shock Quotes

“The crack of the bat was so unusually sharp and loud for a Little League game that the noise captured even my mother’s wandering attention. She turned her head toward home plate—I guess, to see who had hit such a shot—and the ball struck her left temple, spinning her so quickly that one of her high heels broke and she fell forward, facing the stands, her knees splayed apart, her face hitting the ground first because her hands never moved from her sides (not even to break her fall), which later gave rise to the speculation that she was dead before she touched the earth.”

″‘I don’t really know,’ I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true.”

“The right question is whether we as society need people who have emerged from some kind of trauma - and the answer is that we plainly do. This is not a pleasant fact to contemplate. For every remote miss who becomes stronger, there are countless near misses who are crushed by what they have been through. There are times and places, however, when all of us depend on people who have been hardened by their experiences.”

“We know this to be a primary autonomic response, the so-called ‘shame’ or ‘blushing’ reaction to a morally shocking stimulus. It can’t be controlled voluntarily, as can skin conductivity, respiration, and cardiac rate.”

″‘He was looking for someone else, you say—someone who was not you?’ ‘He was looking for little Miles.’ A portentous clearness now possessed me. ‘That’s whom he was looking for.’ ‘But how do you know?’ ‘I know, I know, I know!’ My exaltation grew.‘“And you know, my dear!’

“For there again, against the glass ... was the hideous author of our woe — the white face of damnation.”

“Nothing shocked them anymore. It was the way things were. It was what they had come to expect of life . . . He himself had not yet come to that, he did not want to come to it.”

“God God—whose hand was I holding?”

“All of them stood in silence for a moment and looked at HELP ELEANOR COME HOME ELEANOR written in shaky red letters on the wallpaper over Theodora’s bed.”

“You can imagine the sensation there was the next morning when the missing Princess Amy calmly walked down to breakfast as though she had never been away.”

“The majority of dying had happened during the Second World War when we didn’t exist. ”

“No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to.”

“I read somewhere that when someone is in emotional shock, the area around the heart loses some of its protective fat and is therefore dangerously exposed.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Little often discussed Stuart quietly between themselves when he wasn’t around, for they had never quite recovered from the shock and surprise of having a mouse in the family. He was so very tiny and presented so many problems to his parents.”

“I held my breath and waited for the earth to stop spinning. The sun need not rise again. There was no reason for the rivers to flow. Birds would never sing.”

“Hari was shocked by the story but he did not like to be thought of as another orphan in Jagu’s care. He did have parents after all—even if one was a drunkard and the other an invalid—and a home, a proper home, not just a place on a railway platform.”

“At last the people all came flocking, shouting in the great Town Hall: ‘Our Council’s attitude is shocking! High you sit and far you’ll fall. To think we buy fine gowns of ermine for dolts who can’t or won’t determine how to rid us of our vermin! You’re old and fat and still expect your furry robes to buy respect! Well, wake up! Give your brains a racking! Find the remedy we’re lacking or, sure as fate, we’ll send you packing!’ ”

“In her sleep she twisted and moaned; then mercifully, her mind went blank- nature’s safety valve that protects, even in dreams, those who have been shocked beyond endurance...”

But then one always went about imagining that these things didn’t happen—except to other people. It was difficult to believe in them just at first, when they happened to yourself.

“I’m just dazzled inside,” said Anne. “I want to say a hundred things, and I can’t find words to say them in.”

“I want to be quite silent and quiet and try to realize it. I can’t realize it. Half the time it seems to me that Matthew can’t be dead; and the other half it seems as if he must have been dead for a long time and I’ve had this horrible dull ache ever since.”

Haydée, whose eyes were occupied in examining the theatre in search of her guardian, perceived his pale features close to Morcerf’s face. It was as if the young girl beheld the head of Medusa. She bent forwards as though to assure herself of the reality of what she saw, then, uttering a faint cry, threw herself back in her seat.

“You!” cried Franz, whose hair stood on end; “you, M. Noirtier—you killed my father?”

Seeing nothing save what I had seen already, I turned back into the house, and stood just within the shelter of the doorway, looking out into the night. While I was considering that some one must have been there lately and must soon be coming back, or the candle would not be burning, it came into my head to look if the wick were long. I turned round to do so, and had taken up the candle in my hand, when it was extinguished by some violent shock; and the next thing I comprehended was, that I had been caught in a strong running noose, thrown over my head from behind.

He had first to slowly turn himself around one of the double doors, and he had to do it very carefully if he did not want to fall flat on his back before entering the room. He was still occupied with this difficult movement, unable to pay attention to anything else, when he heard the chief clerk exclaim a loud “Oh!”, which sounded like the soughing of the wind. Now he also saw him—he was the nearest to the door—his hand pressed against his open mouth and slowly retreating as if driven by a steady and invisible force. Gregor’s mother, her hair still dishevelled from bed despite the chief clerk’s being there, looked at his father. Then she unfolded her arms, took two steps forward towards Gregor and sank down onto the floor into her skirts that spread themselves out around her as her head disappeared down onto her breast. His father looked hostile, and clenched his fists as if wanting to knock Gregor back into his room. Then he looked uncertainly round the living room, covered his eyes with his hands and wept so that his powerful chest shook.

She did not see him straight away, but when she did notice him under the couch—he had to be somewhere, for God’s sake, he couldn’t have flown away—she was so shocked that she lost control of herself and slammed the door shut again from outside. But she seemed to regret her behaviour, as she opened the door again straight away and came in on tip-toe as if entering the room of someone seriously ill or even of a stranger.