64 Happenstance Quotes

Following is our list of the most famous happenstance quotations and slogans. We've compiled this selection of inspirational happenstance quotes. Hopefully, these happenstance quotes will keep you motivated not only during hard times but to expand your happenstance knowledge!

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Famous Happenstance Quotes

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance. — Penelope Lively

Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning. — Thomas A. Edison

Fate keeps on happening. — Anita Loos

In the blink of an eye, something happens by chance - when you least expect it - sets you on a course that you never planned, into a future you never imagined. — Nicholas Sparks

Chance is the providence of adventurers. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting — Gregory David Roberts

Random chance plays a huge part in everybody's life. — Gary Gygax

Luck is the residue of opportunity and design. — Branch Rickey

Luck, that's when preparation and opportunity meet. — Pierre Trudeau

I happened to be in the right place at the right time. - Calvin Harris

I happened to be in the right place at the right time. — Calvin Harris

There is no such thing as chance; and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny. — Friedrich Schiller

There is no such thing as chance; and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny. — Friedrich von Schiller

So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness. — Sidney Poitier

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation. — W. Somerset Maugham

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. — Seneca

Short Happenstance Quotes

  • Being alive is just happenstance, and not one more day of it is guaranteed. — Oliver Burkeman
  • Design is the application of intent - the opposite of happenstance, and an antidote to accident. — Robert L. Peters
  • It's luck that one thing works out and one doesn't, it's sort of happenstance. — Richard Linklater
  • The older you get, the more you live with ghosts. — Nick Tosches
  • By the cold Darwinian logic of natural selection, evolution codifies happenstance into strategy. — David Quammen
  • In an infinite Universe anything can happen. — Douglas Adams
  • chromosomal dance oh, heavenly happenstance rare creation, you -Marcus (Poetry Spam #22) — Megan McCafferty

People Writing About Happenstance

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively
quotes on love, life and friendship

60 256
Read quotes by Thomas A. Edison

Thomas A. Edison
quotes on success, innovation and medicine

348 8441
Read quotes by Anita Loos

Anita Loos
quotes on education, life and love

54 525
Read quotes by Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Sparks
quotes on love, marriage and friendship

836 4188
Read quotes by Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte
quotes on leadership, success and war

871 13074
Read quotes by Gregory David Roberts

Gregory David Roberts
quotes on love, education and life

141 336

More Happenstance Quotes

History is not happenstance: it is conspiratorial. Carefully planned and executed by people in power. — George Carlin

So much of life is happenstance. It makes me laugh when I go to a bookstore and see all those titles about controlling your life. You're lucky if you can control your bladder. — Rita Mae Brown

The effect hip-hop had on me was enormous. I was exposed to it by happenstance. My father worked at a radio station in New York called WKTU Disco 92. It was the first radio station in New York City to play disco in the late '70s. — Michael Rapaport

The most powerful life is the most simple life. The most powerful life is the life that knows where it's going, that knows where the source of strength is; it is the life that stays free of clutter and happenstance and hurriedness. — Max Lucado

I am placed in situations with opportunities in those situations that others are not. I don't believe that that is happenstance. I believe that there is a God that has a plan for me. — Ronald Perelman

Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves. — Wayne Coyne

We can't afford to stand pat while the world races by. The United States of America did not become the most prosperous nation on Earth by sheer luck or happenstance. We got here because each time a generation of Americans has faced a changing world, we have changed with it. We have not feared our future; we have shaped it. — Barack Obama

As my father wrote, one's courage, hope, and spirit can be severely tried by the happenstance of life. But as I learned on this Virginia mountain, so long as one never loses faith, it is impossible to ever truly be alone. — David Baldacci

Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended to with vigilance, else it dies out. — Libba Bray

Somewhat by historical happenstance the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China - also were the original five countries to have nuclear weapons. — John Burroughs

People make decisions that may have one intent and yet are somehow perverted into something else. And sometimes it's because of design. Sometimes it's because of happenstance. But very often, it's mysterious to them. — Atom Egoyan

Someone was trying to kill Lady Alexia Maccon. It was most inconvenient, as she was in a dreadful hurry. Given her previous familiarity with near-death experiences and their comparative frequency with regards to her good self, Alexia should probably have allowed extra time for such a predictable happenstance. — Gail Carriger

Not only is it not remarkable to be a single woman, there's no stigma attached. You see more and more women choosing to be single as well as happenstance. — Pepper Schwartz

"Events," I say to the Captain, "events control our lives, although we have no understanding of them nor do they have any motivation. Everything is blind chance, happenstance, occurrence; in an infinite universe anything can happen. After the fact we find reasons. — Barry N. Malzberg

Anger at happenstance for its absurd timing. Anger at myself for being so angry. I hate being angry and every time I got this angry it made me more angry at the fact that I was so angry. I realized though that I couldn't really be mad at any of those things. — David Bowick

Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance. — Anna Quindlen

There are moments that define a person's whole life. Moments in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become balance on a single decision. Life and death, hope and despair, victory and failure teeter precariously on the decision made at that moment. These are moments ungoverned by happenstance, untroubled by luck. These are the moments in which a person earns the right to live, or not. — Jonathan Maberry

Billy: So good... Hey, this is weird. I ordered one frozen yogurt and they gave me two. You don't happen to like frozen yogurt, do you? Penny: I love it! Billy: You're kidding? What a crazy random happenstance! — Joss Whedon

Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action'. — Ian Fleming

**New business concepts are always, always the product of lucky foresight.** That's right - the essential insight doesn't come out of any dirigiste planning process; it comes form some cocktail of happenstance, desire, curiosity, ambition and need. But at the end of the day, there has to be a degree of foresight -- a sense of where new riches lie. So radical innovation is always one part fortuity and one part clearheaded vision. [first-line bold by author] [2002] p.23 — Gary Hamel

What is the one country in the Middle East that has not been attacked by ISIS? One. That is Iran. That is more than happenstance, I'm sure. — James Mattis

I have a very basic notion of the structure the book might have - that's mostly it. The rest is luck and happenstance. — Jesse Ball

[Donald] Trump is explained with the intersection of a number of things: our economic crisis, the way it's easier to blame immigrants, with the happenstance that he discovered that by bashing Latino immigrants and characterizing them as "rapists" and "murderers" and "scumbags," suddenly he's got this groundswell of support from a group of people who were raised on this vocabulary. — Junot Diaz

One of the underlying things I like to do in books, is just say, stop and look at this for a moment. Not that you've got to believe that Jesus was real, or not to believe in God, but the belief that it isn't just happenstance. — Dean Koontz

No one really can have any idea if it's luck or happenstance or timing or fate or the universe or just smart choices that grant you a good life, a happy one. All we can do is decide to own our choices no matter what, to honor them and ourselves as best we can. That whatever is within our control (and there is plenty that is not) is ours. Mine. Responsibility. Conviction. — Allison Winn Scotch

Serendipity is nice, but hoping for luck and the magic of happenstance shouldn't be an excuse for a lack of proactivity. I had to learn for myself that waiting isn't a life plan. — Karen Finerman

Most writers are secretly worried that they're not really writers. That it's all been happenstance, something came together randomly, the letters came together, and they won't coalesce ever again. — Nicholson Baker

I went to really good New York City public schools that had arts programs. So in junior high, I got into the drama department. From there, I went to a performing arts high school in New York City called Laguardia and I just kind of fell into the professional side by happenstance. — Merritt Wever

I would change very little because I have been very, very fortunate. A lot of things fell into place for me simply by happenstance. When that happens you don't really want to change anything, even if you could. Editorially my regrets are few and for the most part minor. I look back on my first published book and think I held on to it too long, babied it too long. — Michael Connelly

The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story. — Tom Shippey

This so gnawed at him on some nights that he lay awake wondering just how many unknown and similarly inconsequential accidents and bits of happenstance were at this moment occurring or failing to occur in order to ensure he took his next breath, and the next. — Louise Erdrich

For as is often the happenstance with that which is precious and lost, when you find him again, he may well not be quite as you left him. — Cassandra Clare

Accidents did not just happen. From time to time they were carefully plotted, calculated, and arranged to one’s advantage-all, of course, under the cloak of happenstance. — Jodi Picoult

I think of how life takes unexpected twists and turns, sometimes through sheer happenstance, sometimes through calculated decisions. In the end, it can all be called fate, but to me, it is more a matter of faith. — Emily Giffin

In Conclusion

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