a man coming in from the corridor and taking hold of my leg ... Quite as much to my own astonishment as his, I uttered the most appalling growl that ever came out of a tigress. He fled, poor man, without a word: and I lay there, trembling slightly, not at my escape but at my potentialities.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Confidence, Night, Men

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• [On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment.

  Nadia Boulanger

  Music, Women, Years

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• To mourn, perhaps, is simply to prolong a posture of astonishment.

  Sara Suleri

  Grief, Posture, Mourn

  Sara Suleri (2018). “Meatless Days”, p.159, Penguin UK

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• The ideas are secondary to the primary premise of people's potential. I'm always in wonder and astonishment.

  Jean Houston

  Ideas, People, Wonder

  "Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations for the New Millennium". Book by David Jay Brown, Rebecca McClen Novick, mavericksofthemind.com. 1993.

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• Discipline, as understood by a warrior, is creative, open, and produces freedom. It is the ability to face the unknown, transforming the feeling of knowing into reverent astonishment; of considering things that exceed the scope of our habits, and daring to face the only war that is worthwhile: The battle for awareness.

  Carlos Castaneda

  War, Knowing, Discipline

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• Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter theunion, the smaller and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul, he will go up and down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Soul, Secret

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1527, Delphi Classics

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• People who relate what they believe to be new and startling information like to have such information received with exclamations of astonishment and admiration.

  Barbara Mertz

  Believe, People, Information

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• A fool who has a flash of wit creates astonishment and scandal, like hack-horses setting out to gallop.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Horse, Scandal, Fool

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• For how smart we think we are, how facile with words, we don't have a word for this feeling, the feeling of being blessed by belonging. If the universe is an unfolding bud, then I am a part of its creative surge, along with the flowing of water and the growing of pines. I can find a kind of camaraderie in this universe, once I recover from the astonishment of it. Or maybe not camaraderie exactly. What is the opposite of loneliness?

  Kathleen Moore

  Smart, Loneliness, Blessed

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• Central to everything I am and believe and have written is my astonishment, naive as it seems to people, that you can use human speech both to bless, to love, to build, to forgive and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate.

  George Steiner

  Hate, Believe, People

  Interview with D.J.R. Bruckner, www.nytimes.com. 1982.

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• Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement.

  Charles Dickens

  Dumb, Words Of Wisdom, Injustice And Oppression

  Charles Dickens (2006). “Nicholas Nickleby: Easyread Edition”, p.2, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• If you want some advice—which I'm sure you don't—you guys should lay off on the magic. Christian still thinks you're moving in on Lissa." "What?" he asked in mock astonishment. "Doesn't he know my heart belongs to you?" "It does not. And no, he's still worried about it, despite what I've told him." "You know, I bet if we started making out right now, it would make him feel better." "If you touch me," I said pleasantly, "I'll provide you with the opportunity to see if you can heal yourself. Then we'd see how badass you really are.

  Richelle Mead

  Christian, Badass, Moving

  Richelle Mead (2013). “Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection”, p.495, Penguin

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• We came to realise - first with astonishment, then bitterness, and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thing...not ideas, but the system; not freedom, but drill. We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will; but they did everything to knock that out of us.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Ideas, Important, Enthusiasm

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• It was so simple that a flash of astonishment that felt like pain shot through her head. Education! That was it! It was education that made the difference! Education would pull them ut of the grame and dirt.

  Betty Smith

  Pain, Simple, Differences

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• George Lowe was the one who opened the mail, and George started laughing uproariously and I looked up at him in astonishment and said, "What's so funny?" And he said, "You've been given a title", and I said, "Ha, ha, big joke." I didn't believe him but, sure enough, in this letter it indicated that the Queen had given me a title.

  Edmund Hillary

  Queens, Believe, Laughing

  "Sir Edmund Hillary's last ever interview". Interview with Maggie Barry, www.noted.co.nz. January 26, 2008.

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• Much of our understanding of God's action in our lives in achieved in hindsight. When a particular crisis or event in our life has passed we cry out in astonishment like Jacob, 'The Lord is in this place and I never knew it.

  Sheila Cassidy

  Understanding, Events, Action

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• The worship of convention has never yet led to astonishment and a joyous leap in human potential.

  Tama J. Kieves

  Worship, Conventions, Leap

  Tama J. Kieves (2004). “This Time I Dance!: Trusting the Journey of Creating the Work You Love”, Tarcher

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• It certainly strikes the beholder with astonishment, to perceive what vast difficulties can be overcome by the pigmy arms of little mortal man, aided by science and directed by superior skill.

  Henry Tudor

  Science, Men, Skills

  Henry Tudor (1834). “Narrative of a tour in North America: comprising Mexico, the mines of Real de Monte, the United States, and the British colonies; with an excursion to the island of Cuba. In a series of letters, written in the years 1831-2”, p.233

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• It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Party, Heart, Years

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• [I was advised] to read Jordan's 'Cours d'analyse'; and I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that remarkable work, the first inspiration for so many mathematicians of my generation, and learnt for the first time as I read it what mathematics really meant.

  G. H. Hardy

  Inspiration, Science, Firsts

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• Frederick Buechner brings the reader to his knees, sometimes in laughter, sometimes in an astonishment very close to prayer, and at the best of times in a combination of both.

  Michael Mewshaw

  Laughter, Prayer, Knees

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• I say, Watson,’ he whispered, ‘would you be afraid to sleep in the same room as a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?’ ‘Not in the least,’ I answered in astonishment. ‘Ah, that’s lucky,’ he said, and not another word would he utter that night.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Sleep, Night, Men

  Arthur Conan Doyle (1989). “Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories”, p.885, Wordsworth Editions

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• But nowadays everybody's a comedian, even the weather girls and continuity announcers. We laugh at everything. Not intelligently anymore, not with sudden shock, astonishment, or revelation, just relentlessly and meaninglessly. No more rain showers in the desert, just mud and drizzle everywhere, occasionally illuminated by the flash of paparazzi.

  Douglas Adams

  Girl, Rain, Weather

  Douglas Adams (2009). “Mostly Harmless”, p.175, Pan Macmillan

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• A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be true.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Heart, Men, Years

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer”, p.225, Simon and Schuster

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• Dustfinger inspected his reddened fingers and felt the taut skin. ‘He might tell me how my story ends,’ he murmured. Meggie looked at him in astonishment. ‘You mean you don’t know?’ Dustfinger smiled. Meggie still didn’t particularly like his smile. It seemed to appear only to hide something else. ‘What’s so unusual about that, princess?’ he asked quietly. ‘Do you know how your story ends?’ Meggie had no answer for that.

  Cornelia Funke

  Princess, Mean, Skins

  Cornelia Funke (2011). “Inkheart”, p.241, Scholastic Inc.

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