“He could tell that the other expected him to be surprised, but it was not in him to be surprised because it was no more surprising to him when things did not fall out as they were supposed to than when they did.”
The Last Gentleman (1966)
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Walker Percy 55
Southern philosophical novelist 1916–1990Related quotes

“There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.”
Il n'est pas de plaisir plus doux que de surprendre un homme en lui donnant plus qu'il n'espère.
XXVIII: "La Fausse Monnaie" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Petits_Po%C3%A8mes_en_prose_-_XXVIII._La_Fausse_Monnaie
Le Spleen de Paris (1862)

“He raped 10 women. I never expected it from him. He surprised all of us. We all envy him.”
On Moshe Katsav NewsRu http://www.newsru.com/russia/19oct2006/olmert.html.

Regarding rioting (1968), as quoted in Judgment days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the laws that changed America (2005), by Nick Kotz, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 417.
1960s

“And those who saw, it did surprise,
Such drops could fall from human eyes.”

Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Context: All error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of stating that the current truth is incomplete. The follies of youth have a basis in sound reason, just as much as the embarrassing questions put by babes and sucklings. Their most antisocial acts indicate the defects of our society. When the torrent sweeps the man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory. Shelley, chafing at the Church of England, discovered the cure of all evils in universal atheism. Generous lads irritated at the injustices of society, see nothing for it but the abolishment of everything and Kingdom Come of anarchy. Shelley was a young fool; so are these cocksparrow revolutionaries. But it is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God’s sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! As for the others, the irony of facts shall take it out of their hands, and make fools of them in downright earnest, ere the farce be over. There shall be such a mopping and a mowing at the last day, and such blushing and confusion of countenance for all those who have been wise in their own esteem, and have not learnt the rough lessons that youth hands on to age. If we are indeed here to perfect and complete our own natures, and grow larger, stronger, and more sympathetic against some nobler career in the future, we had all best bestir ourselves to the utmost while we have the time. To equip a dull, respectable person with wings would be but to make a parody of an angel.

Gilberto Silva, Brazilian World Cup winning footballer, 2006 ( Source http://football.guardian.co.uk/championsleague200506/story/0,,1775677,00.html)
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“To surprise the enemy is to defeat him.”
As Military Adviser in China - Page 245 by Aleksandr Ivanovich Cherepanov - China - 1982.