You should not be surprised at whatever you see or hear...If you are ready to accept things as they are, you will receive them as old friends.

I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.

The students are asked to rate their level of surprise on a five-point scale from ‘not surprised at all’ to ‘beyond shock’. Many describe feelings of total shock and numbness: a large majority indicate some level of surprise. He asks them: “Why were you surprised?

It sounds like a lot of you are not too surprised if this 30% chance materialises,” Dan replies. “You take precautions against it. The rain, if it comes, doesn’t shock you, and you have your umbrella. So why was everyone so shocked about Trump?

Why would we ever be surprised when truth turns up in strange places?

I think that it can be assumed that no adults are ever really 'shocked' - that being shocked is always a pose.

television wears away the capacity to be astonished’.

To admit that species generally become rare before they become extinct — to feel no surprise at the comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude to death — to feel no surprise at sickness — but when the sick man dies to wonder, and to believe that he died through violence.

We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth.

It hadn't shocked the old woman, not much. She had got past being shocked early in life.

The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

When surprise occurs, such as when the economy enters an unexpected recession or a conflict begins seemingly out the blue, the natural reaction is to immediately ask who made the “obvious” mistake. It is much easier to believe that our leaders are incompetent than to accept the less pleasant reality that ours is a world where uncertainty and surprise are the norm, not the exception.