Happenstance Quotes - Page 2

• Questions are not happenstance thoughts nor are questions common problems of today which one picks up from hearsay and booklearning and decks out with a gesture of profundity questions grow out of confrontation with the subject matter and the subject matter is there only where eyes are, it is in this manner that questions will be posed and all the more considering that questions that have today fallen out of fashion in the great industry of problems. One stands up for nothing more than the normal running of the industry. Philosophy interprets its corruption as the resurrection of metaphysics.

  Martin Heidegger

  Running, Fashion, Philosophy

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• Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

  Jane Austen

  Happiness, Inspiring, Happy

  1813 Pride and Prejudice, ch.6.

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• By the cold Darwinian logic of natural selection, evolution codifies happenstance into strategy.

  David Quammen

  Logic, Evolution, Cold

  David Quammen (2012). “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic”, p.17, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Most writers are secretly worried that they're not really writers. That it's all been happenstance, something came together randomly, the letters came together, and they won't coalesce ever again.

  Nicholson Baker

  Together, Letters, Worried

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• Billy: So good... Hey, this is weird. I ordered one frozen yogurt and they gave me two. You don't happen to like frozen yogurt, do you?
  Penny: I love it!
  Billy: You're kidding? What a crazy random happenstance!

  Joss Whedon

  Crazy, Two, Hey

  "Fictional characters: Dr. Horrible / Billy, Penny". TV Mini-Series "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog", 2008.

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• I think of how life takes unexpected twists and turns, sometimes through sheer happenstance, sometimes through calculated decisions. In the end, it can all be called fate, but to me, it is more a matter of faith.

  Emily Giffin

  Fate, Thinking, Decision

  Emily Giffin (2008). “Love the One You're With”, p.346, Macmillan

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• Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves.

  Wayne Coyne

  Mind, Trying, Lucky

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• Significant inventions are not mere accidents. The erroneous view [that they are] is widely held, and it is one that the scientific and technical community, unfortunately, has done little to dispel. Happenstance usually plays a part, to be sure, but there is much more to invention than the popular notion of a bolt out of the blue. Knowledge in depth and in breadth are virtual prerequisites. Unless the mind is thoroughly charge beforehand, the proverbial spark of genius, if it should manifest itself, probably will find nothing to ignite.

  Paul Flory

  Blue, Views, Play

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• Serendipity is nice, but hoping for luck and the magic of happenstance shouldn't be an excuse for a lack of proactivity. I had to learn for myself that waiting isn't a life plan.

  Karen Finerman

  Nice, Waiting, Serendipity

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• The most powerful life is the most simple life. The most powerful life is the life that knows where it's going, that knows where the source of strength is; it is the life that stays free of clutter and happenstance and hurriedness.

  Max Lucado

  Powerful, Simple, Life Is

  Max Lucado (2013). “Grace for the Moment: Inspirational Thoughts for Each Day of the Year”, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• [Donald] Trump is explained with the intersection of a number of things: our economic crisis, the way it's easier to blame immigrants, with the happenstance that he discovered that by bashing Latino immigrants and characterizing them as "rapists" and "murderers" and "scumbags," suddenly he's got this groundswell of support from a group of people who were raised on this vocabulary.

  Junot Diaz

  Numbers, Vocabulary, People

  "Junot Díaz is staying put". Interview with Marcela García, www.bostonglobe.com. April 6, 2016.

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• I have a very basic notion of the structure the book might have - that's mostly it. The rest is luck and happenstance.

  Jesse Ball

  Book, Luck, Might

  Source: therumpus.net

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• For as is often the happenstance with that which is precious and lost, when you find him again, he may well not be quite as you left him.

  Cassandra Clare

  May, Lost, Wells

  Cassandra Clare (2014). “City of Lost Souls”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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• Anger at happenstance for its absurd timing. Anger at myself for being so angry. I hate being angry and every time I got this angry it made me more angry at the fact that I was so angry. I realized though that I couldn't really be mad at any of those things.

  David Bowick

  Hate, Mad, Facts

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• "Events," I say to the Captain, "events control our lives, although we have no understanding of them nor do they have any motivation. Everything is blind chance, happenstance, occurrence; in an infinite universe anything can happen. After the fact we find reasons.

  Barry N. Malzberg

  Motivation, Understanding, Captains

  "Beyond Apollo". Book by Barry Malzberg, 1972.

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• The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story.

  Tom Shippey

  Loyalty, Echoes, Filters

  Tom Shippey (2014). “The Road to Middle-earth: Revised and Expanded Edition”, p.304, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The effect hip-hop had on me was enormous. I was exposed to it by happenstance. My father worked at a radio station in New York called WKTU Disco 92. It was the first radio station in New York City to play disco in the late '70s.

  Michael Rapaport

  New York, Father, Play

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• As my father wrote, one's courage, hope, and spirit can be severely tried by the happenstance of life. But as I learned on this Virginia mountain, so long as one never loses faith, it is impossible to ever truly be alone.

  David Baldacci

  Father, Virginia, Long

  David Baldacci (2011). “Wish You Well”, p.399, Pan Macmillan

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• This so gnawed at him on some nights that he lay awake wondering just how many unknown and similarly inconsequential accidents and bits of happenstance were at this moment occurring or failing to occur in order to ensure he took his next breath, and the next.

  Louise Erdrich

  Night, Order, Next

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• Accidents did not just happen. From time to time they were carefully plotted, calculated, and arranged to one’s advantage-all, of course, under the cloak of happenstance.

  Jodi Picoult

  Advantage, Cloaks, Courses

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• One of the underlying things I like to do in books, is just say, stop and look at this for a moment. Not that you've got to believe that Jesus was real, or not to believe in God, but the belief that it isn't just happenstance.

  Dean Koontz

  Jesus, Real, Believe

  "The Rumpus Interview With Dean Koontz". Interview with Ben Pfeiffer, therumpus.net. December 21, 2015.

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• People make decisions that may have one intent and yet are somehow perverted into something else. And sometimes it's because of design. Sometimes it's because of happenstance. But very often, it's mysterious to them.

  Atom Egoyan

  People, Design, Decision

  "Writer/Director Atom Egoyan Talks THE CAPTIVE, His Writing Process, the Non-Linear Narrative, Dark Material, REMEMBER, and More". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. December 10, 2014.

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• I went to really good New York City public schools that had arts programs. So in junior high, I got into the drama department. From there, I went to a performing arts high school in New York City called Laguardia and I just kind of fell into the professional side by happenstance.

  Merritt Wever

  Art, New York, Drama

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