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• Surprise: An unexpected or astonishing event, fact, etc.  Oxford Dictionary
• Surprise: A completely unexpected occurrence. Dictionary.com
• Surprise: The feeling caused by something that is unexpected or unusual.  Merriam Webster
• Expectation,  Excitement, Awe,  Wonder

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Life is full of surprise

• We live on a planet that has a more or less infinite capacity to surprise. What reasoning person could possibly want it any other way? Bill Bryson
• Life is a celebration of awakenings, of new beginnings, and wonderful surprises that enlighten the soul. Cielo
• That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life. Rabindranath Tagore
• The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us. François de la Rochefoucauld

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Allowing yourself to be surprised is a great gift you can give yourself

• One of the most beneficial and valuable gifts we can give to ourselves in this life: is allowing ourselves to be surprised! It is okay if life surprises you. It’s a good thing! JoyBell C.
• Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us. Boris Pasternak

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Good surprises energize while bad surprises teach

• Surprises are the joy of living. Surprises directly touch the soul. Good surprises energize and bad surprises teach. Alev Oguz
• Energy management,  Learning

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Pay attention and remain open to surprise

• Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches.  Not everyone learns.  Life asks of us the same thing we have been asked in every class:  “Stay awake.”  “Pay attention.”  But paying attention is no simple matter.  It requires us not to be distracted by expectations, past experiences, labels, and masks. It asks that we not jump to early conclusions and that we remain open to surprise.  Rachel Naomi Remen
• Attention

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Make space for the future to surprise you …

• I’m choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to- come surprises. Elizabeth Gilbert
• Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life. … The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future. E. Stanley Jones
• No one can foresee the consequences of trivia and accident, and for that reason alone, the future will forever be filled with surprises. Dan Gardner
• The future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises. Steven Erikson
• The only certain thing about the future is that it will surprise even those who have seen furthest into it. J. Hobsbawm
• Would you like to know your future? If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator.  So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence — a surprise. Vera Nazarian
• The road of life can only reveal itself as it is traveled; each turn in the road reveals a surprise. Man’s future is hidden.
• The future

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…for not being open to surprise will make you anxious

• The inability to tolerate uncertainty plays a huge role in anxiety and worry. Chronic worriers can’t stand doubt or unpredictability. They need to know with 100 percent certainty what’s going to happen. Worrying is seen as a way to predict what the future has in store—a way to prevent unpleasant surprises and control the outcome. The problem is, it doesn’t work. Robert Segal
• Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. Florence Nightingale
• Anxiety

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Live on surprise by letting go of expectations

• Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. Alice Walker
• I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed. Julia Glass
• If you expect nothing, you’re apt to be surprised. You’ll get it.  Malcolm S. Forbes
• No person is free until he or she is free at the center. When we let go there, we are free indeed.  When the self is renounced, then one stands utterly disillusioned, apart, asking for nothing.  If anything comes to us, it is all sheer gain.  Then life becomes one constant surprise.   Stanley Jones
• Letting go,  Let go of attachment to outcome

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Let yourself be surprised by moments of happiness

• The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us. Ashley Montagu
• Happiness

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Let hope surprise you

• Though you lose all hope, there is still hope, and it loves to surprise. Robert Brault
• Hope

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Make room for surprise in your relationships

• Love withers with predictability; its very essence is surprise and amazement. To make love a prisoner of the mundane is to take its passion and lose it forever. Leo F. Buscaglia
• Principles for healthy relationships

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Let people surprise you with their ingenuity

• Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. George S. Patton
• If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural ability and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected. Bill Gates

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Surprise yourself …

• It’s a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you can do that you’ve forgotten about.  Alan Ball
• I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.  John O’Donohue
• I enjoy taking myself by surprise.

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… by challenging yourself

• Above all, challenge yourself. You may well surprise yourself at what strengths you have, what you can accomplish. Cecile Springer
• Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him. Golo Mann
• One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his greatest surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t. Henry Ford
• The capacity of man himself is only revealed when, under stress and responsibility, he breaks through his educational shell, and he may then be a splendid surprise to himself no less than to this teachers. Harvey Cushing
• Stretch your comfort zone

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… by being open to the new

• Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed. Joseph Addison

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… by being open to spontaneity

• Spontaneity is the quality of being able to do something just because you feel like it at the moment, of trusting your instincts, of taking yourself by surprise and snatching from the clutches of your well-organized routine a bit of unscheduled pleasure. Richard Iannelli
• Spontaneity

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… by taking a fresh look at the familiar

• When we dare to doubt what we are told and take a fresh look at what’s going on, we are in for lots of pleasant and fascinating and useful surprises. A new and more satisfying way of life begins to open up, just by noticing what we see. Douglas Harding
• Face what you think you believe and you will be surprised. William Hale White
• Even in the familiar there can be surprise and wonder. Tierney Gearon
• Hunt for beauty like a child looking for seashells on a bountiful beach. Be open to things outside the frame of “nice” or “pretty.” Let yourself be surprised. Find beauty in unexpected places. Rick Hanson

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Here are more ways to surprise yourself

• I’ve always believed that if you took one tenth of the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out. Randy Pausch
• Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised. Norman Vincent Peale
• Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will live. Charles M. Schwab
• Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you’ll be surprised at how little you have. Ernest Haskins
• When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Surprise is at the heart of wonder

• Wonder: A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.  Oxford Dictionary
• Wonder is from surprise, and surprise stops with experience. Bishop Robert South
• Wonder

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Surprise is at the heart of art

• Art must take reality by surprise. F. Sagan
• Art

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Surprise is at the heart of humour

• Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It’s unbridled, it’s unplanned, it’s full of surprises. Erma Bombeck
• The secret to humor is surprise. Aristotle
• Humour

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Surprise is at the heart of creativity

• Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise. Julia Cameron
• Creativity

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Here are some sources of surprise

• It is still an unending source of surprise for me how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a piece of paper can change the course of human affairs.  Stanislaw Ulam
• Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder. Charles Morgan
• What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be. Ellen Burstyn
• The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves. Eric Hoffer

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• Always mystify, torture, mislead, and surprise the audience as much as possible. Don Roff
• No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. Robert Frost
• Try to cook so that it will surprise a little, agreeably and astonish slightly, without shocking. Jean Marie Amat
• A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is-full of surprises. Isaac Bashevis Singer
• A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless. Charles de Gaulle

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• If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it. G. Wells
• My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror. Somerset Maugham
• My divorce came to me as a complete surprise. That’s what happens when you haven’t been home in eighteen years. Lee Trevino
• It is great to be a blonde. With low expectations it’s very easy to surprise people. Pamela Anderson
• The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself. Voltaire
• Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.  Maryon Elspeth Pearson
• A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.  Wilson Mizner
• I enjoy taking myself by surprise.
• My life is so full of surprises nothing surprises me anymore.  Kim Wilde
• Since a politician never believes what he says he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.  Charles de Gaulle
• The best way to surprise your husband on your anniversary is to mention it.
• The dinner I was cooking for my family was going to be a surprise but the fire trucks ruined it.
• The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.  George Will
• The philosophy exam was a piece of cake which was a bit of a surprise actually because I was expecting some questions on a sheet of paper.
• Tomorrow night I’m giving a lecture on silence and invisibility. Don’t be surprised if I don’t show up. Jarod Kintz
• We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born.  Robert Benchley
• When I was 16 years old the morning of my birthday my parents tried to surprise me with a car but they missed.  Tom Cotter
• When I was born I was so surprised I didn’t talk for a year and a half.  Gracie Allen
• When science finally locates the center of the universe some people will be surprised to learn they’re not it.  Bernard Bailey
• You know those movies that look like they’re going to be really insipid and then completely surprise you? 17 Again isn’t one of those.  Devin Faraci

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