Quotes about Surprise

Here on the river I have known peace and beauty such as I never knew in any other place. There is always work here that I need to be doing and I have many worries, for life on the edge seems always threatening to go over the edge. But I am always surprised, when I look back on times here that I know to have been laborious or worrisome or sad, to discover that they were never out of the presence of peace and beauty, for here I have been always in the world itself.

God often does His best work in us when He catches us by surprise and introduces a change that is completely against our own desire.

We shouldn't be surprised when suffering and difficulty come our way; in fact, we should probably be surprised when they don't.

Does it surprise you that God presents himself as a model for human community?

I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.

4. If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

You think the winter will never end, and then, when you don't expect it, when you have almost forgotten it, warmth comes and a different light.

And I sat there trying to think, and failing, thinking only that whatever I would say was probably going to be a surprise to me.

It's not four days ago I find a bastard squatting here, asking me if I read books. Like he would jump me with a book or something. Take me for a ride with the telephone directory.

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then.

One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their great surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn't do.

The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.