Quotes About Surprise

Mrs. Blessing was surprised at how fluently she lied, much better than she'd done it years before, when it had been so much more important, at least to her. She realized that lying was easier than telling the truth because it had such nice smooth edges, not jagged with impossibility and inconvenience the way the truth so often was.

I thought I had a handle on my future. But the future, it turns out, is not a tote bag.

Perhaps instead of scaring ourselves we need to surprise ourselves every day. We are, after all, always a work in progress.

the two dresses she'd brought with her in case of—well, just in case—stood in the corner of her closet like guests who have come to the wrong party and are backing out the door.

It's a funny thing, hope. It's not like love, or fear, or hate. It's a feeling you don't really know you had until it's gone. Three

I always lacked common sense when taken by suprise.

She stared in shock. There was nobody there!

L'émotion est absolument involontaire, elle est un pur événement intérieur, elle arrive, c'est tout, vous surprend, vous désarme, insiste et bouleverse l'ordre des pensées comme tout autre ordre d'ailleurs.

teachers are the most unpredictable creatures on earth. Maybe this time they'll be unpredictable in the right direction for a change.

I'm surprised at my childish innocence. Deep down I know I could never be that innocent again, however much I'd like to be.

Why didn't I know about this, Gideon? Lady Augusta demanded, clearly aggrieved at not being first with the news. And what Welsh aunt is this? Auntie Angharad, Gideon informed her solemnly. Lady Augusta thought for a moment and then declared, You don't have an Auntie Angharad! No, he agreed in a sorrowful voice. She's dead.

If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.

The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it...I would discover that it hadn't washed me away.

Wonder takes our breath away, and makes room for new breath. That's why they call it breathtaking.

When what we see catches us off guard, and when we write it as realistically and openly as possible, it offers hope. You look around and say, Wow, there's that same mockingbird; there's that woman in the red hat again. The woman in the red hat is about hope because she's in it up to her neck, too, yet every day she puts on that crazy red hat and walks to town.

Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.

There is ecstasy in paying attention... Anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world, of the human mind and heart, and can try to capture just that - the details, the nuance, what is. If you start to look around, you will start to see.

It's like bitch-slapping E.T.

I hoped her life would turn topsy-turvy enough to get her attention. Topsy-turvy is often a symptom for the presence of God—the last become first, the hungry are fed, the obnoxious are welcomed.

She walked to the front door. 'Hello?' 'Hello,' a woman's voice said. 'Are you a Witness?' 'I swear to God I didn't see a thing.

we do endure, and that out of the wreckage something surprising will rise.

Hope is not logical. It always comes as a surprise, just when you think all hope is lost. Hope is the cousin to grief, and both take time: you can't short-circuit grief, or emptiness, and you can't patch it up with your bicycle tire tube kit. You have to take the next right action.

God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed. As roses, up from ground. Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish, now a cliff covered with vines, now a horse being saddled. It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open.

Anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world, of the human mind and heart, and can try to capture that--the details, the nuance, what is.