By Accident Quotes & Sayings

I'm not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy? — W. Somerset Maugham

For me songwriting is very ... it's almost like an accident. 'Oh I accidentally wrote about that.' I sit down with the urge to write a song and then afterward it turns out being really personal. I get really overwhelmed by how I feel a lot and sometimes - I feel like my body and my brain can't deal with all the different emotions and I feel like I'm just going to explode. — Jessica Lea Mayfield

That boulder did what it was there to do. Boulders fall. That's their nature. It did the only natural thing it could do. It was set up, but it was waiting for you. Without you coming along and pulling it, it would still be stuck where it had been for who knows how long. You did this, Aron. You created it. You chose to come here today; you chose to do this descent into the slot canyon by yourself. You chose not to tell anyone where you were going. You chose to turn away from the women who were there to keep you from getting in this trouble. You created this accident. You wanted it to be like this. You have been heading for this situation for a long time. Look how far you came to find this spot. It's not that you're getting what you deserve - you're getting what you wanted. — Aron Ralston

Everything that happened to me happened by mistake. I don't believe in fate. It's luck, timing and accident. — Merv Griffin

These country chicks, I'm not even kidding you, they're fucking hard-core. They'll kill your ass and make it look like an accident. You drag the lakes around here and I promise you, there's dumb assholes who tried to get laid by the wrong chicks floating at the bottom of it - concrete boots - and I think your girlfriend's distributing them. Sadistic bitch. — Kele Moon

The residents of the the town are attracted by the words and the pictures on the signs. They know full well the perils posed by overpopulation. Many of them have mastered the use of several types of contraceptives. Now they understand the dangers posed by traffic accidents. They know that even though overpopulation is perilous, the living must do their best to have a good time and avoid being killed in traffic accident. — Yu Hua

or hit you in the turd hole by accident. — Debra Anastasia

If mysterious means a bunch of freaks being brought together by a freak car-accident, then, yes, God does vork in mysterious vays' declared the eldest Russian Doll. — Jonathan Dunne

Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one? — Connie Willis

Don't ever cancel my call again! I told you I would talk to you, you should have waited ... "
Shit. Shit. Shit.
"Mr. Edge, it is 5pm, I assumed my working day was done and I cancelled the phone call by accident, this phone is new, still working it out" I made it up as I went along and was surprised by my ability to lie on my feet.
"Melissa, don't play stupid. Get your arse back here or I will hunt it down and drag it back" He ordered and made me hold my breath — Mercy Cortez

The desire for success is inherent within all of us. It is a part of our nature to want to grow, to improve the quality of our lives. However, nothing improves by accident, it requires conscious attention. When you are being bombarded by negatives, improvement, growth and success are easy to forget. — Bob Proctor

It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one. — Walter Kirn

We were all born by accident but this wandering caravan
will make camp in perfection
Forget the nonsense categories of there and here, race, nation, religion, starting point and destination
You are soul, and you are love, ...
No more questions now as to what it is we're doing here — Coleman Barks

When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is the chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip. — Doris Lessing

There will be ups, there will be downs, there will be sideways. I can just tell you I have been hired, I have been fired, I have been lauded, I have been vilified. I've said some of the most brilliant things that just by accident appeared on my tongue, and I've said some of the dumbest things that you could imagine. But each day - even the day that I knew I was going to be fired - I looked forward to because I've always believed that tomorrow was going to be the best day of my life. — Michael Bloomberg

The first way to balance stress in my life is to get an internal balance of who I am. And I know who I am by knowing whose I am. I am a child of God. I was put on earth not by accident, but for a purpose. I am deeply loved by God. I am accepted by him. He has a plan for my life, and because he put me here, I am significant. — Rick Warren

We do not suffer by accident. It does not often happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young man of independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom he was violently in love with only a few days before — Jane Austen

No swamp dragon could ever terrorise a kingdom, except by accident. Vimes wondered how many had been killed by enterprising heroes. It was terribly cruel to do something like that to creatures whose only crime was to blow themselves absent-mindedly to pieces in mid-air, which was not something any individual dragon made a habit of. A race of, of whittles, that's what dragons were. Born to lose. Live fast, die wide. — Terry Pratchett

Harmony doesn't happen by accident, accidents happen by accident. — Nityananda Das

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

It was all a mistake," he pleaded, standing out of his ship, his wife slumped behind him in the deeps of the hold, like a dead woman. "I came to Mars like any honest enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I built me the finest little stand you ever saw right there on that land by the crossroads - you know where it is. You've got to admit it's a good job of building." Sam laughed, staring around. "And that Martian - I know he was a friend of yours - came. His death was an accident, I assure you. All I wanted to do was have a hot-dog stand, the only one on Mars, the first and most important one. You understand how it is? I was going to serve the best darned hot dogs there, with chili and onions and orange juice." The — Ray Bradbury

WE CAME TO THIS STORY by separate paths, one of us by accident and one by birth. — Bill Dedman

Could be off one of your own boats, Lavette," Whittier said. "The crab I mean." Whittier was hostile, contriving his hostility in witless remarks. Dan said nothing, only thinking that if this small, pompous, foolish man, so uninformed about the essence of his own business, was a measure of the hundred tycoons who ruled the hills of San Francisco, then his own way up would be none too difficult. It came down to money; if you had money, you functioned and you could do without guts or brains; and if you had money, you saw a girl like Jean Sheldon more than once, more than by accident. — Howard Fast

I became an actor by accident. — Christopher Walken

Each electron wants the whole of three-dimensional space for its waves; so Schrodinger generously allows three dimensions for each of them. For two electrons he requires a six-dimensional sub-aether. He then successfully applies his method on the same lines as before. I think you will see now that Schrodinger has given us what seemed to be a comprehensible physical picture only to snatch it away again. His sub-aether does not exist in physical space; it is in a 'configuration space' imagined by the mathematician for the purpose of solving his problems, and imagined afresh with different numbers of dimensions according to the problem proposed. It was only an accident that in the earliest problems considered the configuration space had a close correspondence with physical space, suggesting some degree of objective reality of the waves. Schrodinger's wave mechanics is not a physical theory but a dodge - and a very good dodge too. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

I got involved in fashion by accident. When I got to New York, my intention was to have enough money to eat and to stay and I don't have to leave. I just loved New York - the energy, the culture, the freedom. — Elie Tahari

It's no accident that the fastest growing states with the best economies are all led by Republican governors. — Brian Sandoval

I wanted to become a champ - I was surrounded by champs in my family and in my neighborhood - and because of this stupid accident, I lost my opportunity. — Olivier Martinez

Aging is no accident. It is necessary to the human
condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose: the fulfillment and confirmation of one's character. — James Hillman

Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details of the accident are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying. — Douglas Adams

Paul Broca, for example, was a famous French craniologist in the nineteenth century whose name is given to Broca's area, the part of the frontal lobe involved in the generation of speech (which is wiped out in many stroke victims). Among his other interests, Broca used to measure brains, and he was always rather perturbed by the fact that the German brains came out a hundred grams heavier than French brains. So he decided that other factors, such as overall body weight, should also be taken into account when measuring brain size: this explained the larger Germanic brains to his satisfaction. But for his prominent work on how men have larger brains than women, he didn't make any such adjustments. Whether by accident or by design, it's a kludge. — Ben Goldacre

Every day can be a platform to get you closer to your mountaintop. And yet, too many people live life by accident. — Robin Sharma

There is a spider called Amaurobius, which lives in a burrow and has its young in the late summer, and then it dies when the frosts begin, and the young spiders live through the cold by eating their mother's dead body. One can't believe that's an accident. I don't know that I imagined God as having thought it all out, but somehow He was connected with the pattern, He was the pattern ... — Iris Murdoch

At no point did I form the conscious intention of founding an ad hoc university in my sitting room. It happened, as it were, by accident. — Marie Brennan

Hope works like that. It hinds and blends in, only to pop out when you least expect it. It's always a surprise, something you step on, trip over, or stumble on by accident. It hides in the divots of our lives. in the loneliest valleys. It's like a child, always playing hide and seek to keep our lives unpredictable. Just when we're about to give up, hope turns on, like light, to guide out way. — Katie Kacvinsky

We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

And whereas many men, by accident unevitable, become unable to maintain themselves by their labour; they ought not to be left to the Charity of private persons; but to be provided for, (as far-forth as the necessities of Nature require,) by the Lawes of the Common-wealth. For as it is Unchariablenesse in any man, to neglect the impotent; so it is in the Soveraign of a Common-wealth, to expose them to the hazard of such uncertain Charity. — Thomas Hobbes

...actual happiness only happens by accident — Chuck Palahniuk

I realized that most thoughts are impersonal happenings, like self-assembling machines. Unless we train ourselves, the thoughts passing through our mind have little involvement with our will. It is strange to realize that even our own thoughts pass by like scenery out the window of a bus, a bus we took by accident while trying to get somewhere else. — Daniel Pinchbeck

I didn't join a band. I didn't start a band. I got asked to do it. It kinda happened by accident. — Ian Astbury

Like every other house-renting, paycheck-to-paycheck, heel dragging working American, it wouldn't matter if I stepped in it by accident or was pushed, or simply whiffed it as I walked by. With the powers in play, guilt or innocence had nothing to do with anything. — James Anderson

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's [Right Whale] expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years. — Herman Melville

They did not hang medals, in those days, on all who by accident had heard a gun fired. — Rudyard Kipling

One does not become a master coach by accident. — Daniel Coyle

War didn't scare me. I just didn't want to go all the way-hell over there to fight one. I had a reputation after that
I pretended I shot myself by accident, but everyone knew. I never did lose that reputation, but now most everyone is dead, and y'all ain't got any stories from them, so you have to believe mine by default: They were cowards, too. Everyone is. — John Green

As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest. I am not interested ... in unskilled labor ... The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on. — Minnie Maddern Fiske

Purity doesn't happen by accident; it requires obedience to God. — Joshua Harris

The desires of your heart were not put there by accident. Follow them. — Mandy Hale

To believe in suffering is pride: but to suffer, believing in God, is humility. For pride may tell us that we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is in ourselves. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek Him in suffering, and that by His grace we can overcome evil with good. Suffering, then, becomes good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God. It does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are. Thus, what we consecrate to God in suffering is not our suffering but our selves. — Thomas Merton

I swear, the best things come to me by accident! Or should I say, effortless destiny? — C. JoyBell C.

Don't be afraid of StarClan. They will understand about Brokentail. You will be honored by our warrior ancestors for your loyalty toy your Clanmates and for your endless courage. So many cats owe their lives to you. Cinderpelt would have died after her accident if you hadn't tended to her. And when there was greencough, you fought day and night ... — Erin Hunter

I really discovered I had thyroid disease by accident. My son was having some health concerns, and as I filled out his patient history I noticed I had a lot of similar symptoms. I mentioned it to the doctor, and he ran blood work and finally an ultrasound of my thyroid. — Kim Alexis

Things turn out better by accident sometimes. But you can't organize accidents. — Jeff Beck

No teaching that is not based on reason can be tolerated by critical minds, but the belief that an accident of blind force produces this highly organized world is far more fantastic than the theory that a Super Intelligence devised its ordered evolution. — Alice Hegan Rice

As I read more and more fairy tales as an adult, I found massive collusion between their 'subjects' and those in my fiction: childhood, nature, sexuality, transformation. I realized that it wasn't by accident that I was drawn to their narrative structure and motifs. — Kate Bernheimer

Oliver, my professor, was a scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas, - he was always prying! And you know the knavish system of the scientific world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I went on working, I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon the world with crushing effect and become famous at a blow. I took up the question of pigments to fill up certain gaps. And suddenly, not by design but by accident, I made a discovery in physiology. — H.G.Wells

What we have earned by the sweat of our brow, we defend with pride. What we have gained by the accident of birth, we guard with prejudice. — Robert Breault

It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls. — Max Planck

That's still the best reading experience: falling in love with a book I meet by accident. — Alice Hoffman

Naturally I feel no shame in writing these things because of the time which separates the moment when they are written
when only I can see them
from the moment when they will be read by other people, a moment which I feel will never come. By then I could have had an accident or died; a war or a revolution could have broken out. This delay makes it possible for me to write today, in the same way I used to lie in the scorching sun for a whole day at sixteen, or make love wihout contraceptives at twenty: without thinking about the consequences — Annie Ernaux

Granuaile looked terminally depressed when she emerged from the bathroom with raven hair and, as a result rather Goth by accident. She didn't want to get her picture taken.
"Aughh!" she said miserably, looking in the vanity mirror in the truck of the cab and fingering a wavy curl near her temple. "This sucks more than anything has ever sucked before. You know what we look like? A couple of emo douche bags."
"Well, look at the bright side, Granuaile. Emo Douche Bags would be a great band name."
[That's brilliant! It's already the unofficial name of more bands than I can count.] — Kevin Hearne

The earth was probably born by accident; but, in accordance with one of the most general laws of evolution, scarcely had this accident happened than it was immediately made use of and recast into something naturally directed. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

[Books] were devices as crassly practical for storing or transmitting language, as the latest Silicon Valley miracles. But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our mind and souls, in a spiritual adventure. — Kurt Vonnegut

Frankly I'm not great with heroin addicts. I tried heroin, but it was by accident. I'm not great with that level of substance abuse. — Michael Stipe

I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. — Upton Sinclair

In improv there are no mistakes, only beautiful happy accidents. And many of the world's greatest discoveries have been by accident. — Tina Fey

Mistakes are something that happen by accident. You didn't walk out the door one morning and fall into some guy's bed. You thought about it, for a while. You made that choice. — Jodi Picoult

Beauty is being who God made you to be. Make the most of what you have. He gave you what you are. Nothing about you is by accident. The right people will love you unconditionally, just as He does. — Kate McGahan

At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse -
at least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our finger tips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident. — William Carlos Williams

Sometimes family doesn't always consist of your relatives or by blood. Sometimes your best friends can feel more like family than your cousins. I think everybody kind of has that same feeling. When you go through an accident together, when you go through a traumatic event, sometimes that brings you closer together. — Michael B. Jordan

Indeed, the most vivid travel experiences usually find you by accident, and the qualities that will make you fall in love with a place are rarely the features that took you there. — Rolf Potts

Success doesn't happen by accident. You make it happen. But before you reach that road to victory, some things about yourself have to be changed. — Kevin J. Donaldson

The difference between transformation by accident and transformation by a system is like the difference between lightning and a lamp. Both give illumination, but one is dangerous and unreliable, while the other is relatively safe, directed, available. — Marilyn Ferguson

Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine - the special pleading of selfish interests. — Henry Hazlitt

Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear and pity. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow as cause and effect. The tragic wonder will then be great than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design. — Aristotle.

I didn't get to the Senate by accident. — John Edwards

Let me take up your metaphor. Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat or violence or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after. The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious stones, never. — Walter Savage Landor

I somehow cling to the strange fancy, that, in all men hiddenly reside certain wondrous, occult properties - as in some plants and minerals - which by some happy but very rare accident (as bronze was discovered by the melting of the iron and brass at the burning of Corinth) may change to be called forth here on earth. — Herman Melville

After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people. — Ernesto Che Guevara

A christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident. — T. S. Eliot

As you travel around medieval England you will come across a sport described by some contemporaries as 'abominable ... more common, undignified and worthless than any other game, rarely ending but with some loss, accident or disadvantage to the players themselves'. This is football. — Ian Mortimer

My belief is that I wasn't born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that. — Ram Dass

Giving never happens by accident. It's always intentional. — Amy Grant

George grinned. 'A pity you're perfectly dreadful at shooting.'
Aubrey shrugged. 'I've had all the lessons. I'm adequate.'
'Adequate? I suppose it depends on what you mean. If you mean that you haven't actually shot yourself by accident, then by all means describe yourself as adequate.'
George laced his fingers together and placed them on his chest. 'I'll come, then I might be able to spare you some embarrassment.'
'I'm honoured. — Michael Pryor

Death is the handmaiden of the pilot. Sometimes it comes by accident, sometimes by an act of God. — Albert Scott Crossfield

Girls like Tess don't do anything by accident. You watch her, Ellie. Don't turn your back on her for a minute. — Jayne Pupek

Projects of personal transformation rarely if ever succeed by accident, drift or imposition. — Dallas Willard

Change should be a friend. It should happen by plan, not by accident. — Phil Crosby

He had noticed my bandaged hand.
"An accident," Warthrop said tersely.
"Dr. Warthrop chopped off my finger with a butcher knife."
Von Helrung's brow knotted up in confusion. "By accident?"
"No," I answered. "That part was on purpose. — Rick Yancey

That's certainly a problem. But that's not what I was thinking of. It's just that you are so soft, so fragile. I have to mind my actions every moment that we're together so that I don't hurt you. I could kill you quite easily, Bella, simply by accident." His voice had become just a soft murmur. He moved his icy palm to rest it against my cheek. "If I was too hasty ... if for one second I wasn't paying enough attention, I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake. You don't realize how
incredibly breakable you are. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control when I'm with you. — Stephenie Meyer

Lei Feng is reported to have died in a freak accident in 1962 - struck by a falling telephone pole. — Evan Osnos

Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night,' he had said. 'You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses. — Sherwood Anderson

If they shoot at you, shoot back. If it's one of my people, don't worry about blasting one by accident. Jayne would kill them anyway for endangering you. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

A life best lived is a life by design. Not by accident, and not by just walking through the day careening from wall to wall and managing to survive. That's okay. But if you can start giving your life dimensions and design and color and objectives and purpose, the results can be staggering. — Jim Rohn

Science cannot tell you whether abortion is wrong, but it can point out that the (embryological) continuum that seamlessly joins a non-sentient foetus to a sentient adult is analogous to the (evolutionary) continuum that joins humans to other species. If the embryological continuum appears to be more seamless, this is only because the evolutionary continuum is divided by the accident of extinction. Fundamental principles of ethics should not depend on the accidental contingencies of extinction.* To repeat, science cannot tell you whether abortion is murder, but it can warn you that you may be being inconsistent if you think abortion is murder but killing chimpanzees is not. You cannot have it both ways. — Richard Dawkins

I've learned to judge of men by their own deeds;
I do not make the accident of birth
The standard of their merit. — Sarah Josepha Hale

One thing is sure, there are just two respectable ways to die. One is of old age, and the other is by accident. — Elbert Hubbard

I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident ... Almost none of my inventions came about totally by accident. They were achieved by having trained myself to endure and tolerate hard work. — Thomas A. Edison

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? — Eric Liu

In the era of networks only, I cannot tell you the number of shows that we don't know about that did not survive. They got canceled. But there are a few that survived by accident, because they didn't have anything else to do, and they stayed with it. — Henry Blodget