Unexpected Quotes - Page 38

• The idea that ageing was subject to control was completely unexpected.

  Cynthia Kenyon

  Ideas, Ageing, Subjects

  "Cynthia Kenyon: 'The idea that ageing was subject to control was completely unexpected'". Interview with Catherine de Lange, www.theguardian.com. March 16, 2013.

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• Every parent who has ever said a few words over a goldfish in a toilet bowl
  or felt the numbness of an unexpected diagnosis in a pediatrician's office will appreciate the heartfelt wisdom in It's Okay to Cry. Norm Wright tenderly and skillfully equips parents to help children cultivate a healthy response to life's many pains and sorrows.

  Lori Borgman

  Children, Pain, Heart

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• In trusting, we let ourselves go. We know that all kinds of unexpected events may come our way. Our tension eases, our mind and our hearts open spontaneously to be possibilities. It is an ever new state of mind, in the present moment, because we have detached from all we know. But it is also a feeling as old as can be, because, before all betrayals and all disappointments, there was a time in which trusting another was the very substance of our life.

  Piero Ferrucci

  Disappointment, Betrayal, Heart

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• What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Art, Surprise, Valuation

  Jean Dubuffet, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1993). “Jean Dubuffet 1943-1963: paintings, sculptures, assemblages : an exhibition”, Smithsonian Inst Pr

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• Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available.

  Alain de Botton

  Summer, Berries, Might

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.27, Penguin UK

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• I have friends from rock stars to Rastas; I don't even know what an unexpected friend is.

  Rihanna

  Stars, Rocks, Rasta

  Interview with Laura Brown, www.harpersbazaar.com. February 5, 2015.

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• My great definition of success comes from Thoreau: "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." That always has defined my road to what you call phenomenal success. I have advanced confidently in the direction of my dreams. I have lived the life I imagined, and I have had a ball doing it.

  Wayne Dyer

  Dream, Live Life, Balls

  "Wayne Dyer Interview: On God and goodness, inspiration and presence". Interview with Ray Hemachandra, rayhemachandra.com. September 5, 2015.

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• India is a place where one of the great pleasures for a foreigner is that you're constantly surprised. Everywhere you look is something that is either funny, or very moving, but there is always so much that is so unexpected. That's part of the reason why people who like it tend to love it.

  Wes Anderson

  Moving, People, Looks

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. October 10, 2007.

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• I had but three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship; three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Two, Numbers

  Walden ch. 6 (1854)

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• The element of the unexpected and the unforeseeable is what gives some of its relish to life and saves us from falling into the mechanical thralldom of the logicians.

  Winston Churchill

  Fall, Giving, Expectations

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• Among people I have met, the few whom I would term “great” all share a kind of unquestioned, fierce dedication; an utter lack of doubt about the value of their activities (or at least an internal impulse that drives through any such angst); and above all, a capacity to work (or at least to be mentally alert for unexpected insights) at every available moment of every day of their lives.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Life, Work, Dedication

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• Women hock their jewels and their husbands' insurance policies to acquire an unaccustomed shade in hair or crêpe de chine. Why then is it that when anyone commits anything novel in the arts he should be always greeted by this same peevish howl of pain and surprise? One is led to suspect that the interest people show in these much talked of commodities, painting, music, and writing, cannot be very deep or very genuine when they so wince under an unexpected impact.

  John Dos Passos

  Art, Pain, Husband

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• True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of varietyis but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety.

  Marcel Proust

  Art, Real, Flower

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• Let us consider the polarity of love and hate.... Now, clinical observation shows not only that love is with unexpected regularityaccompanied by hate (ambivalence), and not only that in human relationships hate is frequently a forerunner of love, but also that in many circumstances hate changes into love and love into hate.

  Sigmund Freud

  Love, Hate, Circumstances

  Sigmund Freud (1952). “Major Works”

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• In spite of the fact that religion looks backward to revealed truth while science looks forward to new vistas and discoveries, both activities produce a sense of awe and a curious mixture of humility and arrogance in their practitioners. All great scientists are inspired by the subtlety and beauty of the natural world that they are seeking to understand. Each new subatomic particle, every unexpected object, produces delight and wonderment. In constructing their theories, physicists are frequently guided by arcane concepts of elegance in the belief that the universe is intrinsically beautiful.

  Paul Davies

  Beautiful, Humility, Science

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• Nobody now fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an unexpected blow on our Pacific possessions. Radio makes surprise impossible.

  Josephus Daniels

  Blow, Radio, Impossible

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• An actor must communicate his author's given message--comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.

  Eleanor Robson Belmont

  Power, Unique, Air

  Eleanor Robson Belmont (1957). “The Fabric of Memory”

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• I would have been very happy just cruising around and enjoying the unexpected. I've never been ambitious.

  Christian Bale

  Ambitious, Enjoy, Very Happy

  "Christian Bale May Kill Someone Yet". Interview with John H. Richardson, www.esquire.com. November 15, 2010.

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• In terms of cinema and filmmaking, there are certainly the unexpected gifts that the actors bestow on you. Film is always a question of compromises with respect to what you originally intended.

  Michael Haneke

  Unexpected Gifts, Cinema, Actors

  "Michael Haneke Talks AMOUR, His Inspiration for the Film, His Casting Decisions, Physical and Emotional Demands of the Film and Shooting the Film in French". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. December 14, 2012.

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• New fashions (of all sorts) come from unexpected places, not from the arbiters of what's correct.

  Seth Godin

  Fashion, Unexpected Places, Arbiter

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• Politics is a dirty business, a ruse, an ideological cul-de-sac, a vast looter of intellectual and financial resources, a lie that corrupts, a deceiver, a means of unleashing vast evil in the world of the most unexpected and undetected sort and the greatest diverter of human productivity ever concocted by those who do not believe in authentic social and economic progress.

  Jeffrey Tucker

  Lying, Believe, Dirty

  "Jeffrey Tucker on Laissez Faire Books, Intellectual Property Rights and 'Beautiful Anarchy'". Interview with Anthony Wile, www.thedailybell.com. August 12, 2012.

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• But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all things alive orbrute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Moving, Roots

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1118, Delphi Classics

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• Originality finds the unexpected but inevitable next step.

  Mason Cooley

  Next Steps, Originality, Inevitable

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• Dignity takes alarm at the unexpected sound of laughter.

  Mason Cooley

  Laughter, Alarms, Sound

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• If you can expect the unexpected, you can emotionally lick anyone.

  Benji Durden

  Ifs

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