Surprising Quotes

Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprising. (Václav Havel)
In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it. View quote
Alexander Smith
When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances fit in with them. View quote
William Osler
True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing. View quote
Jean Cocteau
By 3000 B.C. the art of Egypt was so ripe and so far advanced that it is surprising to find any student of early culture proposing that the crude contemporary art of the early Babylonians is the product of a civilization earlier than that of the Nile. View quote
James Henry Breasted
There isn't much political coloration in my economic writing; it's not surprising that few people know my political views. They really aren't very important. View quote
Christopher A. Sims
It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness. View quote
Rollo May
Surprising what you can dig out of books if you read long enough, isn't it? View quote
Robert Jordan
It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. View quote
Bill Watterson
Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically. View quote
Jean Cocteau
And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written. (Mark Strand)
You suck, surprising no one!!!! If bad was a boot, you'd fit it!!!! You're a stupid poo-poo head! I had sexual relations with your mother! Your mother was not that good in bed! You, sir, are a wretched soul! I am rubber, you are glue! View quote
Bryan Lee O'Malley
The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools. View quote
Doug Larson
It's the stupid questions that have some of the most surprising and interesting answers. Most people never think to ask the stupid questions. View quote
Cory Doctorow
... no such individual would find the Golden Rule surprising in any way because at its base lies the foundation of most human interactions and exchanges and it can be found in countless texts throughout recorded history and from around the world--a testimony to its universality. View quote
Michael Shermer
I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it - for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The human race is the most stupid and unfair kind of race. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some runners are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising a lot of people have given up compeating altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk and shout abuse. What the human race needs is a lot more streakers. View quote
Banksy
I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. View quote
J. B. S. Haldane
Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation. View quote
Friedrich Schlegel
I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive. View quote
Colin Firth
Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe. The painter's art is more confined, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally engaged. What is done by Painting, must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have. (Joshua Reynolds)
It was surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so much devilment. View quote
Stephen Crane
The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...") and it's magic and wonderful and strange. View quote
Neil Gaiman
In order to win over Paris and appear, in the eyes of all Europe, an absolute innovator, the most advanced of all, I urge you to get to work with all your heart, resolute on being bolder, crazier, more advanced, surprising, eccentric, incomprehensible, and grotesque than anybody else in music. I urge you to be a madman. View quote
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit? View quote
Anthony Burgess