Quotes on Accidents

Was it always my nature to take a bad time and block out the good times, until any success became an accident and failure seemed the only truth?

The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing. For, though in every age there are some who, by bold adventures, or by favorable accidents, rise suddenly to riches, yet it is dangerous to indulge hopes of such rare events; and the bulk of mankind must owe their affluence to small and gradual profits, below which their expense must be resolutely reduced.

I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human — I only love to be so.

And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?

History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with the linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multiracial and multiethnic as America. Why gratuitously throw away that priceless asset? How mindless to call the desire to retain it 'racist.

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.

Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways.

And I saw that truly nothing happens by accident or luck, but everything by God's wise providence. If it seems to be accident or luck from our point of view, our blindness and lack of foreknowledge is the cause; for matters that have been in God's foreseeing wisdom since before time began befall us suddenly, all unawares; and so in our blindness and ignorance we say that this is accident or luck, but to our Lord God it is not so.

We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.

The next time someone uses denial of citizenship as a weapon or brandishes the special status conferred upon him by the accident of birth, ask him this: What have you done lately to earn it?

We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidents

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.

...people liking you or not liking you is an accident and is to do with them and not you. That goes for love too, only more so.

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today may curse tomorrow and only one thing endures - character.

When I started, I was an artist; I wanted to be an artist. I became an actor almost by accident. I acted for fifteen years and tried to produce. I looked for stories that were the story beneath the story that you thought you knew, like 'The Candidate'.

Even with the best intentions, you can have a nuclear war, a nuclear holocaust, through miscalculation, through accidents.