Surprising Quotes - Page 27

• Vegetables contain more nutriment than an equal amount of dead flesh. This will sound a surprising and incredible statement to many people, because they have been brought up to believe that they cannot exist unless they defile themselves with flesh, and this delusion is so widely spread that it is difficult to awaken the average man from it.

  Charles Webster Leadbeater

  Believe, Men, Vegetarianism

  Charles Webster Leadbeater (1909). “Some Glimpses of Occultism: Ancient and Modern”

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• A great advantage of X-ray analysis as a method of chemical structure analysis is its power to show some totally unexpected and surprising structure with, at the same time, complete certainty.

  Dorothy Hodgkin

  Rays, Analysis, Unexpected

  Dorothy Hodgkin, Guy Dodson (1994). “The collected works of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin”

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• It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Memorable, Woods, Forests

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.111, Courier Corporation

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• Because one has to be an optimist to begin an ambitious project, it is not surprising that underestimation of completion time is the norm.

  Fernando J. Corbato

  Ambitious, Projects, Optimist

  "On Building Systems That Will Fail". Communications of the ACM, Volume 34 Issue 9, dl.acm.org. September 1991.

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• Intrepidity is an extraordinary strength of soul, which raises it above the troubles, disorders and emotions which the sight of great perils can arouse in it; by this strength heroes maintain a calm aspect and preserve their reason and liberty in the most surprising and terrible accidents.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Hero, Sight, Bravery

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• When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

  John le Carre

  Writing, Two, Twenties

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• In view of the importance of philanthropy in our society, it is surprising that so little attention has been given to it by economic or social theorists. In economic theory, especially, the subject is almost completely ignored. This is not, I think, because economists regard mankind as basically selfish or even because economic man is supposed to act only in his self-interest; it is rather because economics has essentially grown up around the phenomenon of exchange and its theoretical structure rests heavily on this process.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Selfish, Men, Thinking

  "Notes on a Theory of Philanthropy". "Philanthropy and Public Policy", edited by Frank G. Dickinson, 1962.

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• Finally, the illusions of validity and skill are supported by a powerful professional culture. We know that people can maintain an unshakeable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. Given the professional culture of the financial community, it is not surprising that large numbers of individuals in that world believe themselves to be among the chosen few who can do what they believe others cannot.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Powerful, Believe, Skills

  Daniel Kahneman (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, p.247, Macmillan

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• . . .the most astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvelous, the most miraculous. . . the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, the most private till today. . . I cannot bring myself to tell you: guess what it is.

  Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne

  Today, Common, Miraculous

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• The best thing is to go from nature's God dawn to nature; and if you once get to nature's God, and believe Him, and love Him, it is surprising how easy it is to hear music in the waves, and songs in the wild whisperings of the winds; to see God everywhere in the stones, in the rocks, in the rippling brooks, and hear Him everywhere, in the lowing of cattle, in the rolling of thunder, and in the fury of tempests. Get Christ first, put Him in the right place, and you will find Him to be the wisdom of God in your own experience.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Song, Nature, Believe

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• Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Religious, Atheist, People

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• What is surprising is that almost all the trends that developed within the sciences, Aristotelianism and an extreme Platonism included, produced results, not only in special domains, but everywhere; there exist highly theoretical branches of biology and highly empirical parts of astrophysics. The world is a complex an many-sided thing.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Special, World, Branches

  "Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Richness". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1999.

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• You're...a demon hunter?' 'It's not as exciting as it sounds,' he said. 'There is a surprising amount of paperwork involved.

  Maureen Johnson

  Sound, Hunters, Demon

  Maureen Johnson (2006). “Devilish”

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• I thought I might cry, the way you do when someone gives you some kindness when you most need it but when it seems the most surprising thing.

  Deb Caletti

  Kindness, Giving, Needs

  Deb Caletti (2012). “Stay”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

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• At such close range, even she could hit a vampire full force in the shoulder, surprising him considerably. He paused in his attack. “Well, my word! You can’t threaten me, you’re pregnant!

  Gail Carriger

  Vampire, Range, Force

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• Tessa, surprising herself, let out a gasp of laughter. Will looked at her, his mouth just beginning to quirk up in a grin. "I must be more amusing than I thought. Which would make me very amusing indeed.

  Cassandra Clare

  Laughter, Mouths, Amusing

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.666, Simon and Schuster

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• Her face ... was a one-of-a-kind, a surprising variation on a familiar theme - a variation that made observers think, Yes - that would be another very nice way for people to look. What Beatrice had done with her face, actually, was what any plain girl could do. She overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Girl, Nice, Thinking

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• I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit. I believe in the journey, not the arrival; in conversation, not monologues; in multiple questions rather than any single answer. I believe in the struggle to remake ourselves and challenge each other in the spirit of eternal forgiveness, in the awareness that none of us knows for sure what happiness truly is, but each of us knows the imperative to keep searching. I believe in the possibility of surprising joy, of serenity through pain, of homecoming through exile.

  Andrew Sullivan

  Pain, Believe, Struggle

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• With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.

  Francine Prose

  Reading, Sight, Temptation

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• The light, the sky, the water, they were all things you looked *through* during the day. At night, they were things you looked *into*. You looked *into* the stars, you looked *into* dark rollers and the surprising platinum flash of their caps.

  Adam Johnson

  Stars, Dark, Night

  Adam Johnson (2012). “The Orphan Master's Son”, p.41, Random House

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• It is surprising that people do not believe that there is imagination in science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Believe, Artist, People

  "The Quotable Feynman".

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• I don't hate it here," she said automatically. Surprising herself, she realized that as much as she'd been trying to convince herself otherwise, she was telling the truth. "It's just that I don't belong here." He gave her a meloncholy smile. "If it's any consolation, when I was growing up, I didn't feel like I belonged here, either. I dreamed about going to New York. But it's strange, because when I finally escaped this place, I ended up missing it more than I thought I would. There's something about the ocean that just calls to me.

  Nicholas Sparks

  New York, Growing Up, Hate

  Nicholas Sparks (2009). “The Last Song”, p.113, Hachette UK

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• Actually,” I said, hesitant to bring it up, “I was thinking along the lines of a curse that can turn you human.” “Or witch?” Ivy said, surprising me. There was a soft vulnerability in her and I blinked. “You don’t want to be a witch,” I said quickly. “Why not? You are.

  Kim Harrison

  Thinking, Ivy, Why Not

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• But we must not underestimate the potency of the mathematical process of abstraction. A surprising variety of things happen to have both magnitude and direction and to combine according to the parallelogram law; and many of them are not at all reminiscent of journeys.

  Banesh Hoffmann

  Journey, Law, Statistics

  Banesh Hoffmann (2012). “About Vectors”, p.8, Courier Corporation

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• Not only in geometry, but to a still more astonishing degree in physics, has it become more and more evident that as soon as we have succeeded in unraveling fully the natural laws which govern reality, we find them to be expressible by mathematical relations of surprising simplicity and architectonic perfection. It seems to me to be one of the chief objects of mathematical instruction to develop the faculty of perceiving this simplicity and harmony.

  Hermann Weyl

  Beauty, Art, Reality

  Hermann Weyl (1950). “Space, Time, Matter”, p.23, Courier Corporation

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