No Accidents Quotes & Sayings

My father was a romantic who believed in kismet, who trusted there were no accidents, that every person we encountered was sent to us for a reason. — Jennifer Handford

The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide. — Larry Elder

There are no accidents in my experience," she said. "Just plans other people make and don't tell you about. — Debbie Viguie

I wish you to understand that there is one man, and only one, for each woman, and one woman only for each man. When those two meet they fly together and are one through all the endless chain of existence. Until they meet all unions are mere accidents which have no meaning. Sooner or later each couple becomes complete. It may not be here. It may be in the next sphere where the sexes meet as they do on earth. Or it may be further delayed. But every man and every woman has his or her affinity, and will find it. Of earthly marriages perhaps one in five is permanent. The others are accidental. Real marriage is of the soul and spirit. Sex actions are a mere external symbol which mean nothing and are foolish, or even pernicious, when the thing which they should symbolize is wanting. Am I clear? — Arthur Conan Doyle

If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents
the
accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts
i.e. of materialism and astronomy
are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset. — C.S. Lewis

Become aware that there are no accidents in our intelligent universe. Realize that everything that shows up in your life has something to teach you. Appreciate everyone and everything in your life. — Wayne Dyer

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. — Henry David Thoreau

God is not blind; neither is He capricious. For Him there are no accidents. With God there are no cases of chance events. — R.C. Sproul

There are no accidents; success is the result of doing the right thing, in the right way, over and over. — Brian Tracy

I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents. — Pablo Picasso

Appreciate everything and everyone. Look upon every experience you've ever had, and everyone who's ever played any role in your life, as having been sent to you for your benefit. In this universe, which was created by a divine, organizing intelligence, there are simply no accidents. — Wayne Dyer

No, it wasn't an accident, I didn't say that. It was carefully planned, down to the tiniest mechanical and emotional detail. But it was a mistake. — John Paxton

There are no accidents in salvation. Those who are to meet will meet, because together they have the potential for a holy relationship. They are ready for each other. — Gabrielle Bernstein

But deep down I always knew there is no way to order chaos. It's the fundamental theory at the beginning and end of everything; it's the ultimate law of nature. There's no way to win against unpredictability, to suit up completely against accidents. — Alexandra Fuller

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. — Zadie Smith

Know that you have complete control over what you put in your mouth. No one ever ate anything by accident. — Charles Poliquin

There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention- that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary- the sunshine, the memories, the future,- which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. — Joseph Conrad

Ships are blowing up at sea, or catching fire, factories are blowing up. Are these accidents? Are these industrial sabotage? No one really suspected a spy network. — Howard Blum

My paintings are the result of countless small brushstrokes, each one shaded with a different blend of colors, each one with a single, deliberate purpose. Every moment, every day, we are all making something - whether it's science or art, a relationship or a destiny - building it choice by choice, moment by moment. Our decisions shape other people's worlds as well as our own. We are all the center of our own universe and all of use in someone else's orbit. It's a paradox, but sometimes paradoxes are where truth begins.
My father would point out that the Beatles told us all of this decades ago. They one sang that in the end, the love we take is equal to the love we make. No, we can never be in complete control of our fates - we're all vulnerable to accidents, to cruelty, and to the random misfortune of life. But I try to think about how much of it is up to us. We decide what emotions serve as our building blocks, which feelings we'll use to shape our universe. — Claudia Gray

He bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of his circumstances, like a skilful general who marshals his limited forces with all the strategy of war . . . . He is his own best friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy, and is afraid of solitude.59 — Will Durant

No accidents are so unlucky [bad] but that the wise may draw some advantage [good] from them ... — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are no mistakes, just happy accidents. — Bob Ross

There's no such thing as a mistake
we do it! There's no such thing as an accident
we do it!. — Lester Levenson

If the universe is friendly, then it is indeed aware of us and works to help us. So there are no 'unfortunate accidents,' and everything that happens is orchestrated in an elaborate and complicated manner to be of benefit to us. — Srikumar Rao

Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. — Avicenna

The little incidents and accidents of every day fill us with emotion, anxiety, annoyance, passion, as long as they are close to us, when they appear so big, so important, so serious; but as soon as they are borne down the restless stream of time they lose what significance they had; we think no more of them and soon forget them altogether. They were big only because they were near. — Arthur Schopenhauer

There is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end. — Jackson Pollock

They were still in the happier stage of love. They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremendous illusions, so that the communion of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered. They both seemed to have arrived there with an extraordinary innocence as though a series of pure accidents had driven them together, so many accidents that at last they were forced to conclude that they were for each other. They had arrived with clean hands, or so it seemed, after no traffic with the merely curious and clandestine. — F Scott Fitzgerald

There's a startling fact that you read somewhere: after airbags became standard in cars, statisticians noticed that the incidence of severe leg injuries increased dramatically. Think about it for a minute: Why should that be? Is there something about the way airbags inflate during collision that targets the passengers' legs, makes them more vulnerable? No. It's a matter of checks and balances. Before airbags, there were certain accidents that would have killed you; you'd be a corpse in the morgue, and no one would be paying any attention to your legs. When we change the way we do things - the way we shop for groceries or take care of our children or protect ourselves from harm - we set other changes in motion, for good or for ill. And it may be years before we figure out what we've done. — Carolyn Parkhurst

No one can depute authority. It comes too much from personal accidents, and too little from reason or law to be handed over to others. — Anthony Trollope

And I want nothing more than to wrap myself around him and be carried away to a place where I don't have to think. A place where there's no guilt or fear, no right or wrong, no divine punishments or senseless accidents or indeterminate states. — Tammara Webber

What to Accept
The fact of mountains. The actuality
Of any stone - by kicking, if necessary.
The need to ignore stupid people,
While restraining one's natural impulse
To murder them. The change from your dollar,
Be it no more than a penny,
For without a pretense of universal penury
There can be no honor between rich and poor.
Love, unconditionally, or until proven false.
The inevitability of cancer and/or
Heart disease. The dialogue as written,
Once you've taken the role. Failure,
Gracefully. Any hospitality
You're willing to return. The air
Each city offers you to breathe.
The latest hit. Assistance.
All accidents. The end. — Thomas M. Disch

... But don't be late, Troy, or I'll ... " She hesitated and laughed, not entirely happily. "I don't suppose I'll ever need to worry about you again, will I? I don't suppose I've ever needed to worry over a magician."
"There are always car accidents," Tabitha declared cheerfully. "A car could come around the corner and ... wallop! You'd need a terrific magician to get out of that one ... "
"Or eagles dropping tortoises," Troy added, looking amused. "That happened in Ancient Greece, you know. An eagle dropped a tortoise on some dramatist and killed him."
"No eagles or tortoises here," said Tabitha, "but a bit could fall off a plane. — Margaret Mahy

We try, when we wake, to lay the new day at God's feet; before we have finished shaving, it becomes our day and God's share in it is felt as a tribute which we must pay out of 'our own' pocket, a deduction from the time which ought, we feel, to be 'our own'. A man starts a new job with a sense of vocation and, perhaps, for the first week still keeps the discharge of the vocation as his end, taking the pleasures and pains from God's hand, as they came, as 'accidents'. But in the second week he is beginning to 'know the ropes': by the third, he has quarried out of the total job his own plan for himself within that job, and when he can pursue this he feels that he is getting no more than his rights, and when he cannot, that he is being interfered. — C.S. Lewis

[ ... ]virtue is not some kind of mode whose value is
incontestable, it is simply
a scheme of conduct, a way of getting along, which varies
according to accidents of geography and climate and which, consequently, has no
reality, the which alone exhibits its futility.
Only what is constant is really good; what changes perpetually cannot
claim that
characterization: that is why they have declared that immutability belongs to the
ranks of the Eternal's perfections; but virtue is completely without this quality: there
is not, upon the entire globe, two races which are virtuous in the same m
anner;
hence, virtue is not in any sense real, nor in any wise intrinsically good and in no sort
deserves our reverence. — Marquis De Sade

This, dear Phaedrus, is the most important point: no geometry without the word. Without it, figures are accidents, and neither make manifest nor serve the power of the mind. — Paul Valery

Accidents illustrate that you have no control over your life, because from one moment to the next it could be taken away from you. — Lauren Henderson

There are no small accidents on this circuit. — Ayrton Senna

Death for [a Christian] is no accident. With God there are no accidents, no tragedies, and no catastrophes as far as His children are concerned. — Billy Graham

Listen -

You are not a lonesome freeway with a history
of accidents, or the damaged record of
every pair of palms that tried to unravel you. You are
not a regret, not a letdown. Here you are, living
like a scarlet war - no part of you wants to be
real. This is when you need to open like a bud
to the arms that hold you, even if you prefer to run
from the sun into the shadowy sirens that call
your name like a prayer.

Repeat after me - you are a vessel of roses, and
you wont always be in bloom, but I promise that
the frost never stays for long. I promise that the
light will find you. — Bianca Sparacino

Accidents happen. I will, um ... I will pay to have your house rebuilt."
"And my barn?" a woman called out.
Liam sighed. "Yes, and your barn, too."
"And my golden carousel?" shouted another man. "Will you pay for that?"
Liam raised an eyebrow. "The giant smashed your golden carousel?"
"No," said the man. "I'd just like to have a golden carousel. — Christopher Healy

Life is responding to you. Life is communicating with you. There are no accidents or coincidences: every single thing has a frequency, and when anything comes into your life, it means it's on the same frequency as you are. — Rhonda Byrne

In my conscious life, though, I cannot honestly say I feel proud to be white and ashamed to be black or proud to be black and ashamed to be white. I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I understand how those words got into the racial discourse, but I can't sign up to them. I'm not proud to be female either. I am not even proud to be human - I only love to be so. As I love to be female and I love to be black, and I love that I had a white father. It — Zadie Smith

In the great and deep qualities of mind, heart, and soul, there is no change. Homer and Solomon speak to the same nature in man that is reached by Shakespeare and Lincoln. but in the accidents, the surroundings, the change is vast. All things now are mobile
movable. — Rutherford B. Hayes

By the time the sixties hit their home bases, we the kids, were already born, and our parents found themselves stuck between an entrenched belief that children needed to be raised in a traditional household, and a new sense that anything was possible, that the alternative lifestyle was out there for the asking. There they were in marriages they once thought were a necessity and with children they'd had almost by accident in a world that was suddenly saying, 'No necessities! No accidents! Drop Everything!' A little too old to take full advantage of the cultural revolution, our parents just got all the fallout. Freedom hit them obliquely, and invidiously, rather than head-on. Instead of waiting longer to get married, our parents got divorced; Instead of becoming feminists, our mothers were left to become displaced homemakers. A lot of unhappy situations were dissolved by people who were not quite young or free enough to start again. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

There are almost no sports within which mortal accidents are not a reality. — Dietrich Mateschitz

It is eerily terrifying that there is no sound when a heart breaks. Car accidents end with a bang, falling ends with a thud, even writing makes the scratching sound of pencil against paper. But the sound of a heart breaking is completely silent. Almost as though no one, not even the universe itself could create a sound for such devastation. Almost as though silence is the only way the universe could pay its respect to the sound of a heart falling apart. — Nikita Gill

When it comes to big things in life, there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. — Ransom Riggs

The trouble with a movie is that it's old before it's released. It's no accident that it comes in a can. — Orson Welles

No one noticed Witch Baby as she went back inside the cottage, into the room she and Cherokee shared.
Cherokee's side of the room was filled with feathers, crystals, butterfly wings, rocks, shells and dried flowers. there was a small tepee that Coyote had helped Cherokee make. The walls on Witch Baby's side of the room were covered with newspaper clippings - nuclear accidents, violence, poverty and disease. Every night, before she went to bed, Witch Baby cut out three articles or pictures with a pair of toenail scissors and taped them to the wall. they make Cherokee cry.
"Why do you want to have those up there?" Weetzie asked. "You'll both have nightmares. — Francesca Lia Block

I lost it in the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I started to panic when I noticed the graveyard of empty toilet paper rolls. The brown cylinders had ostensibly been placed vertically to form a half oval on top of the flat shiny surface of the stainless steel toilet paper holder. It was like some sort of miniature-recycled Stonehenge in the women's bathroom, a monument to the bowel movements of days past. Actually, it was sometime around 2:30 p.m. when my day exited the realm of country song bad and entered the neighboring territory of Aunt Ethel's annual Christmas letter bad. Last year Aunt Ethel wrote with steady, stalwart sincerity of Uncle Joe's gout and her one - no, make that two - car accidents, the new sinkhole in their backyard, their impending eviction from the trailer park, and Cousin Serena's divorce. To be fair, Cousin Serena got divorced every year, so that didn't really count toward the calamitous computation of yearly catastrophes. I — Penny Reid

Now, years later and with Carnegie's blessing, Frick had launched his plan to further consolidate his rule over their industrial kingdom by destroying the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. The labor union, formed in 1876, was one of many that emerged in the industrial age to combat the cruel and oppressive treatment of workers. In the steel mills, workers typically put in 12-hour days, six days a week, for less than a dime an hour. There were no government agencies to inspect the work sites, no forms of compensation in case of injury, and more than 35,000 workers died each year in industrial accidents. Only the unions offered some hope by fighting for higher wages, eight-hour workdays, and improved working conditions. — James McGrath Morris

If you want to understand why you are here on earth, you must first examine who you are on the inside. There are no accidents. There are no mistakes. Everything you need to be great is already inside of you. — Detavio Samuels

Yes, you see, there's no such thing as coincidence. There are no accidents in life. Everything that happens is the result of a calculated move that leads us to where we are. — J.M. Darhower

A lifetime's experience urges me to utter a warning cry: do anything else, take someone's golden retriever for a walk, run away with a saxophone player. Perhaps what's wrong with being a writer is that one can't even say 'good luck'
luck plays no part in the writing of a novel. No happy accidents as with the paint pot or chisel. I don't think you can say anything, really. I've always wanted to juggle and ride a unicycle, but I dare say if I ever asked the advice of an acrobat he would say, 'All you do is get on and start pedaling'. — J.G. Ballard

But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be "as gods." We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another. Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and "one body," will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. — Thomas Merton

Our God is sovereign. That means there's no such thing as luck. Anything that happens to you, good or bad, must pass through His fingers first. There are no accidents with God. I like the story of the cowboy who applied for health insurance. The agent routinely asked him, 'Have you ever had any accidents?' The cowboy replied, 'Well no, I've not had any accidents. I was bitten by a rattlesnake once, and a horse did kick me in the ribs. That laid me up for a while, but I haven't had any accidents.' The agent said, 'Wait a minute. I'm confused. A rattlesnake bit you, and a horse kicked you, Weren't those accidents?' 'No, they did that on purpose. — Tony Evans

You've never been in a scrape yet but what it came about by accident. The thing is, no one else has these accidents. — Georgette Heyer

The medal recipients, sixty-two in al, were summoned to the dais. Like many of the other men, Christopher was dressed in private clothes, having left the ranks at the conclusion of the war. Unlike the other men, Christopher was holding a leash. Attached to a dog. For reasons that had not been explained, he had been told to bring Albert to the presentation. The other Rifles whispered encouragements as Albert walked obediently beside Christopher.
"There's a good boy!"
"Look smart, fellow!"
"No accidents in front of the queen!"
"And all that goes for you too, Albert," someone added, causing the lot of them to snicker.
Giving his friends a damning glance, which only amused them further, Christopher took Albert to meet the queen. — Lisa Kleypas

There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite. — Abraham Lincoln

There are certain things that come along that take precedence over all other events, like natural catastrophes, car accidents, and unexpected meetings with rockstars. These things suck you entirely and leave no room for you to wonder how bored or worried other people might be while you are so completely engaged. — Dakota Lane

If life is a checker game, someone else is moving the pieces. It isn't us. Don't be surprised by amazing coincidences. There are no accidents. Consider, as I learned to do, the incredible interconnectedness of all of life. — Wayne Dyer

Don't you know medicine cats don't have kits?" hissed Yellowfang furiously. "But I heard you were a warrior before that," Firepaw ventured. "I have no kits!" Yellowfang spat. She snatched her tail away from him and sat up. "Anyway" - her voice suddenly lowered, and she sounded almost wistful - "accidents seem to happen to kits when I'm around them. — Erin Hunter

Meaning no disrespect, sir, but there's no way in the Good Lord's fucking universe that anyone can bar accidents or the unexpected. — Dan Simmons

There are no accidents whatsoever in the universe. — Ram Dass

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves as well. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen accidents, meetings and material assistance that no one could have dreamed would come their way. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. - Goethe, by attribution — Gregory Maguire

I shall never find a better document for a phenomenology of a being which is at once established in its roundness and developing in it. Rilke's tree propagates in green spheres a roundness that is a victory over accidents of form and the capricious events of mobility. Here becoming has countless forms, countless leaves, but being is subject to no dispersion: If I could ever succeed in grouping together all the images of being, all the multiple, changing images that, in spite of everything, illustrate permanence of being, Rilke's tree would open an important chapter in my album of concrete metaphysics. — Gaston Bachelard

Stress is not bad but a necessary part of facing life's challenges. Whilst the dreamers maintain the delusion that 'all accidents are preventable' the rest of us know that the bumps and challenges of life are necessary for learning, resilience and maturation. There can be no resilience without stress, and no learning without risk. — Rob Long

Bears are made of the same dust as we, and they breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bear's days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart pulsing like ours. He was poured from the same first fountain. And whether he at last goes to our stingy Heaven or not, he has terrestrial immortality. His life, not long, not short, knows no beginning , no ending. To him life unstinted, unplanned, is above the accidents of time, and his years, markless and boundless, equal eternity. — John Muir

Landscapes can be deceptive. Sometimes a landscape seems to be less a setting for the life of its inhabitants than a curtain behind which their struggles, achievements and accidents takes place. For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal — John Berger

Your life will always be the perfect classroom journey for you and every experience that shows up in your journey is here to serve you. There is meaning and purpose behind everything that happens. There are no accidents which means your suffering through difficulties is never for nothing. Your life matters and everything you experience matters. Your trials are there to help you become a better person and trusting this is truth will take some of the sting out of them. Suffering becomes more bearable if it at least counts for something. — Kimberly Giles

But for sorrow there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return or the past should be recalled. — Samuel Johnson

When they become slaves to thoughts that pull them down they fall into another kind of slavery and no one can emancipate them from such bondage as that except themselves - not even a Lincoln.
I say this because there is an increasing tendency among the youth of both races to assume that a system of government will unload them of all responsibilities for the care of aged parents, for sicknesses and accidents - often due to their own carelessness and neglect - and for their periods of unemployment, no matter how much their condition is due to laziness or failure to co-operate with others. I see this every day. 'Let the government do it,' they say, ignoring the fact that, in a democracy, they themselves help pay for the government's disbursements. It looks to me at this time as if they wish to declare not their independence, but their dependence upon the government from the cradle to the grave. — Thomas Calhoun Walker

Put in hours and hours of planning, figure everything down to the last detail, then what? Burglar alarms start going off all overthe place for no sensible reason. A gun fires of its own accord and a man is shot. And a broken-down old house no good for anything but chasing kids has to trip over us. Blind accidents. What can you do against blind accidents? — Ben Maddow

If we accept that there is no such thing as 'zero risk' then we should not spin the meaning of words with assertions such as 'all accidents are preventable'. — Rob Long

Losing faith is a complicated business and takes time. There are no epiphanies, no "moments of truth." It takes much thought and concentration in the later phases, which thenselves come about through an accumulation of small accidents: examples of general injustice, misfortune falling upon the godly, prayers of one's own unanswered. — Thomas Pynchon

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

Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely. — William James

But there are no real accidents, only decisions that feel like accidents, one after another, that take you down a certain road and take on a momentum that can't be reversed. — Nichole Bernier

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

There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation alter nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again. — Camille Paglia

But if one doesn't really exist, one wonders why ... " she hesitated.
"Why one makes such a fuss about things," Anthony suggested. "All that howling and hurrahing and gnashing of teeth. About the adventures of a self that isn't really a self - just the result of a lot of accidents. And of course," he went on, "once you start wondering, you see at once that there is no reason for making such a fuss. And then you don't make a fuss - that is, if you're sensible. Like me," he added, smiling. — Aldous Huxley

No one's fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we're not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love.
Tristan and Isolde is scarcely the story,
women at least should know the difference
between love and death. No poison cup,
no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder
should have caught some ghost of us: that tape-recorder
not merely played but should have listened to us,
and could instruct those after us:
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces they had ranged against us,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us,
within us and against us, against us and within us. — Adrienne Rich

Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn't prove to serve a function. The outcome itself may be due to small accidents of evolution. — E. O. Wilson

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.
The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.
Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, 'this might be all part of God's plan,' or 'there are no accidents in life,' or 'everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves' - these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this. — Sam Harris

There are no mistakes or accidents. The present is malleable. Influence the odds. Free will is your pen, write your life. — Pharrell Williams

Accidents happen. That's what everyone says. But in a quantum universe there are no such things as accidents, only possibilities and probabilities folded into existence by perception. — J. Michael Straczynski

There are no accidents in Nature, — John Muir

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents. — Michel De Montaigne

There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically
we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first! — Edwin Land

There are many causes of violent deaths in America - murders and traffic accidents - that we do not approach with the same 'no price too steep, no task too difficult' approach that we take toward al Qaeda. — Dennis C. Blair

Accidents and chance are words used by persons who do not think clearly when they attempt to account for certain happenings. Anyone who thinks must be convinced that in a world as orderly as this there is no room for the words accident and chance. — Harold Percival

What happened was no accident. Everything was preordained. True, the will was free, but heaven also made its ordinances. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

There are no accidents so unlucky but the prudent may draw some advantage from them. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are old pilots and there are bold pilots', goes the saying, 'there are no old bold pilots'. Hal never qualified as old. He'd survived his fuel tank blunder; his next mistake killed him.
In the years that followed, other pilot friends and acquaintances were killed in flying accidents. We were never ready; the news always shocked. Whether we learned from these shocks is doubtful; every pilot is certain that Death will never find him. — R.J. Childerhose

Unk shook his head vaguely. He could think of no apt condensation of his adventures for the obviously ritual mood. Something great was plainly expected of him. He was not up to greatness. He exhaled noisily, letting the congregation know that he was sorry to fail them with his colorlessness. 'I was a victim of a series of accidents,' he said. He shrugged. 'As are we all,' he said. The cheering and dancing began again. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

There are no accidents, all things have a deep and calculated purpose; sometimes the methods employed by Providence seem strange and incongruous, but we have only to be patient and wait for the result: then we recognize that no others would have answered the purpose, and we are rebuked and humbled. — Mark Twain

Moreover, poor people are never opposed to big government because they're exempt from all the annoying things that government does. They're not worried about taxes: The government is not going to raise any taxes that they pay. They drive unlicensed cars, have no insurance, flee accidents, and couldn't pay a court judgment anyway. The government doesn't want to get in touch with the poor for any reason other than to give them things. — Ann Coulter

There's no question young drivers have far more accidents than older ones-but is it our aim to keep them off the roads? Or to allow only rich young people (who can afford the premiums) to drive? — Andrew Tobias

Um, accidents happen. Especially if there's a co-star that you're not that fond of - you might 'accidentally' deck him. But no, I'm a professional. I'm just saying that can happen. — Timothy Olyphant