Hocking Quotes

1. "It does not do to rely too much on silent majorities, Evey, for silence is a fragile thing, one loud noise, and its gone. But the people are so cowed and disorganised. A few might take the opportunity to protest, but it'll just be a voice crying in the wilderness. Noise is relative to the silence preceding it. The more absolute the hush, the more shocking the thunderclap. Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations, Evey and it is much, much louder than they care to remember."
Author: Alan Moore

2. "The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own."
Author: Aldous Huxley

3. "Edmund cleared his throat. "Pretty as a picture, isn't she?"Fade only nodded. His hungry stare brought color to my cheeks, and I was conscious of the warmth of his fingers when he touched me. Just on the arm, but my skin was bare, and it felt shocking, intimate, too darking in front of my foster parents."
Author: Ann Aguirre

4. "Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and drained by drink, like Pasha, to be still fond of me and to respect me. My God, how I despise myself! I so deeply loathe my voice, my walk, my hands, these clothes, my thoughts. Well, isn't that funny, isn't that shocking? Less than a year ago I was healthy and strong, I was cheerful, tireless, passionate, I worked with these very hands, I could speak to move even Philistines to tears, I could cry when I saw grief, I became indignant when I encountered evil. I knew inspiration, I knew the charm and poetry of quiet nights when from dusk to dawn you sit at your desk or indulge you mind with dreams. I believed, I looked into the future as into the eyes of my own mother... And now, my God, I am exhausted, I do not believe, I spend my days and nights in idleness."
Author: Anton Chekhov

5. "Busted. I'm a monster. Jev is my deceptively harmless-and shockingly handsome-alter ego."
Author: Becca Fitzpatrick

6. "I'd taken three years off to live as a normal person, so this was my first time back into it, and it was kind of shocking, but then it was fun."
Author: Camilla Belle

7. "It's kind of shocking to me, actually, that I've almost been stereotyped, in a way - physically - because, I didn't get good grades in school; I got in a lot of fights. I wear glasses because I don't want something tugging my eyeball, but I wouldn't consider myself a 'nerd.' I don't know what really makes someone a nerd."
Author: Charlyne Yi

8. "Some lurid things have been said about me—that I am a racist, a hopeless alcoholic, a closet homosexual and so forth—that I leave to others to decide the truth of. I'd only point out, though, that if true these accusations must also have been true when I was still on the correct side, and that such shocking deformities didn't seem to count for so much then. Arguing with the Stalinist mentality for more than three decades now, and doing a bit of soapboxing and street-corner speaking on and off, has meant that it takes quite a lot to hurt my tender feelings, or bruise my milk-white skin."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

9. "A painting probably is the most shocking increase in value, from what it costs to make to what you sell it for."
Author: Damien Hirst

10. "..boys by civil calculations, we had by now roughed up the swami and slept where the elephant shits, Shocking us would have required some kind of genius.Woe To Live On"
Author: Daniel Woodrell

11. "I like my body when it is with yourbody. It is so quite new a thing.Muscles better and nerves more.i like your body. i like what it does,i like its hows. i like to feel the spineof your body and its bones, and the trembling-firm-smooth ness and which i willagain and again and againkiss, i like kissing this and that of you,i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzzof your electric fur, and what-is-it comesover parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,and possibly i like the thrillof under me you so quite new."
Author: E.E. Cummings

12. "Of course, any map of the Place would be shocking to anyone with any understanding of geography. As you can see, this is a map of no earthly geography." -Grace Tiebold"
Author: Elizabeth Knox

13. "The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course. Until Caroline had died I had belonged to that other world, the place of innocence, and linear expectations, where I thught grief was a simple, wrenching realm of sadness and longing that graduallu receded. What that definition left out was the body blow that loss inflicts, as well as the temporary madness, and a range of less straightforward emotions shocking in their intensity."
Author: Gail Caldwell

14. "We live in a shockingly beautiful world. We are walking through the living kingdom of heaven every day; the colours, the sound, the love of others, the potential to create, the plants, wildlife, nature, music, all sensations and life...but if we refuse to see colour and beauty we may as well be in Hell. Maybe an animated band was the best way of announcing this."
Author: Gorillaz

15. "It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes."
Author: Graham Greene

16. "Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart."
Author: H.G. Wells

17. "To see what he has been packing all day makes my center weep with wetness.  Huge, thick and decorated.  He fingers the hoop, which causes his dick to jump and a hiss to shoot from his mouth.  As if the Prince Albert isn't shocking enough, the second horizontal bar through his bulbous head has my jaw dropping."
Author: Harper Sloan

18. "Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear."
Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe

19. "It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups."
Author: Henry A. Wallace

20. "The disconnect between America and its military is shocking."
Author: John Oliver

21. "[W]hile the use of non-lethal weapons such as tasers and LEDIs may not necessarily reduce the number of civilian casualties, they have been largely accepted as the humane alternative to deadly force because they make the use of force appear far less dramatic and violent than it has in the past.Contrast, for instance, the image of police officers beating Rodney King with billy clubs as opposed to police officers continually shocking a person with a taser. Both are severe forms of abuse. However, because the act of pushing a button is far less dramatic and visually arresting than swinging a billy club, it can come across as much more humane to the general public. This, of course, draws much less media coverage and, thus, less bad public relations for the police."
Author: John W. Whitehead

22. "But why would they do that? What is to be asked? He was a man who sees into things -- very ordinary things. A hat left on the floor of a café in Kingstown, a proverb overheard, an old fisherman mending a net: these, for him, were a kind of incitement. There are no answers other than that. He was not like the rest of us. Not even like himself. His imagination, or soul, or whatever province of his mind was hungry for the sustaining rain of the world, would soak in the storms of his own haunted strangeness, and the berries would bloom, and they were what they were, and if the tendrils were peculiar, and some of them wild, the fruits were so shockingly luscious and potent that the thirsty were willing to savour the bitter for the sake of the concomitant sweet. He needed the very ordinary. He was a beautiful man. What more than this need be said? The sort of man who makes you think the movement of foliage might be causing the breeze."
Author: Joseph O'Connor

23. "No wonder I'd never had any friends. I was shockingly bad at it."
Author: Kiera Cass

24. "And I went through a lot of detours and I took a lot of roads and things so yes, that's all there, but it's not meant to be shocking or telltale."
Author: Kim Novak

25. "Well, that is all the notes and there is not much else in the paper of any importance. I never take much interest in foreign parts. Who's this Archduke man who has been murdered?""What does it matter to us?" asked Miss Cornelia, unaware of the hideous answer to her question, which destiny was even then preparing. "Someone is always murdering or being murdered in those Balkan States. It's their normal condition and I don't really think that our papers ought to publish such shocking things."
Author: L.M. Montgomery

26. "I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say 'whom I amconstantly shocking"
Author: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

27. "Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex."
Author: Mahatma Gandhi

28. "It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains. The Governor's wife should cut them all out and paste them into her scrapbook."
Author: Margaret Atwood

29. "That odd capacity for destitution, as if by nature we ought to have so much more than nature gives us. As if we are shockingly unclothed when we lack the complacencies of ordinary life. In destitution, even of feeling or purpose, a human being is more hauntingly human and vulnerable to kindnesses because there is the sense that things should be otherwise, and then the thought of what is wanting and what alleviation would be, and how the soul could be put at ease, restored. At home. But the soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all."
Author: Marilynne Robinson

30. "In a spornographic age it's no longer enough for the male body to be presented to us by consumerism as merely attractive, or desiring to be desired, as it was in the early days of nakedly narcissistic male metrosexuality. This masculine coquettish-ness, pleasing as it is, no longer offers an intense enough image. Or provokes enough lust. It's just not very shocking or arousing any more. In fact, it's just too… normal. To get our attention these days the sporting male body has to promise us nothing less than an immaculately groomed, waxed and pumped gang-bang in the showers."
Author: Mark Simpson

31. "The heat intensified. My emotions were spinning out of control. The euphoria was maddening. Out of pure instinct, I pulled away and leaned against the wall, unable to find enough air to breathe. The more I pulled away, the strong the raw ache inside of me became, causing me more pain than the lack of oxygen in the room. Then I realized the source of my pain. It dawned on me with a shocking certainty. I hadn't wanted to pull away from Nathan. I needed him closer in order to feel safe. I needed his touch, his feel. I needed him now more than I ever had."
Author: Markelle Grabo

32. "Around the time of 'The Lord of the Rings,' it was a shock to me just how big it is to be on that kind of media juggernaut. It was a big thing and the scrutiny was shocking."
Author: Miranda Otto

33. "I think the difference between finding happiness, or moments of happiness, is how you choose to interpret things. That's a rather shocking responsibility. That we're responsible for our own happiness. It's not those around us."
Author: Natascha McElhone

34. "Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It is fact-encirclingly huge, and it is idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking and full of simmering controversies - and it is free, and it is fast."
Author: Nicholson Baker

35. "Gory stuff can be shocking but it doesn't really scare me. I'd say the kind of stuff that gets under my skin is the unknown. You hear a knock behind a wall and you don't know what it is. Is there something there or not?"
Author: Oren Peli

36. "I am not averse to generalizing the notion of "modern" to designate a certain way of life, rather than making it purely a synonym of 'contemporary'. There are moments and places in history to which 'we moderns' could return without too greatly disturbing the harmony of those times, without seeming objects infinitely curious and conspicuous... creatures shocking, dissonant, and unassailable."
Author: Paul Valéry

37. "Restrooms at gas stations were an unpleasant and shocking surprise; I had never considered the serious drawbacks of such lazily-cleaned rooms. I was completely unable to ignore the filth, and wasted a burst of power to turn the sink, floors and porcelain toilet into sparkling, clean examples of their kind before using the facility. I felt that was a much less judgmental response than simply blowing the place off the face of the Earth, which was also a distinct temptation, especially when the storekeeper overcharged me for a bottle of cold water."
Author: Rachel Caine

38. "Bishop was all done with the witty converstaion. "Will you swear?"And Myrnin said, shockingly, "I will." And he proceeded to, a string of swearwords that made Claire blink. He ended with, "--frothy fool-born apple-john! Cheater of vandals and defiler of dead dogs!" and did another twirl and bow. He looked up with a red, red grin that was more like a leer. "Is that what you meant, my lord?"
Author: Rachel Caine

39. "Men's lives are not progressions, as conventionally rendered in history paintings, nor are they a series of facts that may be enumerated & in their proper order understood. Rather they are a series of transformations, some immediate & shocking, some so slow as to be imperceptible, yet so complete & horrifying that at the end of his life a man may search his memory in vain for a moment of correspondence between his self in his dotage & him in his youth."
Author: Richard Flanagan

40. "[W]hen Ben was kissing me, the whole world retreated. I felt things I'd never felt before, in places I never knew were connected.But I was pretty sure that whatever was buzzing against my thigh was not normal. For one thing, it was ringing.Ben dragged his mouth away from mine and mumbled a curse that was a little shocking and kind of hot."Ignore it," he said.That was easy for him to say when his cell phone was rounding third base. If anyone got a home run tonight, I didn't want it to be Verizon Wireless."
Author: Rosemary Clement Moore

41. "What used to be edgy (divorces) has become mainstream and what used to be mainstream (racism and sexism) has become shocking."
Author: Sara Sheridan

42. "Shockingly, a University of Pennsylvania study says the number of young people addicted to gambling - largely due to increased exposure to the Internet and Internet gambling - grew by an alarming 20 percent between 2004 and 2005 alone."
Author: Spencer Bachus

43. "She searched his face. "Why did you do this -- go to all this trouble, indulge in what I'm sure will prove a shockingly hideous expense?He returned he gaze steadily "You like music."It was that simple -- he let her read the truth in his eyes. Then she shivered. He reached for the shawl she'd left over her chair and held it up. She hesitated, then turned so he could drape it over her shoulders. Releasing the fine silk, he closed his hands about her shoulders; leaning closer, he murmured, "As with other pleasures, my reward is your delight."
Author: Stephanie Laurens

44. "I love men, the restlessness of their corrupted souls, the way they hide their heavy, murderous hearts, their sudden delicacies and small shocking acts of tenderness."
Author: Steve Almond

45. "What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenityAnd the wisdom of age? Had they deceived usOr deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secretsUseless in the darkness into which they peeredOr from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,At best, only a limited valueIn the knowledge derived from experience.The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,For the pattern is new in every momentAnd every moment is a new and shockingValuation of all we have been. We are only undeceivedOf that which, deceiving, could no longer harm."
Author: T.S. Eliot

46. "There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?"
Author: Thomas Paine

47. "That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate predjudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable."
Author: Thomas Paine

48. "We, as Americans, have so much to learn here. We have a shockingly low level of global awareness and familiarity and little idea of how the world sees us. And those disturbing facts keep getting us into a lot of trouble."
Author: Tom Freston

49. "In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948)"
Author: W.H. Auden

50. "...lifeless and shockingly alien in that place where dissolution itself was a seething turmoil of ejaculation tumescence conception and birth, and death did not even exit."
Author: William Faulkner

Hocking Quotes Pictures