Surprising Quotes - Page 21

• Country' and 'city' are very powerful words, and this is not surprising when we remember how much they seem to stand for in the experience of human communities. In English, 'country' is both a nation and a part of a 'land'; 'the country' can be the whole society or its rural area. In the long history of human settlements, this connection between the land from which directly or indirectly we all get our living and the achievements of human society has been deeply known.

  Raymond Williams

  Country, Powerful, Land

  Raymond Williams (1975). “The Country and the City”, p.1, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I knew I'd miss you. But the surprising thing is, you never leave me. I never forget a thing. Every kind of love, it seems, is the only one. It doesn't happen twice. And I never expected that you could have a broken heart and love with it too, so much that it doesn't seem broken at all.

  Jodi Lynn Anderson

  Love, Heart, Broken

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• Put the right pitching mechanics together with good health, and there's nothing surprising about lasting a long time.

  Nolan Ryan

  Baseball, Long, Together

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• It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and - even more surprising - it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.

  Seneca the Younger

  Learning, Whole, Dies

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• England is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.

  Stephen Daldry

  Running, Silly, Garden

  "Stephen Daldry Dances to Success with 'Billy Elliot'". IndieWire Interview, www.indiewire.com. October 17, 2000.

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• It is indeed surprising that a man inspite of his belief in the Fire of Jahannum is still able to laugh, and inspite of his belief in Maut he is able to be happy. Inspite of believing in the Reckoning, he commits evil deeds. Inspite of believing in Taqdeer, he grieves. Inspite of observing the world with its changes, he feels contented with it. Inspite of believing in Jannat, he refrains from righteous deeds.

  Moses

  Wisdom, Believe, Islamic

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• I went through one period when I smoked a surprising, a really breath-taking, amount of grass almost every night.

  David Letterman

  Weed, Night, Grass

  "David Letterman's 1984 Playboy Interview. A Candid Conversation with the Comedy Genius In His Youth". Playboy Interview, playboysfw.kinja.com. April 3, 2014.

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• This year has begun hopefully for right thinkers. After all these centuries of feudal barbarism and political slavery, it is surprising to see how the word of 'liberty' sets minds on fire.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Fire, Years, Political

  Napoleon Bonaparte (2010). “The Corsican: The Virtual Diary of Napoleon Bonaparte”, p.4, Fireship Press

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• The reality is that while heliocentrism was discussed and often accepted within Catholic circles - it was effectively the only place where it could be - the more traditional view of the solar system still prevailed even among leading scientists. So it's hardly surprising that Galileo's Catholic judges had difficult accepting his views, especially when they saw themselves as defending scientific orthodoxy and were supported in this by the scientific establishment.

  Michael Coren

  Reality, Views, Circles

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• It's not surprising, therefore, that the [Bisy] Backson thinks of progress in terms of fighting and overcoming. One of his little idiosyncrasies, you might say. Of course, real progress involves growing and developing, which involves changing inside, but that's something the inflexible Backson is unwilling to do.

  Benjamin Hoff

  Real, Fighting, Thinking

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• My writing has a lot of surprising twists.

  Brent Weeks

  Writing, Twists

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• Dad is a really surprising guy. Every time I think he's going to be useless, he ends up doing something amazing and saying exactly the right thing.

  Clare Balding

  Dad, Thinking, Guy

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• It is not surprising that in talking about uncertainty we should lean heavily on facts, just as the court of law does when interrogating witnesses. Facts form a sort of bedrock on which we can build the shifting sands of uncertainty.

  Dennis Lindley

  Talking, Law, Doe

  "Understanding Uncertainty". Book by Dennis Lindley (Chapter 2 "Stylistic Questions", p. 19), 2006.

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• The most important thing in comedy - apart from empathy, which I think is important even if disguised - is surprise. I like surprising people with the fact that something's even a joke at all.

  Ricky Gervais

  Thinking, People, Empathy

  "Ricky Gervais: The ESQ+A". Interview with Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. January 12, 2012.

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• As for my diet, I try to eat lean, clean and healthy - nothing too surprising. And I avoid too much meat or dairy because they slow you down.

  Bear Grylls

  Healthy, Trying, Meat

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• Part of the power of Emerson's individualism is his insistence, at crucial moments, that individualism does not mean isolation or self-sufficiency. This is not a paradox, for it is only the strong individual who can frankly concede the sometimes surprising extent of his own dependence.

  Robert D. Richardson

  Strong, Mean, Thinking

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• The image of the frontier is probably one of the oldest images of mankind, and it is not surprising that we should find it hard to get rid of.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Land, Should, Mankind

  Kenneth E. Boulding, Harold J. Barnett, Rene Dubos, Leonard J. Duhl, Ralph Turvey, Roland N. McKean, Allen V. Kneese, M. Mason Gaffney, Gilbert F. White, David Lowenthal, Norton E. Long, Jacob H. Beuscher (1966). “Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy”

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• End-of-the-world stories tend to ring true. I've always been drawn to them, but as I wrote my own, I found surprising pleasure in creating a world that is so radically changed, yet where there's so much meaning and value in every small and ordinary thing we have, and take for granted: hot showers, enough food, friends, routines.

  Karen Thompson Walker

  Creating, Hot, Stories

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• Melrose is the finest remaining specimen of Gothic architecture in Scotland. Some of the sculptured flowers in the cloister arches are remarkably beautiful and delicate, and the two windows - the south and east oriels - are of a lightness and grace of execution really surprising.

  Bayard Taylor

  Beautiful, Flower, Scotland

  Bayard Taylor (1875). “Views A-foot: Or, Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff”, p.69

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• It's really surprising that what you put on paper, people will believe.

  Chaske Spencer

  Believe, People, Paper

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• To walk into Bill Olsen's poems is to enter a mind so weirdly curious, you can't be released to sadness, not yet: it's just too surprising.  But this book-half microscope, half telescope-shadows grief, our shared and ordinary life where an old neighbor obsessively gathers twigs to wish back the tree, where the moon is regularly ‘sawn in half,’ where sprinklers give off ‘little wet speeches.’  What else?  It's brilliantly instead and odd.

  Marianne Boruch

  Grief, Book, Sadness

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• It does surprise me that intelligent people in the 21st century could claim that if you respond to the terrorists with force, you spawn terrorism, but if you appease them, you somehow tame them. This argument, as I said, is very interesting, and very surprising.

  Meles Zenawi

  Intelligent, Interesting, People

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• Every computer divides itself into its hardware and its software, the machine host to its algorithm, the human being to his mind. It is hardly surprising that men and women have done what computers now do long before computers could do anything at all. The dissociation between mind and matter in men and machines is very striking; it suggests that almost any stable and reliable organization of material objects can execute an algorithm and so come to command some form of intelligence.

  David Berlinski

  Men, Organization, Long

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• I don't think it's surprising we will have to look for them. I'm confident that when the Iraq Survey Group has done its work we will find what's happened to those weapons because he had them.

  Tony Blair

  Thinking, Iraq, Groups

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• The surprising thing is that I was not funny in high school. I was always jealous of the funny kids because they always got the girls. I couldn't tell a joke to save my life.

  Sean William Scott

  Girl, Jealous, School

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