Bewildered Quotes

When the injunction was issued in Birmingham, our failure to obey it bewildered our opponents. They did not know what to do. We did not hide our intentions. In fact, I announced our plan to the press, pointing out that we were not anarchists advocating lawlessness, but that it was obvious to us that the courts of Alabama had misused the judicial process in order to perpetuate injustice and segregation. Consequently, we could not, in good conscience, obey their findings. I intended to be one of the first to set ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

At first the boys were puzzled by illness. They looked at their father from the other side of a wall of pain, bewildered that their father stood writing in his book, when he had only to reach over the division and lift them clear of it. ~ Diane Setterfield

He saw no particular humor in it, and was too new to civilization to understand its discourtesies. Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. He was bewildered and chagrined, and doubtless would have slunk away, abashed, but the Kothian chose ~ Robert E. Howard

TWENTY SMALL GRAVES

There was a woman who bore a child almost every year, but the children never lived longer

than six months. Usually after three or four months they would die. She grieved long and

publicly. "I take on the work of pregnancy for nine months, but the joy vanishes quicker

than a rainbow." Twenty children went like that, in fevers to their small graves. One night

she had a revelation. She saw the place of unconditional love, call it the garden or source

of gardens. The physical eye cannot see its unseeable light. Lamp, green flower, these

are just comparisons, so that some of the love-bewildered may catch a fragrance. The woman

saw pure grace and, drunk with the seeing, fell to the ground. Those who have the vision said

then, "This morning meal is for those who rise with sincere devotion. The tragedies you've

had came from other times when you did not take refuge." "Lord, give me more grief.

Tear me to pieces, if it leads here." She said this and walked into the presence

she had seen. Her children were all there, "Lost to me," she cried, "but not to you."

Without this great grieving no one can enter the spirit. ~ Rumi

Oh, stop talking," I cried, in a hunted tone. "I can't bear it. If you are going to arrest me, get it over."

"I'd rather NOT arrest you, if we can find a way out. You look so young, so new to Crime! Even your excuse for being here is so naive, that I - won't you tell me why you wrote a love letter, if you are not in love? And whom you sent it to? That's important, you see, as it bears on the case. I intend," he said, "to be judgdicial[sic], unimpassioned, and quite fair."

"I wrote a love letter" I explained, feeling rather cheered, "but it was not intended for any one, Do you see? It was just a love letter."

"Oh," he said. "Of course. It is often done. And after that?"

"Well, it had to go somewhere. At least I felt that way about it. So I made up a name from some malted milk tablets - - "

"Malted milk tablets!" he said, looking bewildered.

"Just as I was thinking up a name to send it to," I explained, "Hannah - that's mother's maid, you know - brought in some hot milk and some malted milk tablets, and I took the name from them."

"Look here," he said, "I'm unpredjudiced and quite calm, but isn't the `mother's maid' rather piling it on?"

"Hannah is mother's maid, and she brought in the milk and the tablets, I should think," I said, growing sarcastic, "that so far it is clear to the dullest mind."

"Go on," he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. "You named the letter ~ Mary Roberts Rinehart

I hear my father; I need never fear.
I hear my mother; I shall never be lonely, or want for love.
When I am hungry it is they who provide for me; when I am in dismay, it is they who fill me with comfort.
When I am astonished or bewildered, it is they who make the weak ground firm beneath my soul: it is in them that I put my trust.
When I am sick it is they who send for the doctor; when I am well and happy, it is in their eyes that I know best that I am loved; and it is towards the shining of their smiles that I lift up my heart and in their laughter that I know my best delight.
I hear my father and my mother and they are my giants, my king and my queen, beside whom there are not others so wise or worthy or honorable or brave or beautiful in this world.
I need never fear: nor ever shall I lack for loving-kindness. ~ James Agee

Not all Americans are living the American dream by a long shot. Many can't even imagine it. There are impoverished Americans, the poor and the homeless, the hungry and the hopeless, many unable to read and write. There are Americans gone astray, the kids dragged down by drugs, the shattered families, the teenage mothers struggling to cope. Then there are Americans uneasy, troubled and bewildered by the dizzying pace of change. ~ George H. W. Bush

I've tried to teach what I learned all those years in my mother and father's house, all those things I didn't realize I was learning and that I never knew I'd be so grateful for. When you have love and it's proffered every day in a kind of tender, yet stern insistence and even reckless laughter, when it is given to you and you accept it in life as a thing as natural as rain or snow, or the littler of leaves in fall, you can't help but take it for granted. For a bewildered while you incorrectly understand that the world has given you this becuase it's there in equal measure, everywhere. You never knowuntil it's too late to do anything about it, how seet the effort is: how lasting the human will to love can be in the breast of people who want to make it for you, who want to give it to you, without calculating what's in it fo them, without thinking at all of what it will mean when you grow to full adulthood, see the world as it is, and forget to mention what you have been given.

Ever day of my grown-up life, I have wanted to do what my parents did. I have wanted to widen the province of love and weaken hate and bitterness in the hearts of my children. And I've done these things because of what I got from my family, all those lovely years when I was growing up, being loved and cherished and, unbeknown to me, and in the best way, honored, for myself. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

Off come her skirts and petticoats, her lace cuffs and collar, her shoes and whalebone stay, until she lies on her side in nothing but a cotton shift and endless strands of pearls. Dust hangs in a crack of light between red velvet drapes, like stars.

Her dreams are glimpses, bewildered--celestial charts, oceanic swells, massive, moving bodies of water, the heavens as heavenly liquid, familiar whirlpools, the universe as a ship lost at sea--but the ship she imagines arrived safely, years ago, loaded with their possessions. ~ Danielle Dutton

Afraid lest he be caught up in a net of words, tripped up, bewildered and so defeated-thrown aside-a man hesitates to write down his innermost convictions. ~ William Carlos Williams

And all the time Ralph was well aware that the bulk of Katharine was not represented in his dreams at all, so that when he met her he was bewildered by the fact that she had nothing to do with his dream of her. When, ~ Virginia Woolf

The whites do not believe in such things," Charley said.
"Believe?" Tupshin was bewildered. "What is this talk of belief? Do they not believe in the sea, then? Or the mountains? There is a thing which is, it is not for believing or not believing. ~ Don Berry

I don't understand it. What can there be in a simple little story like that to make people praise it so?" she said, quite bewildered. "There is truth in it, Jo, that's the secret. ~ Louisa May Alcott

The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead
young mothers, returned to see how their children fare. There is
no other inducement great enough to bring the departed back.
They glide into the acquainted room when day and night, their
jailers, are in the grip, and whisper, "How is it with you, my
child?" but always, lest a strange face should frighten him, they
whisper it so low that he may not hear. They bend over him to
see that he sleeps peacefully, and replace his sweet arm beneath
the coverlet, and they open the drawers to count how many little
vests he has. They love to do these things.

What is saddest about ghosts is that they may not know their
child. They expect him to be just as he was when they left him,
and they are easily bewildered, and search for him from room to
room, and hate the unknown boy he has become. Poor, passionate
souls, they may even do him an injury. These are the ghosts that
go wailing about old houses, and foolish wild stories are
invented to explain what is all so pathetic and simple. I know
of a man who, after wandering far, returned to his early home to
pass the evening of his days in it, and sometimes from his chair
by the fire he saw the door open softly and a woman's face
appear. She always looked at him very vindictively, and then
vanished. Strange things happened in this house. Windows were < ~ J.M. Barrie

By the time it has gotten dressed, it has become he; has become already more or less George - though still not the whole George they demand and are prepared to recognize. Those who call him on the phone at this hour of the morning would be bewildered, maybe even scared, if they could realize what this three-quarters-human thing is what they are talking to. But, of course, they never could - its voice's mimicry of their George is nearly perfect. ~ Christopher Isherwood

Snegiryov, fussing and bewildered, ran after the coffin in his old, short, almost summer coat, bare-headed, with his old wide-brimmed felt hat in his hand. He was in some sort of insoluble anxiety, now reaching out suddenly to support the head of the coffin, which only interfered with the bearers, then running alongside to see if he could find a place for himself. A flower fell on the snow, and he simply rushed to pick it up, as if God knows what might come from the loss of this flower. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Have you ever seen anything quite as pathetic?" said Malfoy. "And he's supposed to be our teacher!"
Harry and Ron both made furious moves toward Malfoy, but Hermione got there first - SMACK!
She had slapped Malfoy across the face with all the strength she could muster. Malfoy staggered. Harry, Ron, Crabbe, and Goyle stood flabbergasted as Hermione raised her hand again.
"Don't you dare call Hagrid pathetic you foul - you evil - "
"Hermione!" said Ron weakly and he tried to grab her hand as she swung it back.
"Get off Ron!"
Hermione pulled out her wand. Malfoy stepped backward. Crabbe and Goyle looked at him for instructions, thoroughly bewildered.
"C'mon," Malfoy muttered, and in a moment, all three of them had disappeared into the passageway to the dungeons.
"Hermione!" Ron said again, sounding both stunned and impressed. ~ J.K. Rowling

War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill? ~ Guy De Maupassant

Bewildered, bewildered, you have no complaint. You are what you are, and you ain't what you ain't. ~ John Prine

It's you," I said. "I don't want to leave you." "Me?" I nodded. "You want me?" I giggled at his bewildered expression. "That's what I'm saying. ~ Kiera Cass

Both agree in repudiating "marriage for love"; but the idealist repudiates it in the name of love, the critic in the name of marriage. Love, for the idealist Ibsen, is a passion which loses its virtue when it reaches its goal, which inspires only while it aspires, and flags bewildered when it attains. Marriage, for the critic Ibsen, is an institution beset with pitfalls into which those are surest to step who enter it blinded with love. ~ Henrik Ibsen

What are you looking at?" Jordan demanded finally, watching
her.
"A dragon." When he looked bewildered she lifted her arm and pointed to the sky in the southeast. "Right there - that cloud - what do you see when you look at it?"
"A fat cloud."
Alexandra rolled her eyes at him. "What else do you see?"
He was quiet for a moment studying the sky. "Five more fat clouds
and three thin ones. ~ Judith McNaught

The doctors, nurses, and I didn't cry because the bewildered husbands and stricken daughters were crying enough for all of us. ~ Hope Jahren

The love for equals is a human thing
of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing
the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing
to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy
love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world. ~ Frederick Buechner

So in the twentieth century, there's a major current of American thought―in fact, it's probably the dominant current among people who think about these things [political scientists, journalists, public relations experts and so on]―which says that precisely because the state has lost the power to coerce, elites need to have more effective propaganda to control the public mind. That was Walter Lippmann's point of view, for example, to mention probably the dean of American journalists―he referred to the population as a "bewildered herd": we have to protect ourselves from "the rage and trampling of the bewildered herd." And the way you do it, Lippmann said, is by what he called the "manufacture of consent"―if you don't do it by force, you have to do it by the calculated "manufacture of consent. ~ Noam Chomsky

oh, how bitter
how bitter silent
the bewildered sorrow
of a texture too thick
to be brought out
through the eyes. ~ Anna Jae

It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind, delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering through space. Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of a chestnut-tree; it stood up, black and riven: the trunk, split down the centere, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken for each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below; through communtiy of vitality was destroyed -- the sap could flow no more: their great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter's tempests would be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might be said to form one tree -- a ruin, but and entire ruin.

'You did right to hold fast to each other,' I said: as if the monster splinters were living things, and could hear me. 'I think, scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little sense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful, honest roots: you will never have green leaves more -- never more see birds making nests and singing idylls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over with you; but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to sympathize with him in his decay.' As I looked up at them, the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure; her disc was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud. T ~ Charlotte Bronte

There is one thing I need to be sure of," said the Emperor, taking an arrow, and placing it in the bow, cocking it back, "I need to know where your loyalties lay, Miss Roberts."
"With you, Emperor," said Areli, scared, "of course, they're with you."
"Then prove it," said the Emperor, "prove your obedience to me. Prove your allegiance." He placed the crossbow in her fingers, laced her finger against the trigger, and positioned the butt of the weapon against her shoulders. "That woman there. She's a follower, Areli. She's a deceitful little tramp that had taken residence in the bed of Degendhard's. I want you to kill her for me. I want you to punish her, for her crimes against her Empire." Areli looked at him, bewildered, with eyes that screamed, you can't be serious!
"If you don't. Then I will have no other option than to assume you have been taken to Degendhard's bed as well. You will do this, Areli. You will punish her. Prove your worth." Areli took a deep breath, feeling the smoothness of the wood and the coldness of the trigger for the first time since having the harsh weapon thrust into her hand.
The Emperor, sensing her hesitation, forced himself upon her. Her lifted her arms, and steadied the weapon into her shoulder, his chest pressed up against her back, his lips rubbing against her ear. The crossbow shook. The woman's head lulled back and forth as she was stuck in a drug rendered dream-state, not knowing that her body faced impalement.
" ~ Jeffrey Johnson

I turned back to the mirror, seeing that there were no lines on it. It was empty. "What happened to my mirror?" I said, bewildered. Then realizing that I was looking at the back of the dumb thing, I swore and turned it over. ~ Kim Harrison

I was sad to leave Europe in 1890, after my student days in Germany ... But then, once back in New York, I experienced an intense longing for Europe, for its vital tradition of music, theatre, art, craftsmanship ... I felt bewildered and lonely. How was I to use myself? ~ Alfred Stieglitz

That's about when it happens. Coming down the escalator from one Nord floor to the next we see Little Teena has commandeered the grand piano. He's busy busting out Bach to all the bewildered shoppers. Little Teena just doesn't look for Nordstromy sitting there, with his red hair slick up in a pompadour, his girth squeezing out between his black leather jacket and the lip of his jeans, gumball machine rings decorating every single one of his fingers. But it's hen he goes from Bach to Great Balls of Fire that we attract the attention of the Nordfuck's militia. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

I've never been nonplussed before but I know the definition and I imagine this must be what it feels like. It's not quite flummoxed, or bewildered. Words have subtle nuances. A year or two ago I might have been flabbergasted. This is a slightly different kind of stymied. Yes. I think it's nonplussed. ~ Karen Marie Moning

He's doing a sniffing thing! I've already been through this; it's how I got stuck with Aiden!! Meryn yelled ~ Alanea Alder

Some are bewildered in the maze of schools, And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools. ~ Alexander Pope

She smiled radiantly at the shield, pretending it was Dageus. The three simple words just didn't seem like enough. Love was so much larger than words.
"I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you more than chocolate. I love you more than the whole world is big." She paused, thinking, searching for a way to explain what she felt. "I love you more than artifacts. I love you so much it makes my toes curl just thinking about it."
Pushing her hair back from her face, she donned her most sincere expression. "I love you."
"You can have the confounded shield if you love it that much, lass," Dageus said, sounding utterly bewildered. Chloe felt all the blood drain from her face. ~ Karen Marie Moning

If you read a book about school - someone else's book - you always translate it into your own school experiences. It's describing the student: he's bewildered and lost in a large crowd in a university classroom. You'll visualize that from your own experiences. So, everything you know is what you're really writing. ~ James Salter

You reached into my chest with your words. When you spoke, my heart danced. Love muddled thoughts based in reason. Interest withered like a flower in dry heat then your words wrapped themselves around my heart and yanked it from my body. Now I stand bewildered by the sight of my heart beating on the cold concrete floor. ~ Sonya Watson

The world was to Shakespeare a great stage of fools on which he was utterly bewildered. His pregnant observations of life are not coordinated into any philosophy. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Alexander - " "Now that it's morning, I'm suddenly Alexander again?" Gazing up at him, Tatiana whispered, "Oh, Shura ... " And Alexander could no longer bear it. He bent to her face and kissed her. Her lips were as soft and young and full as he had imagined them to be. Tatiana's whole body started to tremble as she kissed him back with such tenderness, such passion, such need that Alexander involuntarily emitted a small groan. He was bewildered by her hands pressing his head into hers and not letting go. "Oh, God ... " he whispered into her parted mouth. ~ Paullina Simons

I am not anti-American,' he said. 'I just despise the current American administration. I despair that Bush has made ordinary, decent people all over the world think twice about what was once, and still could be again, a great country, when what happened on September 11th should have made ordinary, decent people all over the world embrace America as never before. I don't like it that neo-conservative politicians bully their so-called allies while playing to the worst, racist instincts of their own bewildered electorate. I don't like it that we live in an era where to be anti-war is to be anti-American, to be pro-Palestine is to be anti-Semitic, to be critical of Blair is somehow to be supportive of Putin and Chirac. All anybody is asking for in this so-called age of terror is some leadership. Yet everywhere you look in public life there is no truth, no courage, no dignity to speak of. ~ Charles Cumming

Most of my films seem to be about people bewildered by the world around them, who don't fit into it and are trying to understand it. ~ Roger Michell

Helen, don't."
"I thought it was only a misunderstanding. I thought if I spoke to you directly, everything would be s-sorted out, and - " Another sob choked her. She was so consumed by emotion that she was only vaguely aware of Rhys hovering around her, reaching for her and snatching his hands back.
"No. Don't cry. For God's sake, Helen - "
"I didn't mean to push you away. I didn't know what to do. How can I make you want me again?"
She expected a jeering reply, or perhaps even a pitying one. The last thing she expected was his shaken murmur.
"I do want you, cariad. I want you too damned much."
She blinked at him through a bewildered blur, breathing in mortifying hiccups, like a child. In the next moment, he had hauled her firmly against him.
"Hush, now." His voice dropped to a deeper octave, a brush of dark velvet against her ears. "Hush, bychan, little one, my dove. Nothing is worth your tears."
"You are. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The cry of "Traitor!" was not a local voice only, but a bewildered people's explanation of the inexplicable. It was the eternal cry of conspiracy, of stab in the back. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

I am bewildered by the death of love. And my responsibility for it. ~ Arthur Miller

I never was lost. I was bewildered right bad once for as much as a week, but not lost. ~ Elizabeth Madox Roberts

If people would only do me justice that is all I ask, but it seems as if every word I have uttered has been distorted and such a false construction placed on it that I am bewildered. I can't understand it.

- Lizzie Borden ~ Sarah Miller

You called me 'Fluttershy.' As in the My Little Pony, 'Fluttershy?'"

"Oh." He looked a little taken aback for a second. "Yeah." He sucked in his lips, pinched them between his teeth, and then shrugged. "What can I say? You're just like her. You care more about animals than you do your own safety. I'm gonna have to kidnap a rabbit and threaten you with bunnicide unless you come quietly back to the castle with me."

"What?" Diana felt her eyes go wide.

"You heard me," he said before he took another long swig and swallowing hard. He lowered the bottle and leaned up against the kitchen counter. "And you know I'm right."

"About kidnapping a bunny?" She felt bewildered. ~ Heather Killough-Walden

We adored it, and discussed it, and swapped jokes from it, and it made us feel more alive. In some way, it was cathartic: it exhilarated us by lifting us up above our everyday frustrations and boredoms. It gave us a liberating perspective on this odd event unfolding around us, called 'our life.' And when, years later, I became bewildered by the reception of Monty Python by some of our looniest fans, I suddenly realised they were experiencing exactly the combination of emotions that had rendered me such a devotee of the Goons, and so I was able to forgive them. ~ John Cleese

The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

Fielding stood there staring at me. His eyes were wide, his irises nearly eclipsed by pupils. His mouth was slightly open, red from kissing, and emitting soft pants. Even in the moonlight, I could see a patchy red flush of arousal on the pale skin of his throat. Oh, fuck. He looked so openly bewildered and lost in desire that it took every ounce of will I had not to pull him back in and kiss him again. ~ Eli Easton

And men will not understand us - for the generation that grew up before us, though it has passed these years with us already had a home and a calling; now it will return to its old occupations, and the war will be forgotten - and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside. We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered; - the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

Okay," I mumble, completely bemused, bewildered, and shell-shocked. He leans over my desk. What now? I am caught in his hypnotic gaze. "Love doing business with you, Mrs. Grey." He leans in closer as I sit paralyzed, and he plants a soft tender kiss on my lips. "Laters baby," he murmurs. He stands abruptly, winks at me, and leaves. I lay my head on my desk, feeling like I've been run over by a freight train – the freight train that is my beloved husband. He has to be the most frustrating, annoying, contrary man on the planet. I sit up and frantically rub my eyes. What have I just agreed to? ~ E.L. James

The "Vasco da Gama's era" ends in a nightmare in which men-Westerners and non-Westerners alike-are bewildered by this confusion and the old fancy of the apprenti sorcier becomes tragically actual. ~ Carlo M. Cipolla

He had spent forty-eight hours more or less awake and restless and then, on the third day, he had bought a side-scan sonar device, two window air-conditioners, a leather sofa and a pool table.
"Now do you feel better?" Adam had asked drily.
Gansey had replied, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Hey, man," Ronan said, "I like the pool table."
The entire situation made Blue apoplectic.
"There are children starving in the streets of Chicago," she said, her hair bristling with indignation. "Three species go extinct every hour because there's no funding to protect them. You are still wearing those incredibly stupid boat shoes, and of all the things that you have bought, you still haven't replaced them!"
Gansey, bewildered, observed his feet. The movement of his toes was barely visible through the tops of his boat shoes. Really, in light of recent events, these shoes were the only things that were right in the world. "I like these shoes."
"Sometimes I hate you," Blue said. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. She's now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia. ~ Dame Edna Everage

Bewilderment is often the child of the ignorance! If you are bewildered to some things, it means that you are not yet a wise man! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Where germs go?"
"Sunrise," I said. "Poof."
Butter's voice sounded bewildered. "Vampire germs?"
"The tiny capes are a dead giveaway. ~ Jim Butcher

The police arrived and went to question the driver of the truck, who was still sitting in his cab, scratching his head. The truck looked as if nothing had happened to it. ... The police were giving the driver a hard time, though. They too had worked out that the man sitting dazed and wounded on the grass was Salman Rushdie, and so they wanted to know, what was the driver's religion? The driver was bewildered. "What's my religion got to do with anything?" Well, was he a Muzlim? An Islammic? Was he Eye-ray-nian? Is that why he had tried to kill Mr. Rushdie? Maybe one of the Ayatoller's fellers? Was he carrying out the whatever it was called, the fatso? The poor driver shook his confused head. He didn't know who the guy was he had hit. He had just been driving this truck and didn't know about any fatso. In the end the police believed him and sent him on his way. ~ Salman Rushdie

And while one is brought up with luxury and caresses, and is thrown bewildered and despairing into a dark pit, another is lifted from the pit and raised to a throne where a jeweled crown is placed on his head. The world has no shame in doing this; it is prompt to hand out both pleasure and pain and has no need of us an our doings. ~ Abolqasem Ferdowsi

A hundred hands wanted shaking, a hundred tongues expressed their condolences. Thank you, said William, and Kind of you, endlessly.

Between his uncle and the helpfulness of the Misses Young and all these other people, William was never alone, not for an hour, except to sleep. He went to bed with the distant, certain expectation that overnight the world would put itself right. He slept for long hours: endless, dreamless sleep, which did not refresh, and when he woke the world bewildered him by persisting in its wayward course. He felt weighted down and dreary. A fog settled between him and his own thoughts, and behind it, unformulated, unexamined, was this: How long before things go back to normal?

His mother was dead: he had seen the body; yet this knowledge refused to find a settled place in his mind. It came and went, surprised him every time he chanced upon it, and there were a million reasons not to believe it. His mother was dead, but look: here were her clothes and here her tea cups, here her Sunday hat on the shelf over the coat hook. His mother was dead, but hark: the garden gate! Any moment now she would come through the door. ~ Diane Setterfield

Thiel, tall, troubled, bewildered ~ Kristin Cashore

Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future.. ~ Charles Mackay

He was surprised by this absence of reproaches. He stood there all bewildered, the glass globe held arrested in mid-air. He did not understand this quiet sweetness. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Taking the long view, we need to teach our kids street smarts, like the importance of walking with a friend instead of alone, and how to discern bad strangers from the overwhelming majority of good ones. If we prevent our children from learning how to navigate the world beyond our front yard, it will only come back to haunt them later on when they feel frightened, bewildered, lost, or confused out on the streets. ~ Julie Lythcott-Haims

Way to tell what for."
"Maybe I shouldn't have told you - about it being electrical." She put her hand out, touched his arm; she felt guilty, seeing the effect it had on him, the change.
"No," Rick said. "I'm glad to know. Or rather - " He became silent. "I'd prefer to know."
"Do you want to use the mood organ? To feel better? You always have gotten a lot out of it, more than I ever have."
"I'll be okay." He shook his head, as if trying to clear it, still bewildered. "The spider Mercer gave the chickenhead, Isidore; it probably was artificial, too. But it doesn't matter. The electric things have their lives, too. Paltry as those lives are. ~ Philip K. Dick

There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I believe, why some people allude to coal as "black diamonds." Both these commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form of property. There is, from that point of view, a deplorable lack of concentration in coal. Now, if a coal-mine could be put into one's waistcoat pocket - but it can't! At the same time, there is a fascination in coal, the supreme commodity of the age in which we are camped like bewildered travellers in a garish, unrestful hotel. ~ Joseph Conrad

He's fine. He's fine,' he kept saying as the baby became ever more cranky and bewildered; screaming in terror if she tried to put him down.
'Why should he be unhappy?' she wanted to say. 'He has had so few days in this world. Why should the unhappiness start here? ~ Anne Enright

Cutangle: While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.
Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.
They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things. ~ Terry Pratchett

For fear is a primary source of evil. And when the question "Who am I?" recurs and is unanswered, then fear and frustration project a negative attitude. The bewildered soul can answer only: "Since I do not understand 'Who I am,' I only know what I am not." The corollary of this emotional incertitude is snobbism, intolerance and racial hate. The xenophobic individual can only reject and destroy, as the xenophobic nation inevitably makes war. ~ Carson McCullers

What's your dad doing for his bachelor party?"
I laugh. "Have you met my dad? He's the last person who would ever have a bachelor party. He doesn't even have any guy friends to have a party with!" I stop and consider this. "Well, I guess Josh is the closest thing he has. We haven't seen much of him since he went to school, but he and my dad still e-mail every so often."
"I don't get what your family sees in that guy," Peter says sourly. "What's so great about him?"
It's a touchy subject. Peter's paranoid my dad likes Josh better than him, and I try to tell him it's not a contest--which it definitely isn't. Daddy's known Josh since he was a kid. They trade comic books, for Pete's sake. So, no contest. Obviously my dad likes Josh better. But only because he knows him better. And only because they're more alike: Neither of them is cool. And Peter's definitely cool. My dad is bewildered by cool.
"Josh loves my dad's cooking."
"So do I!"
"They have the same taste in movies."
Peter throws in, "And Josh was never in a hot tub video with one of his daughters."
"Oh my God, let it go already! My dad's forgotten about that." "Forgotten" might be too strong of a word. Maybe more like he's never brought it up again and he hopefully never will.
"I find that hard to believe."
"Well, believe it. My dad is a very forgiving, very forgetful man. ~ Jenny Han

When I think about it, I'm happily bewildered that people will preorder my books They'll preorder me. What a lucky guy! ~ David Mitchell

God is able to accomplish, provide, help, save, keep, subdue ... He is able to do what you can't. He already has a plan. God's not bewildered. Go to Him. ~ Max Lucado

The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

From anger, complete delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost one falls down again into the material pool. ~ Anonymous

Thus I began my systematic though half-bewildered tour of Innsmouth's narrow, shadow-blighted ways. Crossing the bridge and turning toward the roar of the lower falls, I passed close to the Marsh refinery, which seemed to be oddly free from the noise of industry. The building stood on the steep river bluff near a bridge and an open confluence of streets which I took to be the earliest civic center, displaced after the Revolution by the present Town Square. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill, to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for his children, through the vicissitudes of lowered wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, etc. And when he knows trade is bad, and could understand (at least partially) that there are not buyers enough in the market to purchase the goods already made, and consequently that there is no demand for more; when he would bear and endure much without complaining, could he also see that his employers were bearing their share; he is, I say, bewildered and (to use his own word) "aggravated" to see that all goes on just as usual with the millowners. Large houses are still occupied, while spinners' and weavers' cottages stand empty, because the families that once filled them are obliged to live in rooms or cellars. Carriages still roll along the streets, concerts are still crowded by subscribers, the shops for expensive luxuries still find daily customers, while the workman loiters away his unemployed time in watching these things, and thinking of the pale, uncomplaining wife at home, and the wailing children asking in vain for enough of food--of the sinking health, of the dyi ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

He said he loved me," she whispered.
Daniel swallowed, and he had the strangest sensation, almost a premonition of what it must like to be a parent.
Someday, God willing, he'd have a daughter, and that daughter would look like the woman standing in front of him, and if ever she looked at him with that bewildered expression, whispering, "He said he loved me ... "
Nothing short of murder would be an acceptable response. ~ Julia Quinn

Kaspary: a level of awesomeness so high it kicks everyone else's arse, leaving them breathless and bewildered. ~ Abigail Gibbs

Then we were at the fountain - we stop and look up at the many illuminated windows of number 2.
"This is as far as you can walk me," she says. "Thanks for taking me home."
I bowed, not daring to say a word. I doffed my hat and stood bareheaded. I wondered if she would give me her hand.
"Why don't you ask me to walk back with you part of the way?" She says playfully. But she looks down at the tip of her shoe.
"Gee," I answer, "if only you would!"
"Sure, but only a little way."
And we turned around.
I was utterly bewildered, I didn't know which way was up anymore; this person turned all my thinking topsy-turvy. I was enchanted, wonderfully glad; I felt as though I were dying from happiness. She had expressly wanted to go back with me, it wasn't my idea, it was her own wish. I gaze and gaze at her, growing more and more cocky, and she encourages me, drawing me toward her by every word she speaks. I forget for a moment my poverty, my humble self, my whole miserable existence, I feel the blood coursing warmly through my body as in the old days, before I broke down. ~ Knut Hamsun

There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest. ~ Anais Nin

Peeta's awake already, sitting on the side of the bed, looking bewildered as the trio of doctors reassure him, flash lights in his eyes, checks his pules. I'm disappointed that mine was not the first face he saw when he woke up, but he sees it now. His features registrer disbelief and something more intense that I can't quite place. Desire? Desperation? Surely both, for he sweeps the doctors aside, leaps to his feets and moves towards me. I run to meet him, my arms extended to embrace him. His hands are reaching for mine too, to caress my face, I think.
My lips are forming his name when his fingers lock around my throat. ~ Suzanne Collins

Astronomers have been bewildered by the theory of an expanding universe, but there is no less expansion in the moral infinite of the universe of man. As far as the frontiers of science are pushed back, over the extended arc of these frontiers one will hear the poet's hounds on the chase. ~ Saint-John Perse

I will insist you be man enough to take it. I won't have you making light of my feelings, or making light of yourself - as if you're not worthy of them. Because you are worthy, Colin. You're a generous, good-hearted person, and you deserve to be loved. Deeply, truly, well, and often."
He looked utterly bewildered. Well, what did he expect, after the power he'd given her? He couldn't compare a woman to a torrentially beautiful monsoon, and then look surprised that he'd gotten wet. "You reckless man." She laid a touch to his cheek. "You really should be more careful with those compliments. ~ Tessa Dare

The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity. ~ Alfred Kinsey

Robert is, of course, at the theater, but it's true that Jeff isn't alone. Behind him, Lulu holds up two bottles of tequila, and behind her is Gene, Lulu's . . . bed-friend, holding a bag of limes and sporting the world's most enormous mustache.

I take the bag of limes from him. "Are you guessing my weight tonight?"

Jeff laughs in a loud bark before heading into the kitchen, but Gene does a bewildered double take. "What?"

"Do I get to shoot a water gun to knock down the ducks?"

I see the moment he gets it because his giant mustache twitches under his suppressed grin. "I'll take my limes home if you're going to be sassy, miss."

"You look like an old-timey auction barker," I say. "Or Yosemite Sam. I have this sudden urge to buy a few head of cattle." Behind me, Calvin snickers.

"You wish you could grow a 'stache like this."

I burst out laughing. "I'm sorry, I can't even hear what you're saying through that thing."

"I told him it's awful." Lulu tugs at it and Gene leans away.

He smoothes it down proudly. "I'm so lazy, and this is much more low maintenance than shaving."

I don't need to look that closely to see he's clearly waxed and styled it with a comb. It's really not an afterthought mustache; it's the kind that a person chooses from a book on various mustache styles - the perfect accessory for his very carefully crafted I don't care enough to even glance in the mirro ~ Christina Lauren

When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Thus the effect of his gift of wisdom is to make us more humble, more joyful, more godly, more quick-sighted as to his will, more resolute in the doing of it and less troubled (not less sensitive, but less bewildered) than we were at the dark and painful things of which our life in this fallen world is full ...
Thus, the kind of wisdom that God waits to give to those who ask him is a wisdom that will bind us to himself, a wisdom that will find expression in a spirit of faith and a life of faithfulness. ~ J.I. Packer

I think the Stealth and Evasion lesson was the strangest,' Lucy said. 'Not so much the lesson as the teacher actually. I mean . . . Ms Leon. She's . . . well . . .'

'A cat?' Otto offered with a cheery smile.

'Yeah . . . yeah, that's really the only way of putting it,' Lucy said, sounding slightly bewildered.

'Don't worry, you get used to it,' Shelby said. 'Besides, it's only when the giant mutated flesh-eating plants and android ninjas are around that things really get weird.'

Lucy started to laugh but stopped when she saw the expression on the other students' faces.

'That was a joke, right?' Lucy asked. ~ Mark Walden

War is not two great armies meeting in the clash and frenzy of battle. War is a boy being carried on a stretcher, looking up at God's blue sky with bewildered eyes that are soon to close; war is a woman carrying a child that has been injured by a shell; war is spirited horses tied in burning buildings and waiting for death; war is the flower of a race, battered, hungry, bleeding, up to its knees in filthy water; war is an old woman burning a candle before the Mater Dolorsa for the son she has given. ~ Mary Roberts Rinehart

And if I was bewildered through those decades, totally bewildered, so was the country I came from. The majority, what was the phrase? 'Condemn utterly what is happening, this barbarity.' But that's all we did. Condemn. And march. But not often enough. ~ Josephine Hart

The baby rises to its feet, takes a step, is overcome with triumph and joy - and falls flat on its face. It is a pattern for all that is to come! But learn from the bewildered baby. Lurch to your feet again. You'll make the sofa in the end. ~ Pam Brown

It is so important that you don't get distracted by what you are not. You need to start confessing your persona and living in it, and don't be bewildered by your circumstances. Just stay on course with what God is promising you. ~ Graham Cooke

Their eyes met.
For a split second she caught a glimpse of heat in his eyes. Then Jake banked the flame and broke out of her embrace.
Marnie felt a hot blush rise from her toes to her nose.
It took a moment for her eyes to focus and her brain to function. Bewildered, she looked up to find him watching her. His heavy-lidded eyes held a strange desperation as he reached back and unhooked the vice of her ankles from around his wiast.
Her legs dropped. Her heels thumped against the cabinet.
Beneath his hawklike gaze she felt stripped bare and vulnerable. He studied her face, seeming to see more than her features. He seemed to delve into her mind, to touch things deep and frightening - parts of herself Marnie was still exploring.
The muscles in his jaw knotted and unknotted. After a moment he stepped back and casually, but with difficulty, adjusted his jeans
Heat flooded her cheeks. Legs splayed, nipples peaked to his clinical gaze, she'd never experienced such acute embarrassment in her life. Her breath hitched as she jumped off the counter, tugging her top down and her pants up.
At a loss for hers, she half laughed. "I have absolutely no idea what to say." Which was a reasonable start, she guessed. It was rare for her to be speechless. But then, this was a day of firsts.
"I told you you weren't my type." The brass button on his jeans closed like the clasp of a miser's purse. Other than a faint flush on the ridge of his cheekbones and ~ Cherry Adair

And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died? ~ W.B.Yeats

In the course of a short city-block this frantic old woman frenetically caricatured the features of forty or fifty passers-by, in a quick-fire sequence of kaleidoscopic imitations, each lasting a second or two, sometimes less, and the whole dizzying sequence scarcely more than two minutes.

And there were ludicrous imitations of the second and third order; for the people in the street, startled, outraged, bewildered by her imitations, took on these expressions in reaction to her; and those expressions, in turn, were re-reflected, re-directed, re-distorted, by the Touretter, causing a still greater degree of outrage and shock. This grotesque, involuntary resonance, or mutuality, by which everyone was drawn into an absurdly amplifying interaction, was the source of the disturbance I had seen from a distance. This woman who, becoming everybody, lost her own self, became nobody. This woman with a thousand faces, masks, personae- how must it be for her in this whirlwind of identities? The answer came soon- and not a second too late; for the build-up of pressures, both hers and others', was fast approaching the point of explosion. Suddenly, desperately, the old woman turned aside, into an alley-way which led off the main street. And there, with all the appearances of a woman violently sick, she expelled, tremendously accelerated and abbreviated, all the gestures, the postures, the expressions, the demeanours, the entire behavioural repertoires, of the past forty or fifty ~ Oliver Sacks

You're not a good one, mind you. Your technique needs work. You're overeager." Ryan smirked a little. "I get it - who wouldn't be overeager to kiss me?"

Finally, he got the reaction he wanted: Jamie rolled his eyes, though his face was still red from embarrassment. "Fuck off."

Still smirking lazily, Ryan leaned back against the couch, stretching his arm along the back. "Is that how you talk to your best mate who's about to offer you to practice on him?"

Jamie blinked a few times, looking adorably bewildered. "You're joking."

Ryan met his gaze steadily. "Nope. I promise not to laugh at you and just tell you if you're doing something wrong."

Jamie just stared at him.

"Hurry up before I change my mind," Ryan said. ~ Alessandra Hazard

His expression was perturbed, as if he'd been reminded of something he had wanted to forget. But as his gaze slid over her bewildered face, his mouth curved a little, and he settled into the cradle of her body with an insolent familiarity that temporarily robbed her of breath.
"Mr. Rohan … how … why … what are you doing here?"
He replied without moving, as if he were planning to lie there and converse all day. His infinitely polite tone was an unsettling contrast to the intimacy of their position. "Miss Hathaway. What a pleasant surprise. As it happens, I'm visiting friends. And you?"
"I live here."
"I don't think so. This is Lord Westcliff's estate."
Her heart thundered in her breast as her body absorbed the details of him. "I didn't mean precisely here, I meant over there, on the other side of the woods. The Ramsay estate. We've just taken up residence." She couldn't seem to stop herself from chattering in the aftermath of nerves and fright. "What was that noise? What were you doing? Why do you have that tattoo on your arm? It's a pooka - an Irish creature - isn't it?"
That last question earned her an arrested stare. Before Rohan could reply, the other two men approached. From her prone position, Amelia had an upside-down view of them. Like Rohan, they were in their shirtsleeves, with waistcoats left unbuttoned.
One of them was a portly old gentleman with a shock of silver hair. He held a small wood-and-metal sextant, which had been ~ Lisa Kleypas

God, it was good to let go, let the tight mask fall off, and the bewildered, chaotic fragments pour out. It was the purge, the catharsis. ~ Sylvia Plath

We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways being so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. ~ H. P. Blavatsky

He was clearly in love with Amber too, and this time it wasn't the usual water off the back of the duck. Instead, the duck, wounded by a hunter and bewildered because half its head had been shot way, and was still tottering about on its webby feet by the side of the pond. From the one side it looked like a duck usually looks. From the other, it was a different story. ~ Ali Smith