Accidents Quotes - Page 24

• It was manifest to me that there was something in the Roman Catholic religion which made the priests very dear to the people; for I doubt whether in any village in England, had such an accident happened to the rector, all the people would have roused themselves at midnight to wreak their vengeance on the assailant.

  Bill Vaughan

  Catholic Religion, People, Doubt

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• You'll accidentally find in barrows of books wrought-iron lines of long-buried poems, handle them with the care that respects ancient but terrible weapons.. .

  Bill Vaughan

  Book, Iron, Long

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• When it [truth] emerges it often bears out the saying that 'truth is stranger than fiction.' A novelist has to appear plausible, and would hesitate to make use of such astounding contradictions as occur in history through some extraordinary accident or twist of psychology .

  Bill Vaughan

  Psychology, Twists, Novelists

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• Hamlet 's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should he impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Character, Opportunity, Thinking

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Greenough Thayer Shedd (1854). “The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions”, p.285

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• It suits my own attitude toward the world and its people to believe that the Raven is this completely self-centered, uninvolved bringer of change, through inadvertence and accident, and so on... It's a version of the Raven myth for today, not for the time when it was created.

  Bill Reid

  Attitude, Believe, Ravens

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• There are no accidents so unlucky but the prudent may draw some advantage from them.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  May, Prudent, Advantage

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• Just as the witticism brings two very different real objects under one concept, the pun brings two different concepts, by the assistance of accident, under one word.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Real, Two, Different

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “The World As Will And Idea: 3 vols in 1 [unabridged]”, p.40, Kshetra Books

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• I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Baseball, Commitment, Views

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• What's wrong with technology is that it's not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for that.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Real, Heart, Technology

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• Economists must leave to Adam Smith alone the glory of the Quarto, must pluck the day, fling pamphlets into the wind, write always sub specie temporis , and achieve immortality by accident, if at all.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Writing, Wind, Glory

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: Essays in biography”

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• Where the light is, and each thing clear,Separate from all others, standing in its place,I drink the time and touch whatever's near,And hope for day when the whole world has that face:For what assures her present every year?In dark accidents the mind's sufficient grace.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Dark, Light, Years

  Delmore Schwartz (1967). “Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge”, p.27, New Directions Publishing

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• The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Men, Thinking, Serious

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2015). “The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays, Letters and Memoirs (Illustrated): The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Tanglewood Tales, Birthmark, Ghost of Doctor Harris… (Including Biographies and Literary Criticism)”, p.143, e-artnow

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• Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat, or violence, or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Broken, Vases, Violence

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].”, p.4

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• The idea that God may be approached and understood through intellectual analysis is uniquely Christian... It is probably not an accident that modern science grew explosively in Christian Europe and left the rest of the world behind.

  Freeman Dyson

  Christian, Europe, Ideas

  "The Scientist As Rebel". Book by Freeman Dyson, 2006.

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• In my opinion, neither organisms nor organizations evolve slowly and surely into something better, but drift until some small change occurs which has immediate and overwhelming significance. The special role of the human being is not to wait for these favorable accidents but deliberately to introduce the small change that will have great significance.

  Edwin Land

  Small Changes, Organization, Waiting

  "Generation of Greatness : The Idea of a University in an Age of Science". Edwin Land's Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, groups.csail.mit.edu. May 22, 1957.

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• There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically -- we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first!

  Edwin Land

  Eye, Trying, Firsts

  "The Journal of Imaging Science and Technology", (Vol. 37, No. 3, p. 537), 1992.

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• The human race, my intuition tells me, is not outside the cosmic process and is not an accident. It is as much a part of the universe as the trees, the mountains, the aurora, and the stars.

  Richard E. Byrd

  Stars, Race, Tree

  Richard E. Byrd, (2013). “Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure”, p.99, Read Books Ltd

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• I was run over by the truth one day.Ever since the accident I've walked this way

  Adrian Mitchell

  Running, One Day, Way

  Adrian Mitchell (1997). “Heart on the Left: Poems, 1953-1984”, Bloodaxe Books Limited

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• We take ourselves way too seriously, and we don't take God seriously enough. It is not by accident that humor and humility come from the same root word. If you can laugh at yourself, you'll always have plenty of good material.

  Rick Warren

  Humility, Roots, Laughing

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Train yourself: It is not by accident an artist becomes a good painter.

  Sergei Bongart

  Artist, Painter, Competence

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• Values create dimension, but color usually receives all of the attention. When painting with oils, placing dark and light pigments next to each other can be an accident waiting to happen.

  Robert Warren

  Dark, Light, Color

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• You must walk that tightrope between accident and discipline. Accident by itself…so what? Discipline by itself is boring. By walking that tightrope and putting down something on a canvascoming from your guts, you have a chance of making marks that will live longer than you.

  Fritz Scholder

  Discipline, Chance, Boring

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• Not only does the wind of accidents stir me according to its blowing, but I am also stirred and troubled by the instability of my attitude.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Attitude, Wind, Doe

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme measure, yet a better one, I think, than to remain in continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. But since all the precautions that a man can take are full of uneasiness and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with fine assurance for the worst that can happen, and derive some consolation from the fact that we are not sure that it will happen.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Thinking, Hands

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.97, Stanford University Press

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• He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Evil, Ordinary

  Michel de Montaigne (1980). “Essays”

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