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Accidents Quotes

Browse 1809 quotes about Accidents.

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Accidents Quotes

“It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window.”

BelieveUniverseNormalRainWindowAtheistIllnessCommunicateCreatorAccidentsMental IllnessCodeOur SocietyBedroomMorse Code
Book:The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
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“In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.”

ThinkingHumansArtBookFactsFormLiteratureBornViewsFateTraditionAccidentsNationalityPassportsDickensBarcelona
Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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“Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening.”

ThinkingShouldPersonsRealRunningFacesViewsImagineSeeingStreetsMinutesSeriesWaveAccidentsFrightenedFrighteningMistakenReal Friends
Book:The Nancy Mitford Omnibus
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“I submit that Zooey's face was close to being a wholly beautiful face. As such, it was of course vulnerable to the same variety of glibly undaunted and usually specious evaluations that any legitimate art object is. I think it just remains to be said that any one of a hundred everyday menaces — a car accident, a head cold, a lie before breakfast — could have disfigured or coarsened his bounteous good looks in a day or a second.”

ThinkingLooksArtSaidBeautifulFacesLyingCoursesCarObjectsColdHundredRemainsEverydayAccidentsVulnerableVarietyBreakfastSubmitLooking GoodMenaceEvaluationCar AccidentBeautiful FaceUndaunted
Author:J. D. Salinger
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“Both described at the same time how it was always March there and always Monday, and then they understood that José Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room.”

SaidEnoughFactsRoomsCrazyUnderstoodAccidentsMarchMondayFragmentsHad EnoughLuciditySplinters
Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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“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 minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.”

KnowsMindBookSoulHandsWould BeEyeSpiritualAdventureWeightSorryAccidentsResistanceManipulationGrandchildrenCunningTextureCalculationsTokensMy Grandchildren
Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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“I've lived here ... my whole life. It's where I lost all my baby teeth. Where tiny hamster, gerbil, and bird skeletons lie in rotted-out cardboard coffins beneath the oak tree in our backyard. Also where, if some future archaeologist goes digging, they'll find the remains of a plush toy: a gray terrier named Toto I buried after the accident.”

IfsWholeLyingLostTreeBabyBirdRemainsAccidentsWhole LifeTinyTeethGrayBuriedToysDiggingOaksSkeletonsCoffinsBackyardsMy BabyOak TreeHamstersArchaeologistsTerriersBaby Teeth
Author:Jennifer McMahon
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“We live in a world full of accidents finally in which on aesthetic principles have a consistency of which we can be sure. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever striving to create and maintain an ethical balance. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever, striving to create and maintain an ethical balance; but the shimmer of summer rain under the street lamps or the great flashing glare of artillery against a night sky – such brutal beauty is beyond dispute.”

WorldNightPrinciplesStruggleForeverSkyStreetsBalanceSummerRainStriveAccidentsEthicalAestheticBrutalConsistencyLampsDisputesNight SkyGlareArtilleryShimmerSummer Rain
Book:The Queen of the Damned
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“I believe these stories exist because we sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives: the parent who punches instead of kissing, the auto accident that takes a loved one, the cancer we one day discover living in our own bodies. If such terrible occurrences were acts of darkness, they might actually be easier to cope with. But instead of being dark, they have their own terrible brilliance. . . and none shine so bright as the acts of cruelty we sometimes perpetrate in our own families.”

IfsNeedsBelieveRealSometimesStoriesBodyMightI BelieveParentDarkDarknessTerribleEasierOne DayKissingShiningCancerAccidentsMonstersReal LifeCrueltyLoved OnesBrillianceUnreal
Book:THE SHINING
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“The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.”

MenWorldWayNeedsFirstsHumansHas BeensDifferentWholeMightVoiceViewsStupidIntelligentAccidentsDrivenDifferent WaysSheepMight Have BeenGoatsShepherdsSmall Gods
Author:Terry Pratchett
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“My grandfather used to say: Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that -not to mention accidents- even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.”

MenMaySeemsYoungLife IsUsedFallNextJourneyNeededNormalAccidentsInstanceYoung ManOver ItVillageHappy LifeGrandfatherLooking BackMy GrandfatherBeing Afraid
Author:Franz Kafka
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“The traveling salesmen fed me pills that made the lining of my veins feel scraped out, my jaw ached... I knew every raindrop by its name, I sensed everything before it happened. Like I knew a certain oldsmobile would stop even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside, I knew we'd have an accident in the rain. I didn't care. They said they'd take me all the way.”

WayFeelsMadeSaidCareFilmCertainNamesVoiceHappenedSweetRainAccidentsFedsTake MeThey SaidVeinsPillsSalesmanRaindropsSweet Voice
Author:Denis Johnson
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“We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn’t as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness”

KnowsCharacterLightGriefSunOur LivesPerfectionGuiltIndividualityCorruptionAccidentsGravesDirtyIdenticalBruisesSamenessLapses
Book:A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in The Wicked Years
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“They walked still farther and the girl said, "Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?" No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it." Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.”

LongSaidStillsUsedGirlHouseFireHeardStrangeNeededLong TimeAccidentsFlamesLong AgoLong Time AgoFireman
Book:Fahrenheit 451: A Novel
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“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.”

HumansStillsSelfHandsTogetherLastsStagePureIllusionRelationBraveCleanSeriesExtraordinaryAccidentsDrivenCuriousInnocencePlanesTrafficCommunionHuman RelationsClandestineClean Hands
Book:The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works
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“I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or else an unfortunate accident. I hadn't learned that it can happen so gradually you don't lose your stomach or hurt yourself in the landing. You don't necessarily sense the motion. I've found it takes at least two and generally three things to alter the course of a life: You slip around the truth once, and then again, and one more time, and there you are, feeling, for a moment, that it was sudden, your arrival at the bottom of the heap.”

IfsThinkingTwoMomentsFeelingsHappensUsedThreeCoursesFoundLosesHurtResultsGraceErrorsBottomAccidentsMore TimeStomachSlipsUnfortunateThree ThingsArrivalsLanding
Author:Jane Hamilton
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“Love is not breathlessness; It is not excitement; It is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love”, which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”

ArtPassionLeftLove IsPromiseEternalRomanticAccidentsFortunateExcitementConvinceBurnedJust BeingBeing In LoveRomance NovelLove MeansSad LoveWhat Is LoveBeing TogetherWedding CeremonyGreat LiteratureEntwinedWedding VowWeddings And LoveWedding PoetryLiterary LoveLove LiteratureDefinition Of LoveTwo TreesLiterature History
Author:Louis de Bernieres
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“My father had not been outside the house except to drive back and forth to work or sit out in the backyard, for months, nor had he seen his neighbors. Now he looked at them, from face to face, until he realized I had been loved by people he didn't even recognize. His heart filled up, warm again as it had not been in what seemed so long to him- save small forgotten moments with Buckley, the accidents of love that happened with his son. ~pgs 209-210; Buckley, Lindsey and Jack on Susie”

PeopleHeartLongMomentsFacesFatherHouseHappenedSonMonthsFilledForgottenWarmAccidentsNeighborBack And ForthFace To FaceBackyardsFilled UpHeart Filled
Book:The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic
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“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.”

MomentsFallPrayerExampleLosingInjusticeComplicatedAccidentsConcentrationMisfortunesTake TimePhasesGodlyAccumulationEpiphanyUnansweredMoment Of TruthLosing Faith
Book:V.
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“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.”

LoveMatterFactsLightAgePastYoungImaginationLove IsRoseFingersSorryAccidentsSelfishLiftsPrizeSurvivedThornsYoung LoveBlindedSure Love
Book:Selected poems
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“[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.”

PeopleWorldLittlesLongSaidSelfMightDesireSawsThis WorldMovedHearingAccidentsDrunkAppealsComplimentDreadClosestCommunionEgotismArmorGazingClosest Friends
Book:The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel
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“You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.”

PeopleMenShouldYearsMindLongDoeReasonEnoughMomentsYoungValuesTakenJokesHundredEternityMereInjusticeAccidentsYoung ManOld PeopleSeriousness
Book:Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays
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“Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging,it seems like some long, dirty lie ... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?”

IfsGivingBelieveLongDoeIdeasMatterSeemsLyingCommunityGiving UpAccidentsDirtyBelongingIf You BelieveBirthplace
Book:White Teeth: A Novel
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“And there she was, alone and walking out in the cornfield while everyone else I cared for sat together in one room. She would always feel me and think of me. I could see that, but there was no longer anything I could do. Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose tot ell it, even to one person at a time.”

IfsThinkingFeelsFirstsPersonsStoriesWould BeTogetherChoicesGirlRoomsWalkingAccidentsSatLife And DeathThink Of MeStory Of My LifeRuthWalking OutTotsElls
Author:Alice Sebold
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