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21 " How astounding that the largest thing he'd ever seen was still no match for the diminishing effect of distance. It made him aware of his own smallness in the world, his insignificance in the face of what might come, and for a moment his chest felt light with panic. "
― Julie Orringer , The Invisible Bridge
22 " She has never been a pretty crier. She sobbed the way she did everything else - with passion and excess. That she had managed to keep it inside her this long was astounding to James. He thought of pushing open the half-closed door and kneeling before his wife, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and helping her upstairs. He raised his hand, stroking the wood of the door, planning to say something to calm her. But what wisdom could he offer Gus, when he could not even heed it himself? James walked upstairs again, got into bed, covered his head with a pillow. And hours later, when Gus crept beneath the sheets, he tried to pretend that he did not feel the weight of her grief, lying between them like a fitful child, so solid that he could not reach past it to touch her. "
― Jodi Picoult , The Pact
23 " Maybe this was a male-female translation problem. I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they're communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they're actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person's body language.That is, on many levels, astounding to me. I mean, that's like having a freaking superpower. When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we're having a conversation. Singular. We're paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been going on for the last several thousand years? I didn't even know that they ~existed~ until I read that stupid article, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. "
― Jim Butcher , Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14)
24 " Christians believe, as is reported in the New Testament scriptures, that Jesus of Nazareth healed 10 men with leprosy. It sounds like an astounding feat, but compare that to Jacinto Convit who saved thousands of lives when he developed the vaccine that protects us from it. In 1988, Convit was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his anti-leprosy vaccine. So, while the promise of Jesus’ healing power is a centerpiece of the Christian myth, the demigod’s results leave something to be desired when compared to the rigor of man’s scientific inquiry. "
― David G. McAfee
25 " Appetite knows what it craves, without cerebral embellishment. It tends not to waste any time laying hold of its tools. That was the thing I had recognised here: appetite. I recognised it precisely because, in a context like this, it was so unfamiliar. It had forced me to rule out everything else. And there was a second reason for my recognition, which because unprecedented was not recognition at all, but astounding discovery: Martha's face told me. I saw appetite there... "
― Susan Choi , My Education
26 " The truth is -- we are always highly motivated when something means a great deal to us. If I fell into a deep lake and I didn't know how to swim, I would become highly motivated in an instant. Climbing from the lake would mean more to me than anything else in the world. My effort would be no less than astounding and I would suddenly become one of the most excited and enthusiastic persons imaginable. "
― Steve Goodier
27 " Sometimes therapy takes years and years, and sometimes it can happen in one miraculous instant, a lifetime of doubt and self-hatred healed in a moment of astounding love. "
― Mia Sheridan , Stinger
28 " At the end of his life Buddha said: “I am still searching for truth.” This statement could be made by countless thousands of scientists, philosophers, and religious leaders throughout all history. However, Jesus Christ made the astounding claim: I am . . . the truth” [John 14:6]. He is the embodiment of all truth. The only answer to man’s search is found in Him. "
― Billy Graham , Billy Graham in Quotes
29 " It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leprous. "
― John Steinbeck , Tortilla Flat
30 " The fact is: Jesus wrote not a solitary word that survives. Equally astounding is historical silence: not a single historical account refers to him during his lifetime from any source whatsoever, Roman or Jewish, official or personal. "
31 " Piracy is robbery with violence, often segueing into murder, rape and kidnapping. It is one of the most frightening crimes in the world. Using the same term to describe a twelve-year-old swapping music with friends, even thousands of songs, is evidence of a loss of perspective so astounding that it invites and deserves the derision it receives. "
― Nick Harkaway , The Blind Giant
32 " Those were some astounding lies, cub. And the very last one the most inspired of all. You have your father's talent for it. "
― Robin Hobb , Assassin's Fate (The Fitz and the Fool, #3)
33 " The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. "
― Henry David Thoreau , Walden
34 " The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding things about the world. No conception of the natural order that does not reveal it as something to be expected can aspire even to the outline of completeness. And if physical science, whatever it may have to say about the origin of life, leaves us necessarily in the dark about consciousness, that shows that it cannot provide the basic form of intelligibility for this world. There must be a very different way in which t hings as they are make sense, and that includes the physical world, since the problem cannot be quarantined in the mind. "
― Thomas Nagel , Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
35 " I can only see life as this most miserable accident that I have been forced to endure simply because I refuse to see it as the most astounding plan that I have been privileged to engage. "
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
36 " What kind of woman was she? What kind of woman was it who called to me from that calamity on the Seventh Avenue line? What kind of woman do I love now, with a fealty that will not cease, not till my occluded arteries send their clots up to the spongy interiors in my skull and I go mute and slack? I love the kind of woman whose hair has gone gray in a not terribly flattering way, the kind who doesn't even notice how she has to keeps having to buy larger jeans, the kind who likes big cars because she doesn't like to be uncomfortable. I love this woman because she is gifted with astounding premonitory skills: no matter how uncertain, how despondent, how lost her mate feels, no matter how dire the circumstances, she nonetheless predicts that Everything will be roses. "
― Rick Moody , Demonology
37 " When the will is strong enough, it is astounding what one's mind can do. "
― S.R. Ford , Mimgardr (Oblivion's Gate, #1)
38 " The impact of your vision, while quiet and ever present, will be astounding over time as it becomes a reality. "
― Steve Shallenberger , Becoming Your Best: The 12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders
39 " Not once not twice but at least a dozen times i have advanced an idea to people who thought i was either dreaming , imagining the impossible or just in over my head. When the birth of a rare idea lives to see the light of day it is astounding . I have some ideas am now advancing and i am watching closely the discomfort change presents. To achieve different results we have to change how we do things , we must slay lunacy "
40 " Sometimes God speaks to a man in a whisper… But sometimes His Spirit explodes in a man suddenly, lighting up in shocking crimson brilliance the cowardly and sullied things he’s let his drowsy soul become mired in, and bringing unlooked for tears at the glimpse of the man he ought to have been all along. With that despairing realization the astounding truth blossoms like a bursting field of wildflowers or a brilliant new dawn shooting from the peak of a dark hill, that because of Christ’s work for him, he can change. "
