#startle

A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time. ↗

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

#called #first #first time #hears #himself

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

However now we can create a sound that can truly startle someone and in terms of sound effects I think the environment that we are in now has improved dramatically. ↗

— Nobuo Uematsu

#dramatically #effects #environment #however #i

Take the first step, and your mind will mobilize all its forces to your aid. But the first essential is that you begin. Once the battle is startled, all that is within and without you will come to your assistance. ↗

— Robert Collier

#assistance #battle #begin #come #essential

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation. ↗

— Walter Pater

#culture #eager #human #human spirit #life

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

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

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

Coming from a farming background, I saw nothing out of the ordinary in running barefoot, although it seemed to startle the rest of the athletics world. I have always enjoyed going barefoot and when I was growing up I seldom wore shoes, even when I went into town. ↗

— Zola Budd

#always #athletics #background #barefoot #coming

If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days. ↗

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

#amount #busy #days #false #get