#startle

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#day #encountered #event #life #mind

I try to write in plain brown blocks of American speech but occasionally set in an ancient word or a strange word just to startle the reader a little bit and to break up the monotony of the plain American cadence. ↗

— James Laughlin

#ancient #bit #blocks #break #break up

We were married for almost 45 years. We fought all the time, it wasn't a great love or anything, it wasn't a great, all-consuming passion. She was just there. A lot of people were startled because we didn't seem devoted but we were. ↗

— Hugh Leonard

#anything #because #devoted #fought #great

The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger. ↗

— W. Somerset Maugham

#comfortable #first #general #habits #know

I became startled by the extraordinary difference between something whose surface is completely invisible which only makes itself present by virtue of what it reflects, and a window, which doesn't make itself apparent at all, in the ideal case. ↗

— Jonathan Miller

#became #between #case #completely #difference

It is true that I am often startled and even angered and repulsed by the strange directions and provocative content of new forms that seem to pop up every few months. ↗

— David Rockefeller

#angered #content #directions #even #every

It's because we are so flooded with American culture that we're startled when we see ourselves up there on the screen. ↗

— Yahoo Serious

#american culture #because #culture #flooded #ourselves

Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#become #evidence #eye #good #i

Startled, she said, “Oh, I thought you were somebody else.” “No,” I said, “I’m not somebody else—but my clone is.”
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#fright #funny #humor #people #relationships

He was one of those inexplicable gifts of nature, an artist who leaps over boundaries, changes our nervous systems, creates a new language, transmits new kinds of joy to our startled senses and spirits. ↗

— Jack Kroll

#boundaries #changes #creates #gifts #inexplicable