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[In the case of research director, Willis R. Whitney, whose style was to give talented investigators as much freedom as possible, you may define "serendipity" as] the art of profiting from unexpected occurrences. When you do things in that way you get unexpected results. Then you do something else and you get unexpected results in another line, and you do that on a third line and then all of a sudden you see that one of these lines has something to do with the other. Then you make a discovery that you never could have made by going on a direct road.
Irving LangmuirFeedback is a pleasant thing. I get a lot of letters from unexpected people in unexpected places.
Brian AldissRelief work does not consist entirely in wearisome appeals ... it has its moments of enchantment, its adventures, its unexpected vistas into new worlds
Eglantyne JebbIn life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.
Alexander SmithWe are in the the very midst of a revolution, the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.
John AdamsGetting over those unexpected hurdles may not be exactly enjoyable, but ultimately I believe that such challenges and the solutions we find give us more confidence.They teach us with common sense and determination we can turn what looks like a disaster into a triumph.
Martha StewartHistory has taught us: never underestimate the amount of money, time, and effort someone will expend to thwart a security system. It's always better to assume the worst. Assume your adversaries are better than they are. Assume science and technology will soon be able to do things they cannot yet. Give yourself a margin for error. Give yourself more security than you need today. When the unexpected happens, you'll be glad you did.
Bruce SchneierDeath is as casual and often as unexpected as birth. It is as difficult to define grief as joy. Each is finite. Each will fade.
Jim BishopI like to imagine a person's psyche to be like a boardinghouse full of characters. The ones who show up regularly and who habitually follow the house rules may not have met other long-term residents who stay behind closed doors, or who only appear at night. An adequate theory of character must make room for character actors, for the stuntmen and animal handlers, for all the figures who play bit parts and produce unexpected acts. They often make the show fateful, or tragic, or farcically absurd.
James HillmanThe lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.
Alain de BottonWhen running a Ponzi scheme, how does one avoid enormous, unexpected withdrawals - runs on the bank, so to speak - that would pull back the curtain and reveal a little man blowing smoke? One way would be to attract a core of investors who could be counted on to never withdraw more than a small percentage of principal each year.
Mitchell ZuckoffCreativity shouldn't be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn't be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other 'creative types.' The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y.
Jonah LehrerI can depend less and less on my own power and sense of direction...It is so strange to advance backwards and get where you are going in a totally unexpected way
Thomas MertonDeath is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer โ Death has never forsaken any man
Honore de BalzacThis is totally unexpected. I thought I'd be in the NBA or the NFL. I never thought baseball. It's kind of like a surprise. I'm happy it happened.
Carl CrawfordThe higher arithmetic presents us with an inexhaustible store of interesting truths - of truths, too, which are not isolated, but stand in a close internal connection, and between which, as our knowledge increases, we are continually discovering new and sometimes wholly unexpected ties.
Carl Friedrich GaussThe laughs are honestly bigger, ... They are the kind of unexpected belly laughs you get with your friends during conversation.
Drew CareyIf an unexpected temptation comes, don't blame the one through whom it came, but seek out the reason. Thus you will find correction for your soul.
Maximus the ConfessorI am a firm believer that you need a well-defined leadership role to deal with unexpected and non-linear side effects of people working together. You need someone to keep the threads untangled and forming a high-functioning web rather than a big snarl of a Gordian knot.
RandsThe shortest period of time lies between the minute you put some money away for a rainy day and the unexpected arrival of rain.
Jane Bryant QuinnNo one attached to the traditional image of authoritarian patriarchy could imagine the consternation men endure. They have suffered an unexpected blow to the emotional quality of their lives. Its gravity has not been calculated. They have far fewer reliable links than women to the classic currents of family life. They are alienated not only, as Marx said, from the means of production but also from the means of reproduction.
Lionel TigerSpirituality is a mixed-up, topsy-turvy, helter-skelter godliness that turns our lives into an upside-down toboggan ride of unexpected turns, surprise bumps and bone shattering crashes ... a life ruined by a Jesus who loves us right into his arms.
Mike YaconelliWhen a man's knowledge is deep, he speaks well of an enemy. Instead of seeking revenge, he extends unexpected generosity. He turns insult into humor, ... and astonishes his adversary who finds no reason not to trust him.
Baltasar GracianI love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didn't realise political writing could be so funny.
Denise MinaAfter a childhood of hungering to be an adult, my hunger had passed. Unexpected fates had begun to catch my notice. These middle-aged women seemed very tired to me, as if hope had been wrung out of them and replaced with a deathly, walking sort of sleep.
Lorrie MooreWhosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.
HeraclitusA creative train of thought is set off by: the unexpected, the unknown, the accidental, the disorderly, the absurd, the impossible.
Asger JornArtschwager's art always involves looking closely at surfaces, questions what an object is, wants to make you forget the name of the thing you're looking at so that it might mushroom in your mind into something that triggers unexpected infinities.
Jerry SaltzThe more you want it [romantic relationship], the more you are looking for it, the more you repel it for whatever reason. I don't know why. If you kind of create this vacuum, let life take its course, then you tend to free yourself up for the unexpected.
Katherine HeiglWomen hock their jewels and their husbands' insurance policies to acquire an unaccustomed shade in hair or crรชpe de chine. Why then is it that when anyone commits anything novel in the arts he should be always greeted by this same peevish howl of pain and surprise? One is led to suspect that the interest people show in these much talked of commodities, painting, music, and writing, cannot be very deep or very genuine when they so wince under an unexpected impact.
John Dos PassosThe test of a theory is its ability to cope with all the relevant phenomena, not its a priori 'reasonableness'. The latter would have proved a poor guide in the development of science, which often makes progress by its encounter with the totally unexpected and initially extremely puzzling.
John PolkinghorneAdventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else - above all, a travel bureau - arrange everything before-hand?
Richard AldingtonAny human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
Doris LessingChaos is a natural state of being - as natural as structure is - so there is no reason to fear it. On the contrary, one should embrace it. It means something extraordinary and unexpected is about to happen.
Tohoru MasamuneThere's always going to be the circumstances you can't plan for. There's always the unexpected relevance and the serendipity.
Jason SilvaUnexpected hardship refines people; if you can accept it, both mind and body will benefit. If you cannot accept it, on the other hand, both mind and body will be harmed.
Zicheng HongOur God is Jehovah of hosts, who can summon unexpected reinforcements at any moment to aid His people. Believe that He is there between you and your difficulty, and what baffles you will flee before Him, as clouds before the gale.
F.B. MeyerMagic is the craft of shaping, the craft of the wise, exhilarating, dangerous - the ultimate adventure. The power of magic should not be underestimated. It works, often in ways that are unexpected and difficult to control.
StarhawkHarshness vanished. A sudden softness has replaced the meadows' wintry grey. Little rivulets of water changed their singing accents. Tendernesses, hesitantly, reach toward the earth from space, and country lanes are showing these unexpected subtle risings that find expression in the empty trees.
Rainer Maria RilkeThe love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest printโthe love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.
John Edward WilliamsSport is not about being wrapped up in cotton wool. Sport as about adapting to the unexpected and being able to modify plans at the last minute. Sport, like all life, is about taking risks.
Roger BannisterThere may be an art to conversation, and some are better at it than others, but conversation's virtue lies in randomness and possibility: people, without a plan, could speak a spontaneous, unexpected truth, because revelation rules. Telling words recur in this smart, generous conversation between Stephen Andrews and Gregg Bordowitz: patience, responsibility, feminism, ethics, cosmology, AIDS, gift, freedom, mortality.
Lynne Tillman