Astonishment Quote by James A. Baldwin

“One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.”

James A. Baldwin

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.1 out of 5 (6 ratings)

More by James A. Baldwin

One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own.

James A. Baldwin

Image

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

James A. Baldwin

Image

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

James A. Baldwin

Image

The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

James A. Baldwin

Image

The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden - as an unpatriotic act - that the…

James A. Baldwin

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this,…

James A. Baldwin

Image

We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is precisely…

James A. Baldwin

Image

The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.

James A. Baldwin

Image

James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped…

James A. Baldwin

Image

I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.

James A. Baldwin

Image

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be…

James A. Baldwin

Image

An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or…

James A. Baldwin

Image

Explore all 187 James A. Baldwin quotes

More Astonishment quotes

Rich men are resolved to be astonished at nothing. When they see a masterpiece, they must needs at one glance recognize some flaw to…

Honore de Balzac

Image

A lot of what I am looking for is a moment of astonishment, he says. Those moments of pure consciousness when you involuntarily inhale…

Joel Meyerowitz

Image

If there be a skeptical star I was born under it. Yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment.

William Macneile Dixon

Image

If you aren't constantly astonished at God's grace in your solitude, there's no way it can happen in public.

Timothy Keller

Image

“Witness each moment in astounded jubilation. Take every holy breath in gratitude. Rejoice in life!”

Bryant McGill

Image

Those who have past much of their lives in this great city, look upon its opulence and its multitudes, its extent and variety, with cold indifference; but an inhabitant of the remoter parts of the kingdom is immediately distinguished by a kind of dissipated curiosity, a busy endeavour to divide his attention amongst a thousand objects, and a wild confusion…

Samuel Johnson

For a moment Clary thought she might fall; she felt as if something essential had been torn away from her, an arm or a…

Cassandra Clare

Image

Both of you’ll just have to believe me. Emma’s one of those women who was born with… The thing is, the minute a heterosexual man looks at her, all he can think about is – well, her mouth, and – ” “Emma?” Torie’s own mouth gaped in astonishment. Patrick crossed his legs. “Maybe we’re not talking about the same person.…

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it…

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Image

Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment.

Salman Rushdie

Image

When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself

Jorge Luis Borges

Image

What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of Days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the…

Saint John Chrysostom

Browse all 201 Astonishment quotes

Astonishment Quote by James A. Baldwin

Related quotes

More by James A. Baldwin

More Astonishment quotes