Surprise Quotes
More Surprise Quotes
If you go down in the woods today You're sure of a big Surprise If you down in the woods today You'd better go in disguise. For every Bear that ever there was Will gather there for certain because, Today's the day theTeddy Bears have their Picnic.
— 1932 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' (with James B Kennedy).
Texture and pattern should function as a Surprise.
robert denning— Patricia Volk, "The Sweet Smell of Excess", The New York Times (October 8, 2006; retrieved October 4, 2007).
This is not the way it has been done. We would never Surprise each other ... It's not to say that there's not important information that we could discuss or would be discussed in secret or closed session, but I'm astounded by this. I don't really know what the tenor of this is, what is the justification for it and why this extreme approach was used.
trent lott— The Associated Press, November 1, 2005.
To Surprise the enemy is to defeat him.
alexander suvorov— As Military Adviser in China - Page 245 by Aleksandr Ivanovich Cherepanov - China - 1982
Nobody will finish above us in the league. It wouldn't Surprise me if we were to go unbeaten for the whole of the season.
arsène wenger— Before the 2002-03 season commenced, (2002).
Fate has a way of circling back on a man, and taking him by Surprise. A man sees things differently at different times in his life. This town didn't seem the same now that he was older.
— John August, Big Fish, based on Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions (1998) by Daniel Wallace, by "Edward Bloom".
He [Julius Caesar] learned that Alexander , having completed nearly all his conquests by the time he was thirty-two years old, was at an utter loss to know what he should do during the rest of his life, whereat Augustus expressed his Surprise that Alexander did not regard it as a greater task to set in order the empire which he had won than to win it.
augustus— Plutarch
My song can make you cry, take you by Surprise. At the same time, can make your dry your eyes with the same rhyme. See what you're seeing is a genius at work, which to me isn't work, so it's easy to misinterpret it at first.
eminem— "My Dad's Gone Crazy"
How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike, And are lost in the solemn and strange Surprise of the change.
Robert Browning— After.
As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the same level, how comes it that the philosophic mind should, in all ages, be the privilege of a few? The most obvious reason is this: The wonder takes place before the period of reflection, and (with the great mass of mankind) long before the individual is capable of directing his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and dress which the wonder of ignorance usually puts on) is worn away, if not precluded, by custom and familiarity.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— Aids to Reflection (1873), Sequelae to Aphorism 107.
Life is a great Surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.
vladimir nabokov— 1962 Pale Fire.
Art must take reality by Surprise.
— 1958 Writers atWork.
The legend of Felix is ended, the toiling of Felix is done;The Master has paid him his wages, the goal of his journey is won;He rests, but he never is idle; a thousand years pass like a day,In the glad Surprise of Paradise where work is sweeter than play.
henry van dyke— The Toiling of Felix, Pt. III, st. 1 (1898).
Ah, my brother, it is a far harder thing, and it is afar higher proof of a thorough-going, persistent, Christian principle woven into the very texture of my soul, to go on plodding and patient, never taken by Surprise by any small temptation, than to gather into myself the strength which God has given me, and, expecting some great storm to come down upon me, to stand fast, and let it rage. It is a great deal easier to die once for Christ than to live always for Him.
alexander maclaren— P. 109. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
The people who run the international tests told us, "the biggest predictor of student success is choice." Nations that "attach the money to the kids" and thereby allow parents to choose between different public and private schools have higher test scores. This should be no Surprise; competition makes us better.
john stossel— Stossel, John (2006-07-26). "Smearing Education Choice". Townhall.com. Retrieved on 2007-09-24.
It is still an unending source of Surprise for me to see how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a sheet of paper could change the course of human affairs.
stanislaw ulam— Prologue, p. 5
Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable Surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.
joseph addison— No. 412 (23 June 1712).
Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a Surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.
roger ebert— Review of Pearl Harbor (25 May 2001)
From a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia Rode a boy with a six-gun in his hand And his daring life of crime made him a legend in his time East and west of the Rio Grande. Well, he started with a bank in Colorado In the pocket of his vest a Colt he hid. And his age and his size took the teller by Surprise, And the word spread of Billy the Kid.
Billy Joel— The Ballad of Billy the Kid
In addition to the social pressures from the scientific community there is also at work a very human trait of individual scientist. I call it the law of the instrument , and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. It comes as no particular Surprise to discover that a scientist formulates problems in a way which requires for their solution just those techniques in which he himself is especially skilled.
abraham kaplan— p.28 ("The Conduct of Inquiry")
Respect was mingled with Surprise, And the stern joy which warriors feel In foeman worthy of their steel.
walter scott— Canto V, stanza 10.
The word morality , if we met it in the Bible, would Surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.
George Bernard Shaw— Fanny's First Play, Preface (1911).
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb Surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind
Emily Dickinson— Poem 1129: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of Surprise.
ralph waldo emerson— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Merlin.
Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination , because it fills the soul with an agreeable Surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.
— Joseph Addison, in The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes, Volume 3, Bosworth, 1854, p.273
You Surprise me yet again. I'm a better teacher... than I thought...
— Who: Master Sun Li
— Notes: The player is playing the role of his student, whom he had raised to defeat Emperor Sun Hai so that he could take power. He earlier remarked that he did not intend to help others surpass him if the player chose "You are a great teacher. Your skill was wasted on evil ambition."
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will Surprise you with their ingenuity.
— George S. Patton, in War As I Knew It (1947), "Reflections and Suggestions"
