Serendipitous Quotes

Some people like to say serendipitous. I like to say magical. ~ Devendra Banhart

It is perfectly serendipitous,' said the boy, descending the steps to the street. 'Fancy that - us meeting a second time! Of course I have wished for it, very much - but they were vain wishes; the kind one makes in twilight states, you know, idly. I remember just what you said, as we rounded the heads of the harbor - in the dawn light. "I should like to see him in a storm," you said. I have thought of it many times, since; it was the most delightfully original of speeches.'
Anna blushed at this: not only had she never heard herself described as an original before, she had certainly never supposed that her utterances qualified as 'speeches. ~ Eleanor Catton

I move throughout the world...guided by instinct, connecting through trust, and constantly watching for serendipitous opportunities. ~ Rita Golden Gelman

What underlies this [Benedictine] rule is the assumption that God is experienced most clearly in a well-ordered day. God is the God of order, not chaos. A chaotic day in which there is no purpose and intention leads to a troubled and dislocated life, irritated by the events of the day because they control and run one's life. The structure of the day gives purpose, intent, and meaning as God is encountered in the events of daily life. When the day is ordered, serendipitous events may change he course of he day, but God's presence in these events more readily is seen because the day has been ordered, and the eyes and the heart have been watching. ~ Robert E. Webber

Nevermind nomenclatures, boy! What a serendipitous situation this is! ~ T.T. Faulkner

Social media is just useless garbage until one random, serendipitous, meaningful connection happens and suddenly the whole world shifts. ~ Dan Blank

A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before we changed. ~ Earl Nightingale

Am I the star in this story or you?"
Blake wrinkled his nose and chuckled.
"Was that a bad analogy? I meant we're the star, Livia. Us. This." He shrugged his shoulders like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Us being in the same atmosphere is either a great cosmic catastrophe or the most serendipitous rendezvous." Blake pronounced the French word like a closeted foreign language teacher. ~ Debra Anastasia

It takes practice to hear your true desires. Your passion will often come as a whisper or serendipitous event that reminds you of what's important and what makes you happy. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Hubble was lucky in a way. The Hubble Space Telescope could easily have been given another name had certain events turned out differently: if someone had not prematurely died (Keeler), if someone else had not taken a promotion (Curtis), or if another (Shapley) was not mulishly wedded to a flawed vision of the cosmos. The discovery of the modern universe is a story filled with trials, errors, serendipitous breaks, battles of wills, missed opportunities, herculean measurements, and brilliant insights. In other words, it is science writ large. ~ Marcia Bartusiak

From the corner of my eye I saw her. Of course this chance encounter with Rebecca wasn't serendipitous. (I'm not throwing that word out there to illustrate my broad vocabulary, but rather to show that I am a John Cusack fan). ~ Jarod Kintz

Writing often in the pages of the New York Times, Allison Arieff is a powerful spokesperson. "Bring back the sidewalk!" she urged in one of her articles, explaining: "Community is born from social routine - running into neighbors at the mailbox or while walking down the street. Design for these serendipitous encounters."8 ~ Bella DePaulo

Students engaged in direct experience with materials, unforeseen obstacles, and serendipitous discoveries may result in understanding never anticipated by the teacher. ~ Sylvia Libow Martinez

John Cusack and I have been friends since childhood, and the fact that we're in so many films together is, no pun intended, serendipitous. ~ Jeremy Piven

You have to keep the recording process open. If you make too many decisions before you go in, you can lose out on those serendipitous moments that can really make a record, that I think are always required in the making of a really good record. ~ James Mercer

There is no debate that social media is a great tool for networking with others in our industry. It can lead to friendships, support, and serendipitous connections with reviewers, agents, reporters, or editors. ~ M.J. Rose

Cultivate the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities. ~ Gina Greenlee

I'm thankful for serendipitous moments in my life, where things could've gone the other way. ~ Rick Springfield

Freelancing requires such strict adherence to toadyism, to sycophancy, to the grubbiest, lowliest submissions. It is an on-spec life and it is full of what can only be described as insane serendipity (or serendipitous insanity). ~ Richard Morgan

Serendipitous discoveries are made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity, ready to see the unexpected and never indulgent with the apparently unexplainable. ~ Horace Walpole

I like the serendipitous surprises of reality. ~ Lawrence Wright

...interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient. This is because you can't really predict with certainty what will capture your attention and what won't...Without experimenting, you can't figure out which interests will stick, and which won't. ~ Angela Duckworth

It's very rare that I ever go and research a particular subject. Mostly I do serendipitous research, I read stuff, things spinning out of the page. ~ Terry Pratchett

I tried not to read anything into his being there; things like this weren't serendipitous when you lived in the smallest town ever. ~ Heather Demetrios

Hence the vogue for double majors. It isn't enough anymore to take a bunch of electives in addition to your primary focus, to roam freely across the academic fields, making serendipitous connections and discoveries, the way that American higher education was designed (uniquely, among the world's systems) to allow you to do. ~ William Deresiewicz

If you're focused on the friendship as its own reward, serendipitous stuff just happens. I know that sounds weird, but I can tell you for our 12 years of existence, it's actually how a lot of stuff happens. ~ Tony Hsieh

One of the ironies of a conference dedicated to all things digital and virtual is that the best ways to connect with people are surprisingly old-school. Social media tools can improve the odds of a serendipitous encounter at SXSW, but old-fashioned hustle, palm-pressing and - above all - creativity go a long way. ~ Ryan Holmes

Early reading is serendipitous, and rightly so. Gloriously so. Libraries favor serendipity, invite it; the roaming along a shelf, eyeing an unfamiliar name, taking this down, then that--oh, who's this? Never heard of her--give her a go? That is where, and how, you learn affinity and rejection. You find out what you like by exploring what you do not. ~ Penelope Lively

But aren't all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos
we know what's out there. It's what isn't that truly compels us. Technology may have shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short car rides and regional jet lags
four states and twelve hundred miles traversed in an afternoon
but true quests aren't measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope. There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant
sail for Asia and stumble on America
and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along. ~ Jess Walter

Engineering serendipity is this idea that we can help people come across unexpected but helpful connections at a better than random rate. And in some ways it's based on trying to reassess this notion of serendipitous as lucky - to think of serendipitous as smart. ~ Ethan Zuckerman

Thousands of individuals unknowingly contribute to the creation of our lives. Over the years, these serendipitous exchanges made imprints on my mind and heart and served as catalysts for my ongoing growth and development. ~ Kristin S. Kaufman

Predictions that digital tools would allow workers to telecommute were never fully realized. One of Marissa Mayer's first acts as CEO of Yahoo! was to discourage the practice of working from home, rightly pointing out that "people are more collaborative and innovative when they're together." When Steve Jobs designed a new headquarters for Pixar, he obsessed over ways to structure the atrium, and even where to locate the bathrooms, so that serendipitous personal encounters would occur. Among his last creations was the plan for Apple's new signature headquarters, a circle with rings of open workspaces surrounding a central courtyard. Throughout history ~ Walter Isaacson

Perhaps we were each allotted only a certain amount of love - enough for only an initial meeting - a serendipitous clumsiness. When it leaves to find others, the difficulty begins because we are faced with our humanness, our past, our very being. ~ Simon Van Booy

Repertitious has not had nearly the success in entering the language that serendipitous has had, most likely because its PR team isn't nearly as good. The noun form of the latter, serendipity, was made up in the 1750s by the novelist Horace Walpole, based on Serendip (a former name for Sri Lanka). Repertitious, on the other hand, has its first mention in Thomas Blount's dictionary of 1656. Writers - 1, lexicographers - 0. Resentient ~ Ammon Shea

It isn't enough anymore to take a bunch of electives in addition to your primary focus, to roam freely across the academic fields, making serendipitous connections and discoveries, the way that American higher education was designed (uniquely, among the world's systems) to allow you to do. You have to get that extra certification now, or what has it all been for? ~ William Deresiewicz

The concept of serendipity often crops up in research. Serendipity is the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things that were not being sought. I believe that all researchers can be serendipitous. ~ Akira Suzuki

I literally in the New York flea market - just when I was despairing of ever having a great serendipitous find - found a 1926 Chanel. ~ Hamish Bowles

The first time I looked at Yammer, I thought I was on Facebook. Work is not a social network, with serendipitous communications and photo collections. Work is about managing tasks and responding to things quickly. ~ Dustin Moskovitz

The serendipitous nature of hypertext links is just brilliant for a curious mind. I love it. ~ Thomas Watson Jr.

Pinterest is offering consumers a way to discover things on the web, in a serendipitous way, with a beautiful user interface. So it's offering a whole new paradigm called 'discover' and allowing users to be creative. ~ Ron Conway

In 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming found that a mysterious antibacterial fungus had grown on a petri dish he'd forgotten to cover in his laboratory: he discovered penicillin by accident. Scientists have sought to harness the power of chance ever since. Modern drug discovery aims to amplify Fleming's serendipitous circumstances a millionfold: pharmaceutical companies search through combinations of molecular compounds at random, hoping to find a hit. ~ Peter Thiel

Without being told, he'd ordered what I wanted. It was another of the many serendipitous things that always made me feel like we were destined to end up in the same place, together, if only we could make it that far. ~ Sylvia Day