Serendipity... You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip': as their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.

Dr. Calder [a Unitarian minister] said of Dr. [Samuel] Johnson on the publications of Boswell and Mrs. Piozzi, that he was like Actaeon, torn to pieces by his own pack.

Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.

Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.

Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.

Two clergymen disputing whether ordination would be valid without the imposition of both hands, the more formal one said, "Do you think the Holy Dove could fly down with only one wing?

How posterity will laugh at us, one way or other! If half a dozen break their necks, and balloonism is exploded, we shall be called fools for having imagined it could be brought to use: if it should be turned to account, we shall be ridiculed for having doubted.