A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger. W. Somerset Maugham
A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Take the first step, and your mind will mobilize all its forces to your aid. But the first essential is that you begin. Once the battle is startled, all that is within and without you will come to your assistance. Robert Collier
Every man who has at last succeeded, after long effort, in calling up the divinity which lies hidden in a woman's heart, is startled to find that he must obey the God he summoned. Henry Adams