Top 100 Good Surprise Quotes
#2. All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious. BOTH SIDES of the artist's personality must play their part.
Henry Moore
#3. Dodo!" exclaimed Celia, looking after her in surprise. "I never heard you make such a comparison before." "Why should I make it before the occasion came? It is a good comparison: the match is perfect.
George Eliot
#4. When you need a good laugh, do you reach for a book? I don't. I expect books to move me deeply and submerge me in another reality. So when a novel makes me roar with laughter, it's always a delightful surprise.
Maria Semple
#5. Delusion is not good; better to be realistic and then surprise yourself if you're lucky.
Lenny Abrahamson
#6. To be married to a good woman is to live with tender surprise.
Norman Mailer
#7. Genuinely good remarks surprise their author as well as his audience ...
Joseph Joubert
#8. Perfect love means putting up with other peoples shortcomings, feeling no surprise at their weaknesses, finding encouragement even in the slightest evidence of good qualities in them.
Therese Of Lisieux
#9. Education does loads of things for girls that won't surprise you at all - it provides self-esteem, teaches important life skills, and offers the kinds of choices a good education can give anyone.
Richard E. Robbins
#10. Like any good novel, it lulled him into an almost tranquil state of awareness before it jolted him - it caught him completely by surprise.
John Irving
#11. You gotta know that People will say a million negative things about you before they mention 1 good thing, don't be surprise if they never said that 1 good thing about you.
Werley Nortreus
#13. Life takes constant adjustment and growth. Don't get settled in or it will surprise you and not in a good way.
Jean Williams
#14. Nor need it cause surprise that things disagreeable to the good man should seem pleasant to some men; for mankind is liable to many corruptions and diseases, and the things in question are not really pleasant, but only pleasant to these particular persons, who are in a condition to think them so.
Aristotle.
#15. I wish with all my heart that every child could be so imbued with a sense of the adventure of life that each change, each readjustment, each surprise
good or bad
that came along would be welcomed as part of the whole enthralling experience.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#16. Molly wondered if these boys really loved baseball, the sound and smell of it, the rhythm of it, the leather and wood, the grass and dirt, the story and surprise in a good game.
Mick Cochrane
#17. LOVE should be the inspiration when Lover is the Surprise, and when LOVE is the Surprise , then Loved one must be the inspiration!
Madan Mohan Mahapatra
#18. These days, I like to think of sentences as workers. Only one of their jobs is to look and sound good. Sentences are the carriers of plot. They're the conjurers of images, the conveyors of tone and meaning and voice. The best sentences surprise us.
Karen Thompson Walker
#20. Come on." He pressed his forehead against mine, grinning.
"You're happy about this. I can tell. It wasn't exactly what we had planned, but it's a surprise, not a disaster. A surprise is a good thing. Right?
Meg Cabot
#21. No surprise you've got dhampirs with you. What happened to that Moroi boy you had in tow last time? The one with the nice cheekbones?"
"Oh, he's over there," I said, flushing slightly. "I, uh, married him."
Inez's pointed eyebrows rose. "Did you now? Well, good for you.
Richelle Mead
#22. So Oxford, at its inception a huddle of theologicians and divines, grew into a city of dreams, and much good may come of that. Little surprise that Middle-earth and Narnia were both discovered here.
Gregory Maguire
#23. OK cosmos, I could use some good news. Go on, surprise me.
William Meikle
#24. I wouldn't say that I relax and enjoy anything. But I think my pessimism helps. I never really expect anything good to happen, so when it does, it's a nice surprise.
Rivers Cuomo
#25. The eye is made to see and not to think ... A good photograph is a surprise. How could we plan and foresee a surprise? We just have to be ready.
Marc Riboud
#26. A good joke provides tension, and then, release of that tension. You build the tension by saying things that are controversial. The release is the laugh. The bigger the surprise or insight in your joke, the bigger the laugh.
Greg Giraldo
#27. Modesty means admitting the possibility of error, subsuming the self for the good of the whole, remaining open to surprise and the gifts that only failure can bring. There are many ways to practice it. Try taking up golf. Or making your own bagels. Or raising a teenager.
Nancy Gibbs
#28. Was he a good father?"
To their surprise, I shake my head and smile. "No," I reply candidly. "He wasn't a good father, but he was a good man."
Where Dad came from, that meant a great deal more.
Deana Martin
#29. See marriage as a man must, a good, sensible workaday institution; but awfully curbing to one's liberty. Somehow, after you're married forever, life has lost its feeling of adventure. There aren't any romantic possibilities waiting to surprise you around each corner.
Jean Webster
#30. A good poem has its own life. It's like bringing a child into the world. You, the poet, birthed the child, but the child will surprise you continually. I think a work of art has its own aliveness, its own future.
David Whyte
#31. I've been thinking. Her eyebrows rose, but he was used to surprise whenever he claimed an idea. Even when his ideas were as good as theirs, they always remembered how deliberate he was in thinking of them.
Robert Jordan
#32. Good people can't imagine evil. It catches us by surprise, and it always will.
Lisa Scottoline
#33. You see why I'm such a good vampire? We're all lying, devious bastards, not like werewolves, if there are werewolves, whose MO is, "Hi, I'm a werewolf, surprise! And fuck you!" No, we lurk. We're lurkers.
Christopher Buehlman
#34. Perhaps one of these days she'd surprise herself and not actually do the thing that was right and proper and best for all concerned. And probably give herself heart failure from the shock.
Jo Victor
#35. As an actor, you always look for things that will stretch you and that are different than you are, so that you can surprise yourself, and you want to surround yourself with the highest caliber of people that will make you look good.
Emmy Rossum
#36. Robert G. Elliott was not a murderous person by nature, but he proved, no doubt to his own surprise, to be rather good at killing people.
Bill Bryson
#37. Surprise was always good. Delay was always fatal. Guys who let a situation unfold in its own good time were just stockpiling problems for themselves.
Lee Child
#38. To his surprise he also discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something, whether painting or poetry, that you cared about a great deal.
Richard Russo
#39. Life's sloppy ... You think you know how tomorrow's going to be, you've made your plans, everything is set in place, and then the unimaginable happens. Life catches you by surprise. It always does. But there's good mixed in with the bad. It's there. You just have to recognize it.
Susan Beth Pfeffer
#40. After a hard day, try to think of something good about it before you go to sleep - the result may surprise you.
John Avery
#41. If a writer is any good, what he makes will have its source in a realm much larger than that which his conscious mind can encompass and will always be a greater surprise to him than it can ever be to his reader.
Flannery O'Connor
#42. What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.
Edward Dahlberg
#43. We may not be perfect, but we're good, and good people can't imagine evil. It catches us by surprise, and it always will. We don't know the first thing about the kind of evil that would sacrifice a child.
Lisa Scottoline
#44. I'm good at playing the dumbass. It provides a good cover so I can surprise people when I waltz all over them.
Clarissa Wild
#45. There's a sureness to good writing even when what's being written about doesn't make all that much sense. It's the sureness of the so-called seat of an accomplished horseback rider or a sailor coming about in a strong wind. The words have both muscle and grace, familiarity and surprise.
Anne Bernays
#46. Surprises are good. I'm not of the thinking where you tell the audience everything. Sometimes I don't even want to see the trailers. You see the trailer, you've seen the movie.
Spike Lee
#47. The universe will never 'take away' something that is for our highest and greatest good so when we 'lose' something, or our lives shift, it is always for our benefit. It's unwrapping a surprise present from the universe.
Caroline A. Shearer
#48. He said that it always struck him with surprise that while men in buying an earthen or glass vase would sound it first to learn if it were good, yet in choosing a wife they were content with only looking at her.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#49. The good thing about being stuck at the airport for an extra hour, is that it gives you a chance to give weary travelers surprise massages.
Eugene Mirman
#50. The public is being spoiled by good technical quality photographs in magazines, on television, in the movies, and they have become bored. The disease of our age is this boredom and a good photographer must successfully combat it. The only way to do this is by invention - by surprise.
Alexey Brodovitch
#51. Surprise, surprise - the good guys don't always win. Sometimes, they're lucky if they just get to keep on being the good guys.
Anthony Breznican
#52. Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell used it before
Mark Twain
#53. Happy," said Thomas. "When I grow up, I am going to be happy."
Mrs. van Amersfoort was about to pull a book from the shelf, but turned in surprise. She looked at Thomas with a smile and said, "That is a damn good idea. And do you know how happiness begins? It begins with no longer being afraid.
Guus Kuijer
#54. Sometimes, if you have faith in people they'll surprise you. Mom and Dad taught me that. Risk is the price of believing most people want to be good.
Gwenda Bond
#55. When we love somebody, we show it by doing something nice. So learn to serve: find a need and fulfill a need. Surprise people with a good deed they hadn't planned on. We have that opportunity at home, at school, and at church.
Russell M. Nelson
#56. Surprise was their greatest weapon. He didn't want to give it up without a very good reason.
Terry Goodkind
#57. God-fucking-damn but he was seriously good-looking. "Have you ever had the stuffed pancakes here? They're evil. I highly recommend them."
"Heh. The cop is recommending evil," I said. "Too funny."
To my surprise, Ivanov chuckled. "You've discovered my dark side.
Diana Rowland
#58. Find the best in everybody. Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you. It might even take years, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting.
Randy Pausch
#59. I had some good opportunities. I was lucky to have had the chance to do things differently. Architecture is about surprise.
Oscar Niemeyer
#60. We're over at Dad's. James just won another hand of poker. I'm starting to worry."
"He's your son, Pidge. Does it surprise you that he's good at cards?
Jamie McGuire
#61. I don't think it does the audience any good to know what I do to prepare. It keeps it more of a surprise. I don't feel like it has to be a mystery.
Alan Arkin
#62. We knew all along we were making a good show, so its success was not a surprise to me. What has surprised me is the magnitude of this show's success. More people see me now in one episode than saw me in 20 years of movies and theater!
William Petersen
#63. True humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#64. When I say that a good picture has surprise quality or shock appeal, I do not mean that it is a loud or vulgar picture but, instead, that it stimulates my thinking and intrigues me.
Alexey Brodovitch
#65. In retrospect, I can see that President Brezhnev was quite proud of the limited agreement that he had concluded in Vladivostok; and to have a new American president come in and say, "That is not good enough - let's do much more, and do it quite rapidly," took him by surprise.
Jimmy Carter
#66. You know how to be a good boy?" Anna widened her eyes in surprise. "Why, Archer, I'm certain I never recognized that quality in you.
Lora Leigh
#67. That's good. Because you're going to be my assistant." He grins like a Cheshire cat.
I raise my eyebrows in surprise. "I am?"
"Yep, I'm going to put my hands all over that body of yours in the front of the room and you're going to kick my ass.
Vi Keeland
#68. I think it's part of the responsibility of an artist to shock, to upset, to make people think differently, and to surprise people. And that's where the good humor is, if there's a surprise and there's something unexpected. Something that's not normal, not in the realm of general living expectations.
Bill Plympton
#69. Expect nothing at all and accept as a joyful surprise whatever good you find in matrimony.
Frank Leslie
#70. There is no perception without memory. But good art surprise us. Good art reorients our expectations, forces us to break the pattern, to see in a new way.
Siri Hustvedt
#71. To my surprise, the young lady held up her gloved hand to detain me. "If your friend," she said, "would be good enough to stop, he might be of inestimable service to me.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#72. To his surprise he ... discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something ... that you cared about a great deal.
Richard Russo
#73. It must surprise people that I'm such a rap fan, but it's true. Sometimes, just staying in, putting on some rap music, and letting loose is all I need to have a good time.
Phoebe Tonkin
#74. Lily," Mom said, "we need to talk."
I don't think I'm ruining the surprise by pointing out that nothing good happens when someone starts a speech like that.
Chloe Neill
#75. He knows bad days. Bad days take him completely by surprise. They make him not trust the good days because it's likely something is lurking twenty-four hours away.
Melina Marchetta
#76. Puzzles are like songs - A good puzzle can give you all the pleasure of being duped that a mystery story can. It has surface innocence, surprise, the revelation of a concealed meaning, and the catharsis of solution.
Stephen Sondheim
#78. It's such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you're going to do a day's work and at the end of it, it's going to be good.
Anthony Hopkins
#79. Everybody always asks me what the big surprises were that I discovered about Woody and I never have a good stock answer for that, I never know quite what to tell them other than generally that he's much less neurotic and quirky than I would have expected.
Robert B. Weide
#80. It will always take a good deal more courage to do something foolishly dangerous, when it is planned, than when it happens by surprise.
Steven J. Carroll
#81. Life is full of surprises, some good, some not so good.
Pablo Escobar
#82. If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise," said the seer. "If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur.
Paulo Coelho
#83. I am puffed clay, blown up and set down. That I fall like Adam is not surprising: I plunge, waft, arc, pour, and dive. The surprise is how good the wind feels on my face as I fall. And the other surprise is that I ever rise at all
Annie Dillard
#84. The success of the storytellers - we're only as good as what we can withhold from the audience. Aspects of surprise and letting things play out for the audience - it's so much a part of their enjoyment. It's one of the great things about working in the movies and being a great storyteller.
B. D. Wong
#85. You gave me back the paradise
That I thought I lost for good
You helped me find the reasons why
It took me by surprise that you understood
You knew all along
What I never wanted to say
Until I learned to love myself
I was never ever lovin' anybody else.
Madonna
#86. Actors want to surprise themselves. When it's really good, you kind of transcend yourself, and that happens infrequently. Very, very rarely.
Claire Danes
#87. 'The Good Soldier' is an odd and maybe even unique book. That it is a masterpiece, almost a perfect novel, comes as a repeated surprise even to readers who have read it before.
Jane Smiley
#88. Sit down, Will. There's a good fellow," he said.
"Yes, sir," replied Will, and Halt's eyebrows shot up in surprise.
"He's never called me sir," he said.
"Probably trying to get on my good side," Crowley replied.
Halt nodded savagely. "Probably.
John Flanagan
#89. I love to watch good actors who surprise and amuse me.
John Malkovich
#90. Theano: Always expecting the worst, you are.
Danae: If you expect terrible things, then they don't surprise you, and all good things are like wonderful gifts.
Adele Geras
#91. Gutfreund (pronounced Good friend) liked to sneak up from behind and surprise you. This was fun for him but not for you.
Michael Lewis
#92. I do like to shock and surprise people. When it's all in good fun, of course.
Ruth Warrick
#93. One of the tricky things about running a TV show is that you just never know how good the guest stars you cast on a weekly basis, how good they're going to be in the episode. Sometimes they surprise you in good ways and sometimes they surprise you in disappointing ways.
Shawn Ryan
#94. You want to believe in black and white, good and evil, heroes that are truly heroic, villains that are just plain bad, but I've learned in the past year that things are rarely so simple. The good guys can do some truly awful things, and the bad guys can sometimes surprise the heck out of you.
Karen Marie Moning
#95. As a good picture would come, I would never know exactly what I had done. When you did see it, it would strike you as a great surprise - who did that? How did it happen? Being surprised by your own work makes you both less serious and have serious reverence.
Emmet Gowin
#96. When it comes down to it, it's giving people a good night out in a basic way and I think my company guarantees that. There's always something new and something to excite us and surprise us, and that's why people come back, I hope.
Matthew Bourne
#97. It had been a surprise - and yeah, okay, a pleasure - to realize how very good he was at being bad.
Marcus Sakey
#98. The thing about a cartoon is, you can do whatever you want. The tightrope that we are walking on 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama' is 'How do you continue to surprise the audience, but make them good surprises?' Not every surprise is good, but you want to continue jolting people.
Matt Groening
#99. "Do you have any more surprise stowaways up your sleeve?" I ask Morpheus.
Pushing dents out of his hat, he scowls. "I'm starting to fear I didn't bring enough. If there's one thing netherlings are good at, it's cleaning messes."
A.G. Howard
#100. An important part of any good mystery story like 'Original Sin' is that it's not just a game of 'Clue' with surprise after surprise after surprise, but the goal is to tell a story in the midst of that. Even once you know the solution to the mysteries, it's far from the whole story.
Jason Aaron
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
