Things To Happen Quotes & Sayings

I can't buy the idea that we're supposed to live and learn from horrible things. That somehow these things happen so we can grow as people — Julie Halpern

Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy, or integrity. You will be hollow. — George Orwell

Certain things need not be said, and there's nothing, not a whisper, prayer, not a sacrifice, not a payment of any price, that would change what's about to happen. — Alice Hoffman

While finding true love was one of the most splendid things that could happen to you in life, finding a friend was equally splendid. — Felix J. Palma

But this is what ... people are so often and disastrously wrong in doing: they (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment ...
And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half broken things that they would like to call their happiness, and their futures?
And so each of them loses himself to the other for the sake of the other person, and loses the other. And loses the vast possibilities ... in exchange for an unfruitful confusion, out of which nothing more can come, nothing but a bit of disgust, disappointment and poverty. — Rainer Maria Rilke

As a filmmaker, I always try not to concern myself with the outcome of things. I make the movie, and I do that as honestly and good as I can. I don't want to pollute my thoughts with what is going to happen with it afterwards, because I have to work inside-out. — Susanne Bier

We cannot choose the things that will happen to us. But we can choose the attitude we will take toward anything that happens. Success or failure depends on your attitude. — Alfred Armand Montapert

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes 'sight-seeing.' — Daniel J. Boorstin

Over the years, I have developed a visceral reaction to families and victims expressing surprise at tragedy. Why are we surprised? Why do we forget we are mortal? Bad, bad things happen everywhere, every day. Humans, for better or worse, harbor this feeling that we - individually - are special. A patch of ice or a pea-sized blood clot makes a mockery of that illusion in a heartbeat. We are not special at all. — Michael Perry

When you're the lead of a series, things happen around you, and you react to them. — James Van Der Beek

I squeeze my eyes shut as though that will somehow make it go away, but I know it won't. It happened and there's no changing it. No changing any of the things that happen to us. All there is to do is move on. Starting now. — Nyrae Dawn

In the Art of Dreaming Don Juan tells Carlos, " ... most of our energy goes into upholding our importance ... if we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two we would provide ourselves with enough energy to ... catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe." — Carlos Castaneda

I want something completely new and different to happen, and lots of it. Stuff that makes us change the way we think about a market or the world. Something that inspires a new generation of crazy startups doing crazy things. — Michael Arrington

The idea of living there, of not having to go back ever again to asphalt and shopping malls and modular furniture; of living there with Charles and Camilla and Henry and Francis and maybe even Bunny; of no one marrying or going home or getting a job in a town a thousand miles away or doing any of the traitorous things friends do after college; of everything remaining exactly as it was, that instant - the idea was so truly heavenly that I'm not sure I thought, even then, it could ever really happen, but I like to believe I did. — Donna Tartt

For fuck's sake, you vanished and I couldn't find you. Do you really think I'm going to let that happen again? If you believe nothing else, concede it will work for that reason alone. I don't lose things that are mine. — Karen Marie Moning

Out of the 6.8 billion people in the world, these girls wanted their lives to end, wanted negative things to happen to them. In my world, that wasn't normal. I probably wasn't normal in their world, either. — Jessamine Verzosa

I want to make it so that so many things happen ... that you didn't expect would happen in this series, that you realize that you have to read every one of them. — Kevin J. Anderson

One of the things that adds tension to our lives is small frustrations. Losing car keys can give you a panic attack. Not being able to find a comb when you get out of the shower, losing scissors and nail clippers, can make you fight with your roommate. The problem is that we think that these things are not supposed to happen to us. And that's what makes us tense. We think we can avoid these frustrations by making ourselves and others be more careful. I like to take the opposite tack-to assume that these things are a part of life and that they will happen no matter what. — Jennifer James

Why do bad things happen to good people?'
'Because it makes a good story. — Andrew Kaufman

[The truth] is what actually happens. Not what you want to happen. Not what you're afraid will happen. We make up stories when we want things to happen or are afraid they may happen. And sometimes we do it for fun-or to scare people or make them do our way or to hurt them. And sometimes we do it because it's a pretty story and we tell it just as we fly a kite or send balloons floating. — Lillian Smith

My talent is getting things to work that people think are many decades in the future. I say we can make them happen now. — Rodney Brooks

Wonderful things start to happen when you dream outside of your sleep. — Richard Wilkins

Dark books say to us, "This isn't about you. You are in fact alive and safe." Yes, there's an implicit and unavoidable warning, an edge of danger; these things happen, the books say. And yet, as bad as it gets inside this book, you, the reader, are securely outside. If — Pamela Paul

She used to tell me that a full moon was when mysterious things happen and wishes come true. — Shannon A. Thompson

So I just had to step up how I was doing it and the moment that I stepped up and the moment I focused all my energy on that is when things started to happen. So there's a direct relationship between my inspiration and my output. — Talib Kweli

So what if I don't learn algebra?'
'Someday schools will be open again,' Mom said. 'Things will be normal. You need to do your work now for when that happens.'
'That's never going to happen,' Jon said. 'And even if schools do open up somewhere, they're not going to open up here. There aren't enough people left.'
'We don't know how many people are like us, holed up, making do until times get better.'
'I bet whoever they are, they aren't studying algebra,' Jon said. — Susan Beth Pfeffer

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: it teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it to one degree or another.
(Harry Dresden's internal monologue in White Knight) — Jim Butcher

I started out as a poet who primarily wanted to write about image and moment. Over the years I've been trying to teach myself how to do plot and scene. My first story collection had the most issues with the plotlessness, and when I was writing my second collection I was teaching myself how to make things happen. — Dan Chaon

Because we live in a world under siege," I say. "Life sucks for mages and magicians- you taught me that. Bad things happen to those of us who get involved, but if we didn't fight, we'd be in an even worse state. None of it it's your fault, any more than it's the fault of the moon or the stars."
Dervish nods slowly, then arches an eyebrow "The moon or the stars?"
"I always get poetic when I'm dealing with self-pitying simpletons. — Darren Shan

Will, I love you. I really do. You are going to be a part of our wedding; you will also be a part of our family. I want the best things in the world to happen to you." She narrowed her eyes at me, and I felt my balls crawl up into my body. "But I still wouldn't tell a girlfriend of mine to take a chance with you. I'd tell her she should let you fuck her brains out, but keep her emotions out of it because you are a clueless little shit. — Christina Lauren

We make our worlds of stranger stuff: We choose people who do not annoy us, places of green or glass and steel that feel as alive and necessary as our brothers and sisters, houses in which everything has a place, rules such as Do Not Take Things That Aren't Yours Unless No One Is Looking and Good Things Happen to Good People and A Year Is 365 Days are agreed upon, even when they aren't true, perhaps especially so. — Catherynne M Valente

The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things-ancient history, nineteenth century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later, or six months, or six years. But he has faith that it will happen. — Carl Ally

You know," he (Tweedledee) added very gravely, "it's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle
to get one's head cut off." pg. 199 — Lewis Carroll

I learned a lot about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, "Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?" This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman. This same man, by the way, would often talk about his experience as a black man. (To which I should probably have responded, "Why not your experiences as a man or as a human being? Why a black man?") — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Who knows what will happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning. — Mary Oliver

I wasn't sure what would happen with us. I knew that there were no guarantees. Terrible things happened when you were least expecting them, on sunny Saturday mornings, and the consequences just had to be lived with, every day. But it seemed that wonderful things could happen too. You could be forced to take a trip, not knowing who you would meet. Not knowing that it would change your life. — Morgan Matson

Stadiums fill up with people to see what's going to happen between the lines. But life isn't only about visible realities. There are invisible and unseen nuances ... things that shape us into who we are. — Orel Hershiser

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: WHY UNCONDITIONALLY BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD PEOPLE
They never do. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Zen is a study. It's a discipline. It involves the active use of will to make things happen or not happen. These are the secrets of power. — Frederick Lenz

We need to be grateful for many things that didn't happen. — C.J. Langenhoven

Am I doing anything? I do it with reference to the good of mankind. Does anything happen to me? I receive it and refer it to the gods, and the source of all things, from which all that happens is derived. — Marcus Aurelius

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

Timing is so important! If you are going to be successful in dance, you must be able to respond to rhythm and timing. It's the same in the Spirit. People who don't understand God's timing can become spiritually spastic, trying to make the right things happen at the wrong time. They don't get His rhythm - and everyone can tell they are out of step. They birth things prematurely, threatening the very lives of their God-given dreams. — T.D. Jakes

I think fashion in motion is going to happen. I think that's the way things are going, but there are people who will still want to see a picture and to be able to hold it. — Kate Moss

I like to talk about the idea of "design without design," where ... we're creating the conditions for the things that we want to see happen rather than trying to force a particular set of outcomes. — Toby Hemenway

I try not to get too low. I fight adversity as hard as I can fight it, not to get too low. When good things happen, I don't really embrace it. I just say it's a lucky day. — Rick Pitino

A witch is a causal theory of explanation. And it's fair to say that if your causal theory to explain why bad things happen is that your neighbor flies around on a broom and cavorts with the devil at night, inflicting people, crops, and cattle with disease, preventing cows from giving milk, beer from fermenting, and butter from churning - and that the proper way to cure the problem is to burn her at the stake - then either you are insane or you lived in Europe six centuries ago, and you even had biblical support, specifically Exodus 22:18: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. — Michael Shermer

Not that pain is the worst thing in the universe. Interesting things happen when you adapt pain for your own. This thing you were prepared to spend your life flinching from is suddenly just another piece of information. — Shelley Jackson

We base our ideas about the world on our personal experience, and that experience has ingrained the rate of growth of the recent past in our heads as "the way things happen." We're also limited by our imagination, which takes our experience and uses it to conjure future predictions - but often, what we know simply doesn't give us the tools to think accurately about the future. When we hear a prediction about the future that contradicts our experience-based notion of how things work, our instinct is that the prediction must be naive. If I tell you [...] that you may live to be 150, or 250, or not die at all, your instinct will be, "That's stupid - if there's one thing I know from history, it's that everybody dies." And yes, no one in the past has not died. But no one flew airplanes before airplanes were invented either. — Tim Urban

Life ain't easy. Terrible things happen to everyone. You have to keep your sense of humor, give something of yourself to others, make friends who are younger than you, learn new things, and have fun. — George Vaillant

When I'm acting, I have zero control, and it's the scariest thing anyone can do in that field because, you know, your face is always the one that's out there in front of the camera, and any number of things can happen to you once you've done your work. It can be edited badly, it can be distributed badly, or it can not be distributed at all. And I've certainly experienced that; every actor has. — Amber Tamblyn

Every time you say yes to something you don't want to do, this will happen: you will resent people, you will do a bad job, you will have less energy for the things you were doing a good job on, you will make less money, and yet another small percentage of your life will be used up, burned up, a smoke signal to the future saying, I did it again. — James Altucher

My goal is to encourage people to see the possibilities that life holds. So many great things can happen in life, if we can find our own way of doing things, and believe in ourselves, no matter what challenges surround you. — Jim Abbott

Power Thought: I expect good things to happen in my life today. — Joyce Meyer

Well, let's say Asian. Some are Japanese. Some are Chinese. Some are Thai. Some are Vietnamese. He runs the gamut. And I actually happen to have a very dear daughter-in-law who's Japanese. I don't know what she's going to make of the film, but I say a few disparaging things. — Jacki Weaver

Terrible things can happen in this life but being in love changes everything. It gives you something to hold on to. — Judy Blume

I love life, even when bad things happen to me. I can't stop loving it. Every season of the year comes with a promise that something wonderful is going to happen to me someday. — Judith McNaught

If you would have a successful life, less and less try to make things happen and more and more just let things happen. — Ormond McGill

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and
can be none in the future,
And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn'd to
beautiful results,
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death,
And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are
compact,
And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each
as profound as any. — Walt Whitman

It's the basic obstacle of artificial ecosystems. In a normal evolutionary environment, there's enough diversity to cushion the system when something catastrophic happens. That's nature. Catastrophic things happen all the time. But nothing we can build has the depth. One thing goes wrong, and there's only a few compensatory pathways that can step in. They get overstressed. Fall out of balance. When the next one fails, there are even fewer paths, and then they're more stressed. It's a simple complex system. That's the technical name for it. Because it's simple, it's prone to cascades, and because it's complex, you can't predict what's going to fail. Or how. It's computationally impossible." Holden — James S.A. Corey

Revolutions come about when small things happen to small people. — Jennifer Donnelly

Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go. We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box. — Henry Miller

When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take a step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly. — Patrick Overton

Have faith that when bad things happen to you, I belief in an after life, it is better to suffer here on Earth than what awaits you. That is why I pray for pain, and I get it. I do. — Peter Steele

I don't know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don't understand are at work. I cannot believe that God "sends" illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don't believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best. "What did I do to deserve this?" is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is "If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?" As we saw in the previous chapter, it becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don't hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world. — Harold S. Kushner

Scarlett was not fond of fate. She liked to believe if she were good, good things would happen. Fate left her feeling powerless, and hopeless, and with an overall feeling of lessness. To her, fate seemed like a larger, omnipotent version of her father, stealing her choices and controlling her life without any regard for her feelings. Fate meant that nothing she did mattered. — Stephanie Garber

The things I talk about and explain couldn't happen - yet, they don't seem impossible - you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane - and it's trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is. — Steven Wright

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley ... He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: To Harry Potter - the boy who lived! — J.K. Rowling

Anything could happen here and who would know? It was a new place to me, but timeless in its own right. Regn had never stood here. All these years since and we'd been so close to 'this' obscurity. Its hidden proximity is what disquieted. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

That power of the Gods which orders for the good things which are not uniform, and which happen contrary to expectation, is commonly called Fortune, and it is for this reason that the Goddess is especially worshipped in public by cities; for every city consists of elements which are not uniform. — Sallust

I had thus learned to push down my feelings, to force myself to not care, to do nothing and let things happen, come what may. — Amy Tan

You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ... — Kevin Brooks

I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things. — Mike Nichols

Wide awake to the presence of God, I realized I had been so focused on asking why a good God allowed bad things to happen that I was missing out on the nearness of God all along. In becoming preoccupied with the why, I was missing the who. — Margaret Feinberg

All the things that happen to people in the industry today, the actors, what they have to put up with, all the people wanting to know every single moment of their lives - I think it's really sad. — Tab Hunter

Things don't always happen the way we planned. As we learn to trust in God's plan, we will see that He has our best interests at heart. — Dan Ellis

Most of us manage the fateful things that happen in our lives the best we can, certainly not to a Stalin-like 20-year plan. — Jo Brand

As I said,I believe in fate.Things happen as they are meant to be.We just have to recognize our destiny. — Edward Rutherfurd

It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as the Eye, always tried to escape from violence even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around twenty years old when Salvador Allende died. — Roberto Bolano

I think for me, what I'm doing on set is I'm watching things happen as an audience member and trying to just look at, what's the image we're photographing, how will that advance the story and what will the next image be. — Christopher Nolan

Steve is troubled by a lot of things. He is twenty-three, was raised in Virginia, and has the idea that California is the beginning of the end. "I feel it's insane," he says, and his voice drops. "This chick tells me there's no meaning to life but it doesn't matter, we'll just flow right out. There've been times I felt like packing up and taking off for the East Coast again, at least there I had a target. At least there you expect that it's going to happen." He lights a cigarette for me and his hands shake. "Here you know it's not going to."
I ask what it is that is supposed to happen.
"I don't know," he says. "Something. Anything. — Joan Didion

Fantastic things happen - to the way we feel, to the way we make other people feel. All this simply by using positive words. — Leo Buscaglia

A good rule of thumb for many things in life holds that things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could. — Lawrence Summers

As women of the western world, we see our sisters in other lands being raped, maimed and even executed simply for trying to exercise the most basic freedoms, such as taking a bus alone or wearing a bright red sweater. And when we look at our own world, we see that it too still lacks equality for the sexes.
It's a terrible thing to go through one's entire lifetime not getting to do all the things we dream of doing just because others say we're not permitted to do them, and to know that they will hurt us if we try.
But far, far worse than that is when there's not a thing or a person outside that's stopping us from living exactly as we wish, but we stop ourselves; internally we do not give ourselves permission, simply because we're too scared of what will happen if we dare. — PatriciaV. Davis

Sometimes bad things happen to good people. We don't know the meaning of all things, but we know God loves His children! And because He loves us, He will never desert us. — John Bytheway

Sometimes I get the feeling that everything that happened to me was some kind of illusion. It's as though something happened to make me think that things happened that never really happened at all. But I know for sure that they did happen. — Haruki Murakami

Those who haven't been exposed to the hypocrisies of a civilized education react to things 'naturally', as they happen. It is in the here and now that they are either happy or unhappy, joyful or sad, interested or indifferent. — Henri Charriere

People find pressure in different ways. I find it in keeping my mind clear. In not turning away from people or the things that happen to them. In accepting and welcoming everything I see. In treating each thing as it deserves. — Marcus Aurelius

You really do think about it institutionally; this is your job, and to some extent you benefit from having a job to do at a moment like this. You have things that you have to make happen. And you don't have time for the emotional reaction that might otherwise occur if somebody was just sitting there watching these events unfold and had no responsibilities. — Dick Cheney

Demon possession strains the boundaries of credulity, given the sheer number of times it seems to happen. One would really hope demons had better things to do with their time. — Kelley Armstrong

There's a logic to dreams that doesn't necessarily follow linear narrative. You don't know why things happen, it's your subconscious pushing you, to give you information. — Justin Theroux

Listening better. Caring more. Being there. Its not big changes, but the little ones in our daily lives that make all the difference. With little ways to love more, big things happen — Yehuda Berg

You cannot make your life move faster than it's moving. No matter how urgent your situation may seem to be, things are going to happen when they happen, not a minute sooner. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with others. Be patient with life. Patience always pays off. — Iyanla Vanzant

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that. — Paulo Coelho

I have no regrets. The best thing to happen to me was for Lorne Michaels to hire me and fire me. — Jenny Slate

The reason Dick's physics was so hard for ordinary people to grasp was that he did not use equations. The usual theoretical physics was done since the time of Newton was to begin by writing down some equations and then to work hard calculating solutions of the equations. This was the way Hans and Oppy and Julian Schwinger did physics. Dick just wrote down the solutions out of his head without ever writing down the equations. He had a physical picture of the way things happen, and the picture gave him the solutions directly with a minimum of calculation. It was no wonder that people who had spent their lives solving equations were baffled by him. Their minds were analytical; his was pictorial. — Freeman Dyson

Strange, how such a small realization can affect everyone's life forever. In movies there is always a carefully staged moment - a big crescendo of music, close- ups of the actors' faces, the camera slowly pulling away to let all this sink in for the viewer ... but, in real life, most all of the extraordinary things happen with no more loudness than a whisper. — Silas House

If a witch offers you her love,you should take it. If you don't it's your own fault if bad things happen to you ... — Philip Pullman

Money actually becomes even more difficult than other things because it's very hard to imagine what the benefits are to saving. So, imagine that you see a new bicycle, a new pair of shoes, or something today. You know exactly what you are giving up if you are not buying it, what are you gaining in the future if you are not getting it. So, you are giving up the bicycle today, what is it in the future? What will happen if you send another $1,000 to your retirement fund? What difference will it make? It is very, very hard to figure out. — Dan Ariely

I think it's good to have a nice, healthy group of people all doing different things. A lot of my friends don't even work in Hollywood; they just happen to live in L.A. — Topher Grace