Surprise Quotes - Page 12

• Find the best in everybody. Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you. It might even take years, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting.

  Randy Pausch

  Friends, Years, Long

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• We're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford. "..." "And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win." "I care about lots of things," said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty. "Such as?" "Well," said the old man, "life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords." "Would you die for them?" "Fjords?" blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. "No." "Well then." "Wouldn't see the point, to be honest.

  Douglas Adams

  Winning, Men, Fjords

  Douglas Adams (2017). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy in Four Parts”, p.357, Pan Macmillan

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• I went to the door, and Gary tried hard not to notice I was blue. He looked at his feet, and he looked above my head, and he cleared his throat. It's okay,' I said. 'I know I'm blue.' It caught me by surprise,' he said. 'I didn't want to seem rude.

  Janet Evanovich

  Blue, Doors, Feet

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• Nothing will surprise us more than when we get to heaven and see the Father and realize how well we know Him and how familiar His face is to us.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Father, Heaven, Faces

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• Say what you will, but you’re never prepared for the surprise attack.

  Sarah Dessen

  Surprise Attacks, Prepared

  Sarah Dessen (2006). “The Truth About Forever”, p.20, Penguin

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• The commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual;" and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come more or less as a shocking surprise.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Book, Stressed

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.60, Vintage

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• It was a splendid population - for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home - you never find that sort of people among pioneers - you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day - and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, "Well, that is California all over.

  Mark Twain

  Home, Names, California

  Mark Twain (2017). “Mark Twain, the Globetrotter: Complete Travel Books, Memoirs & Anecdotes (Illustrated Edition): A Tramp Abroad, The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Old Times on the Mississippi, Life on the Mississippi, Following the Equator & Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion, With Author’s Biography”, p.999, e-artnow

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• It is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice - guessed and refused to believe - that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return. Yet they do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the rainbow, and they its children...

  Thomas Pynchon

  Children, Believe, Moving

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.165, Penguin

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• At the end of the day faith is a funny thing. It turns up when you don't really expect it. Its like one day you realize that the fairy tale may be slightly different than you dreamed. The castle, well, it may not be a castle. And its not so important happy ever after, just that its happy right now. See once in a while, once in a blue moon, people will surprise you , and once in a while people may even take your breath away.

  Zane Grey

  Moon, Blue, Funny Things

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• "Look," I said, "We knew Jason and Becky would be back, the break would end. This isn't a surprise, it's what's supposed to happen. It's what we wanted. Right?" "Is it?" he asked. "Is it what you want?" Whether he intended it to be or not, this was the final question, the last Truth. If I said what I really thought, I was opening myself up for a hurt bigger than I could even imagine. I didn't have it in me. We changed and altered so many rules, but it was this one, the only one when we'd started, that I would break. "Yes," I said.

  Sarah Dessen

  Hurt, Jason, Would Be

  "The Truth About Forever". Book by Sarah Dessen, 2004.

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• The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it, either. Government office should be received like a child’s Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.

  Orson Scott Card

  Running, Children, Struggle

  Orson Scott Card (2009). “Empire”, p.263, Macmillan

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• From a distance, it makes perfect sense that the people and the things you think will save you are the very ones that have the power to disappoint you most bitterly, but up close it can hit you as a bewildering surprise.

  Tom Perrotta

  Life, Distance, Thinking

  Tom Perrotta (2006). “Joe College: A Novel”, p.263, Macmillan

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• I learned that the search for God is a Dark Night, that Faith is a Dark Night. And that’s hardly a surprise really, because for us each day is a dark night. None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, and yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.

  Paulo Coelho

  Dark, Night, Each Day

  Paulo Coelho (2009). “Brida: A Novel”, p.17, Harper Collins

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• Questions are great, but only if you know the answers. If you ask questions and the answers surprise you, you look silly.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Silly, Looks, Answers

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2002). “Burnt Offerings: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.47, Penguin

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• Rather than dwelling on the past, we should make the most of today, of the here and now, doing all we can to provide pleasant memories for the future…If you are still in the process of raising children be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled, will disappear all too soon, and that you will, to your surprise, miss them, profoundly.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Children, Memories, Past

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• The young man called the waiter and paid. Then he got up and said to the girl: 'We're going.' Where to?' The girl feigned surprise. Don't ask, just come on,' said the young man. Is that any way to talk to me?' It's the way I talk to whores.

  Milan Kundera

  Girl, Men, Way

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• If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise," said the seer. "If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur.

  Paulo Coelho

  Suffering, Pleasant Surprises, Good Things

  Paulo Coelho (1998). “The Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition”, HarperSanFrancisco

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• And those who saw, it did surprise, Such drops could fall from human eyes.

  Lord Byron

  Fall, Eye, Saws

  Lord Byron (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)”, p.956, Delphi Classics

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• I said I 'liked' being half-educated; you were so much more 'surprised' at everything when you were ignorant.

  Gerald Durrell

  Knowledge, Ignorant, Half

  "My Family and Other Animals". Book by Gerald Durrell, 1956.

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• You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

  Bernard Malamud

  Men, Pity, Invention

  Bernard Malamud (1987). “The Fixer”, Isis Large Print Books

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• "What would they do to me," he asked in confidential tones, "if I refused to fly them?" "We'd probably shoot you," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied. "We?" Yossarian cried in surprise. "What do you mean, we? Since when are you on their side?" "If you're going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen retorted.

  Joseph Heller

  Mean, Sides, Tone

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• The fantastic breaks the crust of appearance … something grabs us by the shoulders to throw us outside ourselves. I have always known that the big surprises await us where we have learned to be surprised by nothing, that is, where we are not shocked by ruptures in the order.

  Julio Cortazar

  Order, Rupture, Appearance

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• To a person who expects every desert to be barren sand dunes, the Sonoran must come as a surprise. Not only are there no dunes, there's no sand. At least not the sort of sand you find at the beach. The ground does have a sandy color to it, or gray, but your feet won't sink in. It's hard, as if it's been tamped. And pebbly. And glinting with -- what else -- mica.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Beach, Color, Feet

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• The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Car, Telephones, Morality

  George Bernard Shaw (2004). “Fanny's First Play”, p.7, 1st World Publishing

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• Surprise is the warrior's greatest weapon

  Erin Hunter

  Warrior, Weapons

  Erin Hunter (2011). “Warriors 3-Book Collection with Bonus Material: Warriors #1: Into the Wild; Warriors #2: Fire and Ice; Warriors #3: Forest of Secrets”, p.83, Harper Collins

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