Surprising Quotes - Page 8

• Over and over, we are broken on the shore of life. Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open—not once, and not in predictable patterns, but in surprising ways and for as long as we live.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Heart, Long, Broken

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• Photography makes one conscious of beauty everywhere, even in the simplest things, even in what is often considered commonplace or ugly. Yet nothing is really 'ordinary', for every fragment of the world is crowned with wonder and mystery, and a great and surprising beauty.

  Alvin Langdon Coburn

  Photography, Beauty Everywhere, Ordinary

  Alvin Langdon Coburn, Alison Gernsheim (1978). “Alvin Langdon Coburn, Photographer: An Autobiography with Over 70 Reproductions of His Works”, p.80, Courier Corporation

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• Rule 1. You can't tell where a program is going to spend its time. Bottlenecks occur in surprising places, so don't try to second guess and put in a speed hack until you've proven that's where the bottleneck is

  Rob Pike

  Trying, Speed, Program

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• There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Credit, Facts, Models

  "Quantum Explanations" by Eliezer Yudkowsky, lesswrong.com. April 9, 2008.

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• Keep your life so constantly in touch with God that His surprising power can break through at any point.

  Oswald Chambers

  Break Through, Break

  Oswald Chambers (2010). “My Utmost for His Highest”, p.69, Discovery House

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• No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic

  Richard Dawkins

  Children, Fun, Believe

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• Surprising, I know. Everyone thinks I'm older.

  Sarah J. Maas

  Thinking, Knows

  Sarah J. Maas (2012). “The Assassin and the Underworld: A Throne of Glass Novella”, p.331, A&C Black

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• Abundance flows into my life in surprising and miraculous ways every day.

  Cheryl Richardson

  Way, Flow, Abundance

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• Manlius ... took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and smaller. Caius Valerius, powerful member of a powerful family, had never even heard of Plato. A hundred, even fifty years before, such an absurdity would have been inconceivable. Now it was surprising if such a man did know anything of philosophy, and even if it was explained, he would not wish to understand.

  Iain Pears

  Dream, Powerful, Plato

  Iain Pears (2003). “Dream of Scipio”, p.18, Penguin

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• So it's possible that someday, by understanding a little bit more about how the world works, it will come back to help us in some other way that will be surprising

  Saul Perlmutter

  Understanding, World, Littles

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• Most good writing is clear, vigorous, honest, alive, sensuous, appropriate, unsentimental, rhythmic, without pretension, fresh, metaphorical, evocative in sound, economical, authoritative, surprising, memorable, and light.

  Ken Macrorie

  Memorable, Writing, Light

  Ken Macrorie (1985). “Telling Writing”, Boynton/Cook

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• It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were OK, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that that simply wasn't so.

  Gillian Flynn

  Night, Daylight, Hours

  Gillian Flynn (2009). “Dark Places: A Novel”, p.108, Broadway Books

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• Blumenthal goes straight to the heart in these poems. Gorgeously wrought, surprising, true, wise, elegiac, they leave me with a sense of having listened to Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus. Who could ask for more?

  Lynn Freed

  Wise, Heart, Leaving Me

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• The Amazons is a stupendous achievement--a long-anticipated centerpiece in the great puzzle of humankind. The story of these forbidden women, silenced for so long by the rigidity of traditional scholarship, is as exciting and surprising as a bestselling murder mystery; I simply couldn't put it down. Through scholarly brilliance and passion, Adrienne Mayor has opened the door to a forgotten world of gender equality, and her book ought to be required reading in every college history course.

  Anne Fortier

  Book, Reading, Passion

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• Therapy isn't Radio.We don't need to constantly fill the air with sounds. Sometimes, when its quite, surprising things happen.

  Mary Pipher

  Air, Sound, Needs

  Mary Pipher (2009). “Letters to a Young Therapist: Stories of Hope and Healing: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.49, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Art can make the old surprising, and the new and sudden soothing.

  Eli Siegel

  Art, Fairness, Soothing

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• Science fiction is an amazing literature: plot elements that you would think would be completely worn out by now keep changing into surprising new forms.

  Connie Willis

  Thinking, Elements, Literature

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• I don't know what I expected, but my first morning in the Oval Office had a surprising ring of familiarity to it. It reminded me a lot of my job as governor.

  Ronald Reagan

  Morning, Jobs, Office

  Ronald Reagan (1990). “An American Life”, p.230, Simon and Schuster

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• Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother. Mothers at present can bring children into the world, but this performance is apt to mark the end of their capacities. They can't even attend to the elementary animal requirements of their offspring. It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers.

  Norman Douglas

  Funny, Mother, Children

  Norman Douglas (2014). “South Wind”, p.198, Courier Corporation

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• And the first three cars are all Escorts, which isn't surprising as this is an all Escort race.

  Murray Walker

  Funny, Motor Racing, Race

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• This is one of those rare recipes, surprising in its flavors and wonderful in its simplicity -- an out-and-out favorite of mine.

  Diana Kennedy

  Simplicity, Flavor, Recipes

  Diana Kennedy (1989). “The Art of Mexican Cooking: Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados”, Bantam

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• Being a football manager is no fun at all. You have to put up with all the hassle. It is not surprising that so many turn grey or have heart attacks.

  Ruud Gullit

  Football, Fun, Heart

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• Any serious man or woman in search of spiritual ideas will find a surprising challenge and an authentic source of inspiration and intellectual nourishment in the writings of Paul Brunton.

  Jacob Needleman

  Spiritual, Inspiration, Writing

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• I didn't know who my daddy was until I was 10 or 12. Surprising as it may seem, he was living right across the street.

  Terrell Owens

  Living Right, Daddy, May

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• What is universal can be surprising. Over time you find the kind of stuff which has people thinking 'That is just something that occurred to me there's something wrong with me', is in fact stuff that is universal.

  Dylan Moran

  Thinking, People, Stuff

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