Mishaps Quotes

• Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

  James Russell Lowell

  Broken Heart, Heartbroken, Kindness

  James Russell Lowell (1864). “Fireside Travels”, p.2

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• He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another's mishap.

  Publilius Syrus

  Wise, Gains

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• Don't try to be perfect. Life isn't; no one is. Use mistakes and mishaps as opportunities to grow tolerance and to teach. There is such a thing as happy accidents. And love, love, love and listen, listen, listen.

  Teri Hatcher

  Mistake, Parenting, Opportunity

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• Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one

  Walter Savage Landor

  Failure, Failing, Worst

  Walter Savage Landor (1824). “Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen”, p.311

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• The more disastrous the mishaps the simpler the reviewing task.

  Donal Henahan

  Tasks

  "Music View; When Inspired Awfulness Becomes Interesting" by Donal Henahan, www.nytimes.com. August 31, 1986.

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• A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.

  Christopher Hampton

  Art, Disappointment, Numbers

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• Great and small suffer the same mishaps.

  Blaise Pascal

  Greatness, Suffering

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• Physicists dream of Nobel prizes, engineers dream of mishaps.

  Hendrik Tennekes

  Dream, Nobel, Physicist

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• My mortal foe can no ways wish me a greater harm than England's hate; neither should death be less welcome unto me than such a mishap betide me.

  Elizabeth I

  Hate, Wish, Demise

  Elizabeth I (2002). “Elizabeth I: Collected Works”, p.248, University of Chicago Press

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• Down the mine I dreamed of cricket; I bowled imaginery balls in the dark; I sent the stumps spinning and heard them rattling in the tunnels. No mishap was going to stop me from bowling in the real game, especially this one.

  Harold Larwood

  Real, Dark, Tunnels

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• It's the mishaps that make it fun, and brings you the surprise.

  Anna Wintour

  Fun, Surprise, Vogue

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• A rent in your clothes is a mishap, a stain on them is a vice.

  Honore de Balzac

  Clothes, Vices, Stains

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• Our past cannot be changed, and to be preoccupied with it is inefficient in time and effort. Likewise, by fretting over the future, we only exhaust ourselves, making us less able to effectively respond when the future is actually upon us. By worrying about a mishap that may or may not take place, we're forced to undergo the event twice-once when imagining it and once again if and when we actually experience it.

  H. E Davey

  Past, Ifs And, Worry

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• Maybe" she said. "I just wish we'd have a little mishap.It would be reassuring

  Sarah Dessen

  Wish, Would Be, Littles

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• The nuclear industry has this amazing record, even equipment from generations one and two. But nuclear mishaps tend to come in these big events - Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and now Fukushima - so it's more visible.

  Bill Gates

  Islands, Two, Events

  "Q&A: Bill Gates on the World’s Energy Crisis". Interview with Chris Anderson, www.wired.com. June 20, 2011.

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• You are not an accident. Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. ... Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God. He thought of you first. It is not fate, nor chance, nor luck, nor coincidence that you are breathing this very moment. You are alive because God wanted to create you!

  Rick Warren

  Mistake, Fate, Breathing

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• For where there is true love, a man is neither out of measure lifted up by prosperity, nor cast down by mishap; whether you give or take away from him, so long as he keeps his beloved, he has a spring of inward peace. Thus, even though thy outward man grieve, or weep downright, that may well be borne, if only thy inner man remain at peace, perfectly content with the will of God.

  Johannes Tauler

  Love, Spring, Men

  "The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler of Strasbourg: With Twenty-five of His Sermons".

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• I may be permitted, kind reader, to doubt whether you have ever been enclosed in a glass bottle, unless some vivid dream has teased you with such magical mishaps.

  E. T. A. Hoffmann

  Dream, Glasses, Doubt

  E. T. A. Hoffmann (2000). “The Golden Pot and Other Tales”, p.67, Oxford University Press, USA

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• My restlessness makes me a far better day-to-day traveler than he will ever be. I am infinitely curious and almost infinitely patient with mishaps, discomforts, and minor disasters. So I can go anywhere on the planet—that’s not a problem. The problem is that I just can’t live anywhere on the planet.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Travel, Patient, Problem

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace With Marriage”, p.112, A&C Black

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• No day-to-day mishaps or indignities can really compromise your sense of self after you've survived a deep tragedy.

  Kelsey Grammer

  Grief, Loss, Self

  "Kelsey Grammer: What I've Learned" by Cal Fussman, www.esquire.com. December 15, 2009.

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• It is strange how a memory will grow into a wax figure, how the cherub grows suspiciously prettier as its frame darkens with age-strange, strange are the mishaps of memory.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Memories, Age, Strange

  Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Scammell (1963). “The gift”

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• It used to be the custom for the bachelor dinner to take place the night before the wedding. Now, however, the bridesmaids' and ushers' dinner is usually on that night, for a groom realizes that he and his attendants need some time in which to recover sufficiently to be able to distinguish the altar from the organ and walk up the aisle with no mishaps.

  Alice-Leone Moats

  Night, Needs, Dinner

  Alice-Leone Moats (1933). “No Nice Girl Swears”, New York : A. A. Knopf

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• I go out of my way to stay off commuter planes. I have skipped conferences because I would not fly on marginal airlines (and because of many mishaps, I also avoided flying on ValuJet).

  Mary Schiavo

  Safety, Flying, Way

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• And what if thou, sweet May, hast known
  Mishap by worm and blight;
  If expectations newly blown
  Have perished in thy sight;
  If loves and joys, while up they sprung,
  Were caught as in a snare;
  Such is the lot of all the young,
  However bright and fair.

  William Wordsworth

  Sweet, Sight, Expectations

  William Wordsworth (2009). “The Poems of William Wordsworth: Collected Reading Texts from the Cornell Wordsworth Series”, p.599, Humanities-Ebooks

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• Henry York, aka Whimpering Child, aka WC (hair sample included), is hereby identified as Enemy, Hazard, and Human Mishap to all faeren in all districts, in all ways, and in all worlds.

  N.D. Wilson

  Children, Aka, Hair

  N. D. Wilson (2009). “Dandelion Fire: Book 2 of the 100 Cupboards”, p.294, Random House Books for Young Readers

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