Quotes About Unexpected Events

“I'm thinking of how unexpected and yet oddly preordained life can be. Events are upon you in an instant, unforseen and without warning, and often times marked with disappointment and tragedy, but equally often leading to a better understanding of the bittersweet truth of life.”

— Rob Lowe

“Their sudden intimacy was like the explosive combustion that engulfs and consumes a moth that has fluttered too close to a candle flame; a completely unexpected turn of events that took both of them unawares and swept them irresistibly up and out of themselves as it hurled them into each other's arms.”

— Jack Whyte

“We all experience many freakish and unexpected events - you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed later on. When you are an old guy, you can look back, and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you see it more clearly than anyone.”

— Viggo Mortensen

“If you know something bad is coming, can't you plan to avoid it or try to do something differently?" said Charles.
Probably", said the Cartographer, "but then the good events would have no flavor. The joy you find in life is paid for by suffering that comes later, just as sometimes, the suffering is redeemed by a joy unexpected. That's the trade that makes a life worth living.”

— James A. Owen

“Adventures are funny things.
Many are merely happy accidents-a single spark that ignites an unexpected chain of events.
But some adventures are meant for you and you alone.
And whether you want them or not, they seek you out of a great crowd and take you somewhere you never thought you'd go.
Often, these unlooked for adventures require a sacrifice too great to imagine.”

— Wayne Thomas Batson

“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

“Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them. Even something one would call unusual- if one things about it, it's really just a thing that was supposed to happen. Encountering unusual events often means you didn't think things through.”

— Paula McLain

“Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“When you face unexpected events, you have to try to overcome those problems, but at the same time, you have to continue working according to the plan that you defined since the beginning. So that's what we have tried to do - not to avoid the urgent responses but to continue the route that we had defined.”

— Laura Chinchilla

“My intention was to enroll at McGill University but an unexpected series of events led me to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

— Sidney Altman

“Maybe it's all utterly meaningless. Maybe it's all unutterably meaningful. If you want to know which, pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we're in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us. Any fiction that helps us pay attention to that is religious fiction. The unexpected sound of your name on somebody's lips. The good dream. The strange coincidence. The moment that brings tears to your eyes. The person who brings life to your life. Even the smallest events hold the greatest clues.”

— Frederick Buechner

“Your house is all about routine, not the unexpected events of your life.”

— Chris Van Allsburg

“Any enterprise CEO really ought to be able to ask a question that involves connecting data across the organization, be able to run a company effectively, and especially to be able to respond to unexpected events. Most organizations are missing this ability to connect all the data together.”

— Tim Berners-Lee

“Reality's not strange, not unexpected.Reality doesn't reside in the hallucination of events. Reality is uneventfulness, vacancy, flatness. Reality is that nothing happens.”

— Graham Swift

“Did we do our best to meet our priorities for that day, based on the given circumstances and unexpected life events? Today agility and fluidity are truly the key elements required-along with patience, compassion, forgiveness, and gentle discipline. Maryrose Solis, founder, March 4ward”

— Anonymous.

“Man is at the mercy of events. Life is a perpetual succession of events, and we must submit to it. We never know from what quarter the sudden blow of chance will come. Catastrophe and good fortune come upon us and then depart, like unexpected visitors. They have their own laws, their own orbits, their own gravitational force, all independent of man.”

— Victor Hugo

“Above all, a well-imagined story is organized around extraordinary human behaviors and unexpected and startling events, which help illuminate the commonplace and the ordinary.”

— Tim O'Brien

“Never judge others. You both know good and well how unexpected events can change who a person is. Always keep that in mind. You never know what someone else is experiencing within their own life.”

— Colleen Hoover

“As Secretary of State I thought of our choices and challenges in three categories: The problems we inherited, including two wars and a global financial crisis; the new, often unexpected events and emerging threats, from the shifting sands of the Middle East to the turbulent waters of the Pacific to the uncharted terrain of cyberspace; and the opportunities presented by an increasingly networked world that could help lay the foundation for”

— Hillary Rodham Clinton

“We cannot decide who is on right path and who is not because our own life is series of unexpected events passing through time, situation and circumstances.”

— Santosh Kalwar

“The wonders of a journey consist far more of such intangible experiences and unexpected situations than of factual things and events of material reality.”

— Anagarika Govinda

“Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our Father's love - difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul's miseries, her burdens, her needs - everything, because through them, she learns humility, realizes her weakness. Everything is a grace because everything is God's gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events - to the heart that loves, all is well.”

— Therese Of Lisieux

“Jesus will turn your sorrow into joy. One can only imagine the shock and bewilderment the Apostles felt when the Lord told them he must go away. Though they could not understand it at the time, his departure was for their benefit. The same is true of the unexpected setbacks and tragedies we experience in this life ... When I consider the times when I have been confounded by events that seemed so contrary to what I thought God wanted for me, I should be mindful that they were permitted by the Lord's inscrutable providence for my own good, as difficult as that might be to fathom.”

— Patrick Madrid

“Justin Hermann is one of the best new voices in short fiction-deep and entertaining as hell, with many funny lines, unexpected turns of events, and great insights. Wonderful stories: each one is a trip!”

— Josip Novakovich

“In trusting, we let ourselves go. We know that all kinds of unexpected events may come our way. Our tension eases, our mind and our hearts open spontaneously to be possibilities. It is an ever new state of mind, in the present moment, because we have detached from all we know. But it is also a feeling as old as can be, because, before all betrayals and all disappointments, there was a time in which trusting another was the very substance of our life.”

— Piero Ferrucci

“It is often to the wary that the events in life are unexpected. Looser types-people who are not busy weighing and measuring every little thing-are used to accidents, coincidences, chance, things getting out of hand, things sneaking up on them. They are the happy children of life, to whom life happens for better or worse.”

— Laurie Colwin

“Unexpected events can set you back or set you up. It's all a matter of - perspective.”

— Mary Anne Radmacher

“As to moral courage, I have very rarely met with the two o'clock in the morning kind. I mean unprepared courage, that which is necessary on an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgement and decision.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte

“From our limited vantage point, our lives are marked by an endless series of contingencies. We frequently find ourselves, instead of acting as we planned, reacting to an unexpected turn of events. We make plans but are often forced to change those plans. But there are no contingencies with God. Our unexpected, forced change of plans is a part of His plan. God is never surprised; never caught off guard; never frustrated by unexpected developments. God does as He pleases and that which pleases Him is always for His glory and our good.”

— Jerry Bridges

“To approach the stranger is to invite the unexpected, release a new force, let the genie out of the bottle. It is to start a new train of events that is beyond your control ...”

— T.S. Eliot

“Money is the driving force of Hand to Mouth, the lack of money, and all those true stories about strange things in The Red Notebook, coincidences and unlikely events, surprise, the unexpected.”

— Paul Auster

“Listening to your own mind gives you "good reasons" why you should be fearful over unexpected events is just like being friends with someone who thinks it's funny to find new ways to hurt you!”

— Guy Finley

“Appealing to his [Einstein's] way of expressing himself in theological terms, I said: If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.”

— Karl Popper