Not Surprising Quotes

#1. I'm sorry. I can't serve him that item," the waitress said, only somewhat surprising her since she had a pretty good idea why.
"Why not?" she found herself asking anyway out of curiosity to see if she was right.
***
"Because he's a Bradford," the woman explained with a shrug.

R.L. Mathewson

#2. Prayer is such a basic foundation of a Christian's relationship with God. It's how we communicate and fellowship with Him. But a surprising number of people, young and old, new and even long-time Christians, say they're not satisfied with their prayer life.

Joyce Meyer

#3. perhaps we are not as free as we might think in the first place. Given your background, your friends, your family, the books you read, and the movies you watch, how surprising is your vote in a federal election?

Tyler Cowen

#4. You can analyse a joke and say it's funny because this guy thought this was going to happen, and that happened, and it's surprising. But not all surprising things are funny.

John Lloyd

#5. It is not merely the feeling that something is familiar. It is one step beyond that. It is something new, challenging, or surprising that opens a door into a feeling of comfort, meaning, or familiarity. It is called an aesthetic aha.

Derek Thompson

#6. A lot of people have been quite surprised with the stuff that I'm doing on my own, which shocks me because I've always known what I wanted to do. But people have only seen me with the Spice Girls, so I suppose it's not that surprising.

Melanie Chisholm

#7. Mathematics has always shown a curious ability to be applicable to nature, and this may express a deep link between our minds and nature. We are the Universe speaking out, a part of nature. So it is not so surprising that our systems of logic and mathematics sing in tune with nature.

George Zebrowski

#8. Women get consumed. Not surprising, considering the sheer amount of traffic a woman's body experiences. Tampons and speculums. Cocks, fingers, vibrators and more, between the legs, from behind, in the mouth.

Gillian Flynn

#9. When I began we did not really have a lot of First Amendment law. It is really surprising to think of it this way, but a lot of the law - most of the law that relates to the First Amendment freedom of the press in America - is really within living memory.

Floyd Abrams

#10. It's not exactly surprising that staying sane is useful when trying to hit performance markers.

John Scalzi

#11. Ed? Are you alive?'
'Yes..and that's genuinely surprising
since your bike went over me about
halfway down. You're a very dangerous
girl to date.'
'We're not on a date.

Cath Crowley

#12. It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.

Mary Shelley

#13. It's not surprising to me that in a country born of racial genocide, the issue of race is still an open wound on the American soul. We haven't dealt with it.

Michael Moore

#14. It is not surprising that emotion untutored by thought results in nearly contentless blather, in which--ironically enough--genuine emotion cannot be adequately expressed.

Theodore Dalrymple

#15. Predictions of surprising events always prove more accurate if not set down on paper beforehand.

Carl Sagan

#16. It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.

Voltaire

#17. Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.

Wendy Kaminer

#18. It is not surprising that honest and well-informed experts can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreement about facts, there is another deeper disagreement about values.

Freeman Dyson

#19. But I can endure a surprising amount of midnight torment without being absent from class sharp at nine the next day. I suppose that marks me as something not quite up to the Byronic standard.

Robertson Davies

#20. I can get really obsessive. I like writing many drafts, and I try not to because it is very time-consuming, especially when you're working on a novel. But I do like to take a story and reorder it, put things in different places. This allows me to see things in a new and sometimes surprising way.

Carol Windley

#21. The days get longer and the nights smell green I guess it's not surprising but it's spring and I should leave.

Modest Mouse

#22. Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.

Edward M. Lerner

#23. He wore his medals. He had a surprising number of them, the real kind, not the ones you got for turning up. Although turning up was no mean thing, some days.

Nick Harkaway

#24. An 'unintended pregnancy' could be a wonderful surprise, not planned but welcome. Why should the government be in the business of 'preventing' a surprising but welcome pregnancy

Wendy Wright

#25. When people are against profits they're against business; when they're against business, they're against employment; when they're against employment, it's not surprising that a large number of them are unemployed.

Richard J. Needham

#26. You suck, surprising no one!!!! If bad was a boot, you'd fit it!!!! You're a stupid poo-poo head! I had sexual relations with your mother! Your mother was not that good in bed! You, sir, are a wretched soul! I am rubber, you are glue!

Bryan Lee O'Malley

#27. What I do find surprising is that other people do not think in the same way. I find it hard to imagine a world where numbers and words are not how I experience them!

Daniel Tammet

#28. I come from a very expressive family, so it's really not surprising that we became actors. There was a lot of real-life drama in our house. Some of it was drama, some of it was comedy and some of it was comic-tragedy.

John Turturro

#29. For me, even if I'm not a fan of the band in general or maybe it's not the style of music I want to put on for my daughter and me when we're waking up in the morning, there's always something that I can learn from it. And I think those are the things that are surprising.

Jon Foreman

#30. One way to tell if you're really comfortable with a person is if you can be quiet together sometimes and not feel awkward. If you don't feel obligated to say something brilliant or funny or surprising or cool. You can just be together. You can just be.

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

#31. Prince Charles's concern for the underprivileged and disadvantaged has not exactly endeared him to the Conservative Central Office. As Norman Tebbit replied, it is not surprising that the Prince is so sympathetic towards the unemployed: he is by way of being one of them himself.

David Cannadine

#32. I always like to be a step ahead of the audience by surprising them and the best way to do that is to not hold back.

Anna Camp

#33. It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Barack Obama

#34. For days afterward, a series of magical thoughts flew through my mind. For instance, it seemed somehow surprising that the hours continued to pass in spite of what I knew. It was almost shocking that time did not, in fact, stop.

Karen Thompson Walker

#35. The secret of literature, which conventional people don't guess, is that writers are forever looking for the surprising revelation - not for reinforcement of collective wisdom.

Carol Bly

#36. I've been playing both sides of the law my entire career. It's not really surprising for me to be doing opposing sides simultaneously. I would argue that even though my character on 'Hawaii Five-0' originated on the wrong side of the law, I'd say he's worked his way over to the good side.

Ian Anthony Dale

#37. If you want a machine to be able to interact with people, it better not do things that are surprising to people.

Rodney Brooks

#38. It is a little surprising given the strength of the economy that there is a perception - at least among some of the public - that the economy is not very good.

Edward Lazear

#39. If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains.

Alain De Botton

#40. It's not that I enjoy surprising everyone I know; it's more that I almost never know where I'm going before I actually get there.

Seanan McGuire

#41. I'm not very precious at all, which I think people find surprising.

William Monahan

#42. That's not surprising to hear. Your daughter is definitely in love with me, Mrs. Bryant. She hasn't told me yet, but she will soon.

R.S. Grey

#43. I'm not the kind of poet who arranges treasure-hunts to please the academics and keep them busy. Poetry should be surprising in deeper ways.

Michael Longley

#44. Wisdom of the Ages: "The Nativity" The Son of God was born in a manger-not surprising, have you seen the prices of hotel rooms in Bethlehem? Oy Vay! Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah Peace!

Matthew D. Heines

#45. Considering the way evolution works, it should not be surprising if every man has got a Don Giovanni somewhere inside him.

Matt Ridley

#46. In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

Alexander Smith

#47. There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence. It is not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet all the time he was in Mecca.

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan

#48. The photographer, like an acrobat, must defy the laws of probability or even of possibility; at the limit, he must defy those of the interesting: the photograph becomes surprising when we do not know why it has been taken.

Roland Barthes

#49. I wish you would moderate that fondness you have for your children. I do not mean you should abate any part of your care, or not do your duty to them in its utmost extent, but I would have you early prepare yourself for disappointments, which are heavy in proportion to their being surprising.

Mary Wortley Montagu

#50. I mean look at Antichrist. He's not making films to be liked by everyone, so why is this so surprising coming from Lars von Trier?

Kirsten Dunst

#51. This naming of things is so crucial to possession - a spiritual padlock with the key thrown irretrievably away - that it is a murder, an erasing, and it is not surprising that when people have felt themselves prey to it (conquest), among their first acts of liberation is to change their names ...

Jamaica Kincaid

#52. I like the lad who, when his father thought To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, Cried, Served him right! it's not at all surprising; The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!

John Godfrey Saxe

#53. I became the voice of a generation in a very surprising way, because many Iranians recognize themselves in it. But that is not what I wanted.

Marjane Satrapi

#54. It hapens very often that parents think they are worred about the progress a boy is making. they do not realise that all boys are numskulls with o branes which is not surprising when you look at the parents really the whole thing goes on and on and there is no stoping it it is a vicious circle.

Geoffrey Willans

#55. This may sound surprising for someone who works in Hollywood, but I do not count calories, and I don't even care about weight gain, which I know sounds really bizarre. I listen to my body. I don't just wake up in the morning and cook whatever I eat.

Nikki Reed

#56. Life ... Isn't a roller coaster, it isn't unexpected or surprising. It's not a free ticket to go along for the ride ... Simply put, Life is life. Its who you are, what you do that defines you and your life, so choose ... but choose wisely, because life is here to stay ...

Bilal Hussain

#57. I've always had a fascination for everything surrounding things that are unexplainable. Not surprising that my first movie was a horror film, even though, of course, at the time I had no experience writing horror music.

Christopher Young

#58. It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It's nice to write a book that does tend toward significance and meaning, and where else are you sure of finding it?

Jonathan Franzen

#59. In fact, the very nature of an X-event is that it is both rare and surprising. So I would not say that any specific X-event is likely. What I would say, though, is that some X-event is not only plausible, but very likely in a time scale of a few years.

John L. Casti

#60. There's a magical energy and power from the ocean. I was born in a room overlooking the sea, in the middle of a storm. Perhaps, then, it's not surprising that shores touch my soul. Science might disagree, but I think there's a difference in the air on a coast - the positive ions, perhaps.

Jo Beverley

#61. It is not surprising that Venice is known above all for mirrors and glass since Venice is the most narcissistic city in the world, the city that celebrates self-mirroring.

Erica Jong

#62. The Word of God is a seamless garment, and men who deny its law deny its eschatology also, and are deprived of God's power. It is not surprising, therefore, that this is an era of impotence for the church.

Greg L. Bahnsen

#63. It is not surprising, then, that in the decade since Oslo began, Arafat used all the resources placed at his disposal to fan the flames of hatred against Israel.

Natan Sharansky

#64. I get bored at the theatre a lot because I notice that there's not always a connection between the actors. They may be technically proficient, but they're not surprising each other. I'm thrilled by actors who make choices that are surprising.

Lusia Strus

#65. Cut through the ridicule and search for factual information in most of the skeptical commentary and one is usually left with nothing. This is not surprising. After all, how can one rationally object to a call for scientific examination of evidence? Be skeptical of the skeptics.

Bernard Haisch

#66. Over and over, we are broken on the shore of life. Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open - not once, and not in predictable patterns, but in surprising ways and for as long as we live.

Elizabeth Lesser

#67. It is not surprising that in talking about uncertainty we should lean heavily on facts, just as the court of law does when interrogating witnesses. Facts form a sort of bedrock on which we can build the shifting sands of uncertainty.

Dennis Lindley

#68. But since day one, we've always been kinda up against it. So at the end, it's not surprising that we were kind of led along for so many months and didn't know what the fate of the show was gonna be. It was ... in a weird way, just kind of that was the way it's always been.

Will Arnett

#69. It's not surprising that you wouldn't see that side of me on television, but in real life I find the world to be quite a funny place.

Gwen Ifill

#70. People are capable of surprising one frightfully. One gets an idea of them into one's head, and sometimes it's absolutely wrong. Not always - but sometimes.

Agatha Christie

#71. But I cannot pretend, as much as sometimes I would like to, that I have not throughout my life experienced the redeeming, destabilizing love of a surprising God.

Nadia Bolz-Weber

#72. It is not surprising that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is no longer an instrument that will secure political solutions ... They can see that the parliamentary democracy we boast of is becoming a sham.

Tony Benn

#73. Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.

W. H. Auden

#74. (It is surprising how refreshing this feels. Being judged by what you do, and not what you are.) Lately

N.K. Jemisin

#75. Children do not see themselves as shocking or surprising and do not want other people to do so.

Elizabeth Ferrars

#76. It is not surprising that most Pakistanis do not support America's bombardment of Afghanistan. The Afghans are neighbours on the brink of starvation and devastated by war. America has shown itself to be untrustworthy, a superpower that uses its values as a scabbard for its sword.

Mohsin Hamid

#77. There isn't much political coloration in my economic writing; it's not surprising that few people know my political views. They really aren't very important.

Christopher A. Sims

#78. What's surprising to me now is that now that I'm talking to a lot of women about this, so many women are doing this. Straight women, lesbian women, bisexual women, poor women, White women, immigrant women. This does not affect one group.

Staceyann Chin

#79. Actually," I said, hesitant to bring it up, "I was thinking along the lines of a curse that can turn you human." "Or witch?" Ivy said, surprising me. There was a soft vulnerability in her and I blinked. "You don't want to be a witch," I said quickly. "Why not? You are.

Kim Harrison

#80. Part of the power of Emerson's individualism is his insistence, at crucial moments, that individualism does not mean isolation or self-sufficiency. This is not a paradox, for it is only the strong individual who can frankly concede the sometimes surprising extent of his own dependence.

Robert D. Richardson

#81. I'm not saying there's not darkness in there still, but it's happening from outward factors more than inward. Maybe things are terrifying, but they're beautiful, too. The world is extremely surprising.

Gary Lightbody

#82. It is not at all surprising that the disciples imagined that the law had been abrogated, when Jesus made promises like this. For these promises reversed all popular notions of right and wrong, and pronounced a blessing on all that was accounted worthless.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#83. One of the things I admire about longer stories is the way writers can work with dead time and slower, more idle moments - not only can they feel expansive, they feel lived-in; the unhurried pacing often makes the endings even more resonant and surprising for me.

Molly Antopol

#84. I'm very spiritual. I meditate every day. I don't know if that's surprising or not, but I've been doing that since I was 16 every day, so that's like kind of my thing. I'm really a hippie-chick at heart.

Madeline Zima

#85. So also in culture. Infinite players understand that the vigor of a culture has to do with the variety of its sources, the differences within itself. The unique and the surprising are not suppressed in some persons for the strength of others. The genius in you stimulates the genius in me.

James P. Carse

#86. With sixty professors there are roughly eighteen hundred pairs of professors. Out of that many pairs it was not surprising that there were some whose members did not like one another.

Stanislaw Ulam

#87. Anyone who ever wondered how much they could love a child who did not spring from their own loins, know this: it is the same. The feeling of love is so profound, it's incredible and surprising.

Nia Vardalos

#88. [There is a] strong correlation between market freedom and lower government corruption
not terribly surprising, since the effect of increasing regulatory power is to shift 'cheating' from the private to the public sphere.

Julian Sanchez

#89. In an imperialist racist patriarchal society that supports and condones oppression, it is not surprising that men and women judge their worth, their personal power, by their ability to oppress others.

Bell Hooks

#90. Audiences may experience an epiphany at a play, whether that play is consciously "Christian" or not; God is not limited by our conscious preparation (as artists or audiences). God's Spirit enters our lives in the most surprising of places-even in the theatre.

Todd E. Johnson

#91. As an actor, I started using dreams more, which is not mystical or anything like that. I just found that I've been using that as a tool to give me another point of view towards the work. It's often surprising but really helpful.

Mark Ruffalo

#92. Results for Getting a dog is like getting married. It teaches you to be less self-centered, to accept sudden, surprising outbursts of affection, and not to be upset by a few scratches on your car.

Will Stanton

#93. So when you are faced with a decision on the euro, it is not surprising that many people are confused. They still try to squeeze the euro debate into the old language. But deep down it is a matter of deciding where one's future lies. It is a matter of political will and courage.

Romano Prodi

#94. It's not surprising so many people end up with credit-card debts. Saving for your retirement and buying a house are difficult things, and we don't educate people about them at all.

Niall Ferguson

#95. We are bipedal apes, and it should not be surprising to see that fact reflected in the way our ancestors lived.

Richard Leakey

#96. The people who don't like it tend to dislike it intensely. That's unfortunate, but not surprising when one deliberately goes against audience expectations.

John M. Ford

#97. So few American novels have happy endings. Perhaps this is not surprising in a nation whose declaration of independence provides its citizens not with the right to happiness, but the right to its pursuit.

Azar Nafisi

#98. When thugs by nature meet thugs by political conviction, 5-0 is not surprising.

John McCarthy

#99. 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

#100. Given the conflicting messages we receive about what it takes to be "good enough," it's not surprising that Christians are as plagued by depression and anxiety as the general population.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick