If I had known when I was twenty-one that I should be as happy as I am now, I should have been sincerely shocked. They promised me wormwood and the funeral raven.

—Christopher Isherwood

age youth death shock

About Christopher Isherwood

Portrait of Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood (born Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood; 26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an English and American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which was the basis for Cabaret (1966); A Single Man (1964), adapted into a...

More quotations tagged with “shock”

Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.

—Kazuo Ishiguro in Never Let Me Go

time shock aloneness social encounters

Betty Williams, a 1977 Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Northern Ireland, once witnessed the bombing death of Irish children, and a little girl died in Williams's arms. The girl's legs had been severed in the explosion and thrown across the street from where the woman held the bleeding child. Williams went home in shock and despair. Later, the full impact of what she'd seen jolted her awake. She stepped outside, screaming out in the middle of the night. She knocked on doors that might easily have opened with weapons pointed at her face and cried, "What kind of people have we become that we would allow children to be killed on our streets?" Within four hours the city was awake and there were sixteen thousand names on petitions for peace.

peace weapons children bombs death shock despair

Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically — for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist — but then what isn't?

—Quentin Crisp

truth shock manners lying

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

time age shock getting old

Most people have seen worse things in private than they pretend to be shocked at in public.

—Edgar Watson Howe

privacy shock etiquette propriety