Shock Quotes - Page 21

• Isn't it curious how one has only to open a book of verse to realise immediately that it was written by a very fine poet, or else that it was written by someone who is not a poet at all. In the case of the former, the lines, the images, though they are inherent in each other, leap up and give one this shock of delight. In the case of the latter, they lie flat on the page, never having lived.

  Edith Sitwell

  Lying, Book, Giving

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• We ought always to conform to the manners of the greater number, and so behave as not to draw attention to ourselves. Excess either way shocks, and every man truly wise ought to attend to this in his dress as well as language, never to be affected in anything and follow without being in too great haste the changes of fashion.

  Moliere

  Wise, Fashion, Men

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• The essence of the ludicrous consists in surprise,--in unexpected terms of feeling and explosions of thought,--often bringing dissimilar things together with a shock; as when some wit called Boyle, the celebrated philosopher, the father of chemistry and brother of the Earl of Cork.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Brother, Father, Essence

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• Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Iron, Hatred, Scorpions

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.46

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• To die: - to sleep: No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Sleep, Heart

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 1, l. 56

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• Mr. [Aldous] Huxley has been the alarming young man for a long time, a sort of perpetual clever nephew who can be relied on to flutter the lunch party. Whatever will he say next? How does he think of those things? He has been deplored once or twice, but feeling is in his favor: he is steadily read. He is at once the truly clever person and the stupid person's idea of the clever person; he is expected to be relentless, to administer intellectual shocks.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Clever, Stupid, Party

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• I don't know how to tell it--but ef such a thing could be
  As the angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me--
  I'd want to 'ccommodate 'em--all the whole-in-durin' flock--
  When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

  James Whitcomb Riley

  Angel, Frost, Ems

  James Whitcomb Riley, “When The Frost Is On The Punkin”

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• The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him stupid is severe.

  Cyril Connolly

  Stupid, Intelligent, Thinking

  Cyril Connolly (1960). “Enemies of promise and other essays: an autobiography of ideas”

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• Laughter lifts our spirits, surprises and sometime shocks our expectations, allows us to cross boundaries, reorders our priorities, and gives us access to ideas and associations we rarely ever thought to have.

  Jean Houston

  Laughter, Ideas, Giving

  Jean Houston (1996). “A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story”, Harpercollins

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• Humor is the shock absorber of life; it helps us take the blows.

  Peggy Noonan

  Humor, Blow, Shock Absorber

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• In the name of equal rights, women are being stripped of the protections of the family and given no place except the perverse competition of a sexual market in which increasingly shock, deviation, and aggressiveness command a premium . . .

  R.J. Rushdoony

  Rights, Names, Competition

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• Shock equals discovery, and if I narrated my past, you'd be pretty grossed out too, I bet - same as if you narrated yours. Aren't we all composed of our past mistakes? Isn't that part of emerging into an adult awareness of the world?

  D. T. Max

  Mistake, Past, Discovery

  Interview with Samuel Cohen, logger.believermag.com. September 11, 2012.

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• There is very little sense that anybody really knows what works or why. But that's not a shock. And I don't think market research would solve that.

  Charlie Huston

  Thinking, Research, Littles

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• It is true fortitude to stand firm against
  All shocks of fate, when cowards faint and die
  In fear to suffer more calamity.

  Philip Massinger

  Fate, Suffering, Coward

  Philip Massinger, William Gifford, John Ferriar (1813). “The Plays of Philip Massinger: The bandman. The renegado. The parliament of love. The Roman actor. The great Duke of Florence”, p.375

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• With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thought to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology.

  Dervla Murphy

  Country, Years, Two

  Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.76, The Overlook Press

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• Inevitably, the flood of literary pornography loosed on us is dulling our reactions of surprise or shock. Its writers are forced to raise the ante, to provide stronger and stronger stimulants. Or try to provide them, since both the manner, the naming of parts and the few inexpressive four-letter words, and the matter, are narrowly limited.

  Storm Jameson

  Trying, Stronger, Matter

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• It's always better to shock people and change people's expectations than to give them exactly what they think you can do. It's not unexpected for me to be in a comedy film anymore; I'm no longer the underdog in that world. Not that I'm great or good at it or anything, it's just that I've done a bunch of them, so you're not shocked.

  Jonah Hill

  Thinking, People, Giving

  Interview with Kyle Ryan, www.avclub.com. September 21, 2011.

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• The thing about fame, is you never think it's going to happen to you. So when it does, it's sort of a shock. Some people are just better at it than others.

  Orlando Bloom

  Thinking, People, Doe

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• I wanna begin saying a story about my son. I have a four-year old son who loves superheroes from Spider-Man to Iron Man to Batman. He's got all the costumes. One day he looks at me and says 'Dad, I want to be light-skinned so I could be Spider-Man. Spider-Man has light skin.' That was sort of a shock. This is why I am excited to be a part of the Marvel Universe, so I could be hopefully provide that diversity in the role of the superhero.

  Djimon Hounsou

  Dad, Son, Men

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• Its always a shock to me when I get recognized.

  Bryan Callen

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• I looked at my shoulder and saw a javelin stuck in it. I was in shock.

  Roman Sebrle

  Javelin, Saws, Shoulders

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• There's been shock waves sent throughout all parts of the nation's economic fabric.

  George W. Bush

  Humor, Political, Fabric

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• If the hairs on my neck stand up while Im writing, I figure the reader will get the same kind of shock.

  Andrew Pyper

  Writing, Hair, Necks

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• A consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. Don't insult her intelligence, and don't shock her.

  David Ogilvy

  Wife, Insult, Moron

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• His (Swami Vivekananda) words are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of books, at thirty years' distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shocks, what transports, must have been produced when in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!

  Romain Rolland

  Distance, Hero, Book

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