Stumbled Across Quotes & Sayings

Childhood
even a sad childhood
eventually becomes a place we think we've dreamed or stumbled across and want to find again, but never can. — Rachel Klein

I was in a bookstore one afternoon, and I stumbled across this book called 'A Guide to Film Schools.' I always loved movies growing up and had never even conceived that it was something you could do for a living. Realizing most of them were in Los Angeles and knowing that was warm, I ended up applying. — Brian Helgeland

Fireheart tensed, waiting for whatever had hunted down these apprentices to emerge from the trees and attack, but nothing stirred. Feeling as if his legs hardly belonged to him, he sprang down and stumbled across to Swiftpaw.
The apprentice lay on his side, his legs splayed out. His black-and-white fur was torn, and his body was covered with dreadful wounds, ripped by teeth far bigger than any cat's. His jaws still snarled and his eyes glared. He was dead, and Fireheart could see that he had died fighting. — Erin Hunter

Anyone with a cursory knowledge of mythology knows that it is suicidal to sexually harass a goddess. Look what Artemis did to that guy who stumbled across her bathing. — Kevin Hearne

I would kill for a cheeseburger. Honestly. If I stumbled across someone eating a cheeseburger, I would kill them for it. — Rick Yancey

After all, this is how you learned how to walk. You didn't just jump up from your crib one day and waltz gracefully across the room. You stumbled and fell on your face and got up and tried again. At what age are you suddenly expected to know everything and never make any more mistakes? If you can love and respect yourself in failure, worlds of adventure and new experiences will open up before you, and your fears will vanish. — David D. Burns

Ultravox were the blueprint for what I wanted to do, but I stumbled across them by accident. — Gary Numan

As he stumbled along a high bright object caught his eyes; he looked up. Atop a building across the street, above the heads of the people, loomed a flaming cross. At once he knew that it had something to do with him. But why should they burn a cross? As he gazed at it he remembered the sweating face of the black preacher in his cell that morning talking intensely and solemnly of Jesus, of there being a cross for him, a cross for everyone, and of how the lowly Jesus had carried the cross, paving the way, showing how to die, how to love and live eternal. But he had never seen a cross burning like that one upon the roof. Were white people wanting him to love Jesus, too? — Richard Wright

There have been women who stumbled across Feministing randomly, through a bizarre Google search or something, and had no idea what feminism was. They thought it was something older women do, or bought into the hairy bra-burning man-hating stereotype 100 percent. Anything that deviates from that is very exciting for them. — Jessica Valenti

One night, Tim stumbled across a documentary called Manufacturing Consent. After viewing it, he found some writing online by its subject, Noam Chomsky, and as a result began to feel that there wasn't really a point to anything, that free will was an illusion, and that the things most people invested time and energy in were systems of control designed by those who sought to manipulate the general populace — Chad Kultgen

He stumbled past, revealing the canvas of his back. My sword ripped across it in so many rapid successions, I nearly wrote my name.
Zorro could kiss my ass. — Holly Jennings

All of the dissatisfactions he had felt in his practice of the art form he had stumbled across within a week of his arrival in America, the cheap conventions, the low expectations among publishers, readers, parents, and educators, the spatial constraints that he had been struggling against in the pages of Luna Moth, seemed capable of being completely overcome, exceeded, and escaped. The Amazing Cavalieri was going to break free, forever, of the nine little boxes. — Michael Chabon

Grace," I said, my vision swirling now because of her blood smeared across my wrists, "Can you hear me?"
She nodded then stumbled to her knees. I knelt beside her; her eyes were huge and afraid and my heart was breaking. "I'll come find you, I said. "I promise I'll come find you. Don't forget me. Don't-don't lose yourself. — Maggie Stiefvater

The solvable systems are the ones shown in textbooks. They behave. Confronted with a nonlinear system, scientists would have to substitute linear approximations or find some other uncertain backdoor approach. Textbooks showed students only the rare non-linear systems that would give way to such techniques. They did not display sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Nonlinear systems with real chaos were rarely taught and rarely learned. When people stumbled across such things-and people did-all their training argued for dismissing them as aberrations. Only a few were able to remember that the solvable, orderly, linear systems were the aberrations. Only a few, that is, understood how nonlinear nature is in its soul. Enrico Fermi once exclaimed, "It does not say in the Bible that all laws of nature are expressible linearly!" The mathematicians Stanislaw Ulam remarked that to call the study of chaos "nonlinear science" was like calling zoology "the study of nonelephant animals. — James Gleick

There was one fledgling PUA, in particular, whom Papa bonded with: a twenty-two-year-old Canadian who had discovered the pickup scene when his mother stumbled across a seduction website. He called himself Tyler Durden, after the seditious character in Fight Club. And like a virus or a demagogue (choose your simile), he would eventually change the course of the community and everyone in it. He — Neil Strauss

A loud boom exploded the air, making Thomas jump. It was followed by a horrible crunching, grinding sound. He stumbled backward, fell to the ground. He wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it for himself. The enormous stone wall to the right of them seemed to defy every known law of physics as it slid along the ground, throwing sparks and dust as it moved, rock against rock. The crunching sound rattled his bones. He looked around at the other openings. On all four sides of the Glade, the right walls were moving toward the left, closing the gap of the Doors.
Then one final boom rumbled across the Glade as all four Doors sealed shut for the night. — James Dashner

I toyed with making portraits based on people's discarded shopping lists found on the street, or old diaries bought on eBay, or other forms of borrowed stories. When I stumbled across the Missed Connections listings, I knew immediately I'd found it. — Sophie Blackall

When the ancients discovered 'Phi', they were certain they had stumbled across God's building block for the world. — Dan Brown

Simone's mother was an unfortunate mistake. Palackas, Simone's father, was a bound demon who stumbled across her one night while he was carrying out an order for his master. One thing led to another ... he inserted part A into slot B, and he fell in love with her ... (Jaden) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I'm thankful for my struggle because without it I wouldn't have stumbled across my strength. — Alex Elle

Miles leaned forward and spoke earnestly into the secure holovid recorder. I just want you to know, Gregor, that if the planet melts down over all this, it wasn't my fault. The trip-wire was laid long before I stumbled across it. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Ah ... Dectective, this is a very private and personal moment for them both. I'm sure you can understand their need for-"
A man stumbled out clutching a sheet round his waist and Valkyrie's eyes widened. "Whoa," she said as he hummed into a table. He was tall and sandy-haired and his physique was jaw-dropping lay amazing. "No way," she said. "Scapegrace?"
The man looked at her, and shook his head. The a woman came charging out of the back room, slammed into the man and they both went rolling across the floor.
"Give it to me!" The woman screamed. "Give it to me!"
Nye scuttled over. "Mr Scapegrace, you know the procedure cannot be repeated, your brains are in far too deteriorated a condition."
"You! Gave! Me! The! Wrong! Body! — Derek Landy

For everyone here in Ohio and across America who's been ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up
this one is for you. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff's talus on the other side,
And then in the far-distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush--and that was all. — Robert Frost

Annie had made so many mistakes, and most of them had been because she'd planted herself firmly in the middle of the road. But now she knew that life without risk was impossible, and if by chance you stumbled across a safe, serene existence, it was because you'd never really reached for anything in the first place. — Kristin Hannah

By accident, some traders had stumbled across a route controlled by Verizon that took 14.65 milliseconds. "The Gold Route," the traders called it, because on the occasions you happened to find yourself on it you were the first to exploit the discrepancies between prices in Chicago and prices in New York. — Michael Lewis

Across the room, she heard a loud clatter. She looked up to see that Roland ahd fallen out of his chair. The last time she'd glanced at him, he'd been leaning back on tw legs, and now it looked like gravity had finally won.
As he stumbled to his feet, Arriane went to help him. She glanced over and offered a hurried wave. "He's okay!" she called cheerily. "Get up!" she whispered loudly to Roland. — Lauren Kate

Well, good-bye for now," he said, rolling his neck as if we hadn't been talking about anything important at all. He bowed at the waist, those wings vanishing entirely, and had begun to fade into the nearest shadow when he went rigid.
His eyes locked on mine wide and wild, and his nostrils flared. Shock - pure shock flashed across his features at whatever he saw on my face, and he stumbled back a step. Actually stumbled.
"What is - " I began.
He disappeared - simply disappeared, not a shadow in sight - into the crisp air. — Sarah J. Maas

When John Heartfield and I invented photomontage in my South End studio at five o'clock on a May morning in 1916, neither of us had any inkling of its great possibilities, nor of the thorny yet successful road it was to take. As so often happens in life, we had stumbled across a vein of gold without knowing it. — George Grosz

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that I'd stumbled across the kind of man I used to find irresistible, or that he'd managed to stare right inside my brain to locate my weaknesses. The thrill of being wanted while pretending not to be interested was a game I'd played over and over during my youth. I'd grown up since then. I'd done more than my share of getting mixed up with men who were all ego and muscles, and he reminded me exactly why I'd given them up.
Unfortunately, my body hadn't got the memo yet. — Kyra Lennon

Yes, she is in love with him, and yes, in spite of his qualms and inner hesitations, he loves her back, however improbable that might seem to him. Note here for the record that he is not someone with a special fixation on young girls. Until now, all the women in his life have been more or less his own age. Pilar therefore does not represent an embodiment of some ideal female type for him
she is merely herself, a small piece of luck he stumbled across one afternoon in a public park, an exception to every rule. — Paul Auster

My dad was a different person when he lectured: his eyes sparkled, his lips turned upward ... 'Think what it must have been like for Darwin, two hundred years ago. He took that voyage on the Beagle [1831] expecting to document the natural world and he stumbled across something impossible. A creature who could defy the laws of physics
straight out of the pages of mythology ... In that one moment, the entire landscape of scientific investigation was drastically and irrevocably changed. The impossible became a widespread scientific reality, as omnipresent as gravity and in some cases, nearly as hard to see. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

How did you know about my candy stash?"
Vincent innocently shrugged. "I needed tape and stumbled across your Willy Wonka drawer — Victoria Michaels