Quotes about thrill
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Oliver Sacks photo
Alan Shepard photo

“I guess those of us who have been with NASA … kind of understand the tremendous excitement and thrills and celebrations and national pride that went with the Apollo program is just something you're not going to create again, probably until we go to Mars.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

James Endrst (July 8, 1994) "It's Been 25 Years Since We Took That Giant Leap For Mankind - Moon Odyssey", The Hartford Courant, p. B1.

Joseph Stella photo
Sania Mirza photo
Woodrow Wilson photo

“There is a very great thrill to be had from the memories of the American Revolution, but the American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation, and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the duty of bringing the things then begun to a noble triumph of completion.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

“On the Spirit of America” http://books.google.com/books?id=w0IOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA122, Address to Daughters of the American Revoltion (11 October 1915)
1910s

Jerome K. Jerome photo

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Camille Paglia photo

“The thrill of terror is passive, masochistic, and implicitly feminine. It is imaginative submission to overwhelming superior force.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 267

Jeremy Clarkson photo
Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo
Babe Ruth photo
Edwin Boring photo
Gino Severini photo

“[Severini referred to himself as a].. primitive who is thrilled by the movement of a dancer and boulevard filled with people.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

(c. 1911), as quoted by Fonti, 'The Dance', p. 15; as cited in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003, p. 33

“I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now is your chance to—Well, we warned you.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

Prologue; Edward Van Sloan actually comes out from behind an on-screen curtain to deliver this speech.
Frankenstein (1931)

Anthony Bourdain photo
John Muir photo
Shandi Finnessey photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo
Marina Warner photo
Merle Haggard photo

“I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball.
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all.”

Merle Haggard (1937–2016) American country music song writer, singer and musician

"Okie from Muskogee" (September 1969), co-written with Roy Edward Burris, for Okie from Muskogee (October 1969)

M. K. Hobson photo
Irene Dunne photo
Fritz Leiber photo
Gustav Holst photo

“Music, being identical with heaven, isn't a thing of momentary thrills, or even hourly ones. It's a condition of eternity.”

Gustav Holst (1874–1934) English composer

Letter to W G Whittaker, 1914, quoted in Paul Holmes Holst p. 62.

Jordan Peterson photo

“Partly what you need to do is decide what your highest value is. It's the star. What are you aiming for? You can decide. But there are some criteria. It should be good for you in a way that facilitates your moving forward. Maybe it should be good for you in a way that's also good for your family, as well as for the larger community. It should cover the domain of life. There's constraints on what you should regard as a value, but within those constraints you have the choice. You have choice. The thing is that people will carry a heavy load if they get to pick the load. And they think, 'well, I won't carry any load.' Ok, fine, but then you'll be like the slead dog that has nothing to pull. You'll get bored. People are pack animals. They need to pull against a wait. And that's not true for everyone. It's not true for conscientious people. For the typical person, they'll eat themselves up unless they have a load. This is why there's such an opiate epidemic among so many dispossessed white, middle aged, unemployed men in the U. S. They lose their job, and then they're done. They despise themselves. They develop chronic pain syndromes and depression. And the chronic pain is treated with opiates. That's what we're doing. And you should watch when you talk to young men about responsibility. They're so thrilled about it. It just blows me away. Really?! That's what the counter-culture is? Grow up and do something useful. Really? I can do that? Oh, I'm so excited by that idea. No one ever mentioned that before. Rights, rights, rights, rights. Jesus. It's appalling. People have had enough of that. And they better have, because it's a non-productive mode of being. Responsibility, man. That's where the meaning in life is.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Barbara Hepworth photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Bruce Springsteen photo

“You ride in a limousine the first time, it’s a big thrill but after that it’s just a stupid car.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

Bruce Springsteen Talking

Matthew Simpson photo
Horace photo

“Mere grace is not enough: a play should thrill
The hearer's soul, and move it at its will.”

Non satis est pulchra esse poemata; dulcia sunto Et, quocumque uolent, animum auditoris agunto.

Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 99 (tr. John Conington)

John A. Eddy photo
Helen Keller photo
Garrison Keillor photo

“I can get excitement watching rain on a puddle. And then I paint it. Now, I admit, there are not too many people who would find that exciting. But I would. And I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is.”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

Interview with Marion Finlay, "Hockney on … politics, pleasure, and smoking in public places" http://www.forestonline.org/output/Page264.asp FOREST Online (28 July 2004)
2000s

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
K. Barry Sharpless photo
Jacques Derrida photo
Phil Brooks photo
George William Russell photo

“The great deep thrills for through it everywhere
The breath of beauty blows.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Donald Barthelme photo
Ellen Kushner photo

“He felt the almost sexual thrill of being the one in the room with all the power.”

Part IV, Chapter VI (p. 405)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Dylan Moran photo
Josh Groban photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
J. M. Barrie photo
E. B. White photo
George Eliot photo

“Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill.”

Flann O'Brien (1911–1966) Irish writer

Page 143
The Hair of the Dogma (1977)

Tom Petty photo
Raymond Loewy photo
Milan Kundera photo
Robert Burns photo

“Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill the deepest notes of woe.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Sensibility How Charming, st. 4
Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1787-1796)

Madalyn Murray O'Hair photo
Paul Newman photo
John Banville photo
André Maurois photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Kunti photo

“When the element of conversion with reference to a standard is eliminated from life, what remains is the irresponsible quest for thrills.”

Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) American academic and literary criticism

Source: "Democracy and Standards" (1924), p. 138

Max Barry photo

“When someone thinks, “I liked his last book, I’ll hope this new one is good” and shells out their hard-earned, I fervently want that person to be thrilled.”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

October 8, 2005 weblog post http://www.maxbarry.com/2005/10/08/news.html#firstreviews

Herbert Hoover photo
Toni Morrison photo
Phil Ochs photo
Natasha Lyonne photo

“Look, I’m not thrilled that perfect strangers get to have an opinion about me or feel like they know me, but I have enough perspective to know they don’t know me, and I do have a life and I don’t live it for other people.”

Natasha Lyonne (1979) actress

As quoted in "Spoonful of Sugar : Natasha Lyonne’s Sweet Comeback" by Shira Levine, in Heeb Magazine (20 January 2009)
Context: Look, I’m not thrilled that perfect strangers get to have an opinion about me or feel like they know me, but I have enough perspective to know they don’t know me, and I do have a life and I don’t live it for other people.… My reality is very different from what everyone read. The problem is because I did get myself in a lot of trouble, I didn’t get to do the kind of work that maybe I should have been doing, so it became confusing who I really am and what I am really about … It’s totally fucking strange to me that people took a lot of that fucking stuff seriously. … It’s not their fault that they don’t know me personally. Who’s got the time?

Richard Wright photo
Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“To a noble person it is a holy joy to remember, an overwhelming thrill to be grateful, while to a person whose character is neither rich nor strong, gratitude is a most painful sensation.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Holy Dimension", p. 334
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: Only those who are spiritually imitators, only people who are afraid to be grateful and too weak to be loyal, have nothing but the present moment. The mark of nobility is inherited possession. To a noble person it is a holy joy to remember, an overwhelming thrill to be grateful, while to a person whose character is neither rich nor strong, gratitude is a most painful sensation. The secret of wisdom is never to get lost in a momentary mood or passion, never to forget a friendship over a momentary grievance, never to lose sight of the lasting values over a transitory episode.

Alan Watts photo
David Lynch photo

“Then Dennis called and said, 'I have to play Frank, because I am Frank.' That thrilled me, and scared me.”

Casting, p. 69
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: On Blue Velvet, I worked with a casting director, Johanna Ray. And we had all brought up Dennis Hopper. But everybody said, 'No, no; you can't work with Dennis. He's really in bad shape, and you'll have nothing but trouble.' So we continued looking for people. But one day, Dennis' agent called and said that Dennis was clean and sober and had already done another picture, and I could talk to that director to verify it. Then Dennis called and said, 'I have to play Frank, because I am Frank.' That thrilled me, and scared me.

Starhawk photo

“To become truly wild, we must not be sidetracked by the dramas of power-over, the seduction of addictions, or the thrill of control. We must go deeper.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)
Context: One of the great disservices a culture of domination has done to all of us is to confuse the erotic with domination and violence. The God is wild, but his is the wildness of connection, not of domination. Wildness is not the same as violence. Gentleness and tenderness do not translate into wimpiness. When men — or women, for that matter — begin to unleash what is untamed in us, we need to remember that the first images and impulses we encounter will often be the stereotyped paths of power we have learned in a culture of domination. To become truly wild, we must not be sidetracked by the dramas of power-over, the seduction of addictions, or the thrill of control. We must go deeper. <!-- p. 233

St. Vincent (musician) photo

“Lover, I don’t play to win but for the thrill until I’m spent.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"The Strangers" - Live @ Great American Music Hall (27 February 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAX3P1ueR6w
Actor (2009)
Context: Lover, I don’t play to win but for the thrill until I’m spent.
Paint the black hole blacker. Paint the black hole blacker

Helen Keller photo

“I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.”

Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 4
Context: We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me.

Cornstalk photo

“There was a time when the name of Cornstalk thrilled every heart in West Virginia.”

Cornstalk (1720–1777) Native American in the American Revolution

Rev. William Henry Foote, in "Cornstalk, the Shawanee Chief" in The Southern Literary Messenger Vol. 16, Issue 9, (September 1850) pp. 533-540 http://victorian.fortunecity.com/rothko/420/aniyuntikwalaski/cornstalk.html
Context: There was a time when the name of Cornstalk thrilled every heart in West Virginia. Here and there among the mountains may be found an aged one, who remembers the terrors of Indian warfare as they raged on the rivers, and in the retired glens, west of the Blue Ridge, under that noted savage. Cornstalk was to the Indians of West Virginia, what Powhatan was to the tribes on the Sea Coast, the greatest and the last chief.

W. C. Handy photo

“I am constantly recharged by the different artists I work with, by the new challenges we face, and by listening to my inner voice. My trip to the ocean every year gives me great peace, and now that I am a grandfather for the first time, I am thrilled and inspired every day that I see my granddaughter because I have great hope for the future generation.”

Hugo Medrano director, playwright, and actor

On what inspires him in “An Interview with GALA Hispanic Theatre’s Hugo Medrano” https://mdtheatreguide.com/2011/10/an-interview-with-gala-hispanic-theatres-hugo-medrano/ in MD Theatre Guide (2011 Oct 8)

Leo Tolstoy photo

“I longed for activity, instead of an even flow of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to renounce self for the sake of my love. I was conscious of a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. I had bouts of depression, which I tried to hide, as something to be ashamed of…My mind, even my senses were occupied, but there was another feeling – the feeling of youth and a craving for activity – which found no scope in our quiet life…So time went by, the snow piled higher and higher round the house, and there we remained together, always and for ever alone and just the same in each other’s eyes; while somewhere far away amidst glitter and noise multitudes of people thrilled, suffered and rejoiced, without one thought of us and our existence which was ebbing away.”

Worst of all, I felt that every day that passed riveted another link to the chain of habit which was binding our life into a fixed shape, that our emotions, ceasing to be spontaneous, were being subordinated to the even, passionless flow of time… ‘It’s all very well … ‘ I thought, ‘it’s all very well to do good and lead upright lives, as he says, but we’ll have plenty of time for that later, and there are other things for which the time is now or never.’ I wanted, not what I had got, but a life of challenge; I wanted feeling to guide us in life, and not life to guide us in feeling.
Family Happiness (1859)

Billie Holiday photo

“Life of Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionists. Astonishing really that he should be so little known, should have left so little impression.. Strangely thrilling that St Paul - end of the eighteenth century!”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

should have prayed all his life for the conversion of England, pledging his sons to do likewise. Once, during Mass, he had a vision of my sons in England. But only in 1841, almost seventy years after his death, did they actually set foot on English soil - through Fr Dominic Barberi. It was he who received Newman into the Church..
Broken Lights Diaries 1957-59.

Donald J. Trump photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“I haven’t been able to sleep before entering the house; I’m that thrilled to share the same stage as him. It’s an absolute dream come true.”

Nikki Tamboli (1996) Indian Actress

Bigg Boss 14: Nikki Tamboli wants to work with Vijay Sethupathi after reality show

Marta Kristen photo

“It’s really thrilling to teach somebody all the different things I’ve learned in the past and that I can cull from my own experiences. I’m fortunate to be able to do what I wanted to do most of my life.”

Marta Kristen (1945) Norwegian actress

Source: Marta Kristen and Mark Goddard – Fifty Years Later and Still Lost in Space https://www.popentertainmentarchives.com/post/marta-kristen-and-mark-goddard-fifty-years-later-and-still-lost-in-space (January 15, 2015)

Jordan Peterson photo

“You should watch when you talk to young men about responsibility. They're so thrilled about it. It just blows me away. Really?! That's what the counter-culture is? Grow up and do something useful. "Really? I can do that? Oh, I'm so excited by that idea. No one ever mentioned that before."”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Rights, rights, rights, rights… Jesus! It's appalling. People have had enough of that. And they better have, because it's a non-productive mode of being. Responsibility, man: that's where the meaning in life is.
Other

Tara Westover photo