Surprise Quotes

“Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”
― Mae West

“I stood on my toes and stole a soft kiss from his lips. "Surprise attack," I said.
Sam leaned down and kissed me back, his mouth lingering on mine, teeth grazing my lower lip, making me shiver. "Surprise attack back."
"Sneaky," I said, my voice breathier than I intended.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Desperation can make a person do surprising things.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“Would you like to know your future?

If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator.

So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence -- a surprise.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Frank heard a laugh behind him. He glanced back and couldn't believe what he saw. Nico di Angelo was actually smiling.

"That's more like it," Nico said. "Let's turn this tide!”
― Rick Riordan, The House of Hades

“The secret to humor is surprise.”
― Aristotle

“Well, hello there, Mother,” Sebastian said in a voice like silk. “Surprised to see me?”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls

“The magic of purpose and of love in its purest form. Not televison love, with its glare and hollow and sequined glint; not sex and allure, all high shoes and high drama, everything both too small and in too much excess, but just love. Love like rain, like the smell of a tangerine, like a surprise found in your pocket.”
― Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

“I was like a chocolate in a box, looking well behaved and perfect in place, all the while harboring a secret center.”
― Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

“How quickly he fell; how soon it was over.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“I said I *liked* being half-educated; you were so much more *surprised* at everything when you were ignorant.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“People live on the flow of the daily reality and they surge on the waves of hazy expectations. They can experience pleasant junctures and try to catch and enjoy each special moment that is offered to them. Until life takes them by surprise.”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, its unplanned, it's full of suprises.”
― Erma Bombeck

“That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him; that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams

“The rapture of an ‘innocent moment’ or an “unsuspected instant” can overwhelm us at any time, throughout our lives, and surprise us with a storm of liberating waves of good vibrations.( What do they think behind their dirty aprons?)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.”
― Bernard Beckett, Genesis

“There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved.”
― Charles Morgan

“I think in a moment of weakness, you might surprise yourself.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Mine Till Midnight

“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, 'Well, are you a Republican or an American?' The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, 'I don't have a knowledge that God exists.' The atheist says, 'I don't have a belief that God exists.' You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic.”
― Dan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists

“Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“You may pray to God to remove the hills on your way and fill every pothole on your path; but don’t be surprised if God gives you a shovel to do so!”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Charity in Truth: Caritas in Veritate

“If you can sustain your interest in what you’re doing, you’re an extremely fortunate person. What you see very frequently in people’s professional lives, and perhaps in their emotional life as well, is that they lose interest in the third act. You sort of get tired, and indifferent, and, sometimes, defensive. And you kind of lose your capacity for astonishment — and that’s a great loss, because the world is a very astonishing place.

What I feel fortunate about is that I’m still astonished, that things still amaze me. And I think that that’s the great benefit of being in the arts, where the possibility for learning never disappears, where you basically have to admit you never learn it.”
― Milton Glaser

“I’ve always found hitting a man from behind to be the best way to go about things. This can sometimes be accomplished by dint of a simple ruse. Classics such as, “What’s that over there?” work surprisingly often, but for truly optimal results it’s best if the person doesn’t ever know you were there.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

“I've been very lucky at what's happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine - anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I'd like Gary Oldman's career: he's the perfect example of it. I've love to have a really broad sweep of characters - to be able to do something edgy, surprising and unfashionable.”
― Benedict Cumberbatch