Whenever a noble deed is wrought.
Whenever is spoken a noble thought.
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
To the mind,
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise. [ Byron ]
And otherwhyles with amorous delights
And pleasing toyes he would her entertaine.
Now singing sweetly to surprise her sprights,
Now making layes of love and lover's paine,
Bransles, ballads, virelayes, and verses vaine!
Oft purposes, oft riddles, he devys'd;
And thousands like which flowed in his braine,
With which he fed her fancy, and entys'd
To take to his new love, and leave her old despys'd. [ Spenser ]
Who has not seen that feeling born of flame
Crimson the cheek at mention of a name?
The rapturous touch of some divine surprise
Flash deep suffusion of celestial dyes:
When hands clasped hands, and lips to lips were pressed,
And the heart's secret was at once confessed? [ Abraham Coles ]
Women have become so highly educated that nothing should surprise them except happy marriages. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Genius is always a surprise, but it is born with great advantages when the stock from which it springs has been long under cultivation. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. [ Dr. Johnson ]
To elevate and surprise is the great art of quackery and puffing; to raise a lively and exaggerated image in the mind, and take it by surprise before it can recover breath. [ Hazlitt ]
Resolution will sometimes relax, and diligence will sometimes be interrupted; but let no accidental surprise or deviation, whether short or long, dispose you to despondency. [ Johnson ]
Surprise is so essential an ingredient of wit that no wit will bear repetition; - at least, the original electrical feeling produced by any piece of wit can never be renewed. [ Sydney Smith ]
In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures, faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say. [ Emerson ]