Rene Magritte
Surrealist Artist
"Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist."
Serendipity quotes
Serendipity
84 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Julio Cortazar
Novelist, Short Story Writer
"We know that attention acts as a lightning rod. Merely by concentrating on something one causes endless analogies to collect around it, even penetrate the boundaries of the subject itself: an experience that we call coincidence, serendipity – the terminology is extensive. My experience has been that in these circular travels what is really significant surrounds a central absence, an absence that, paradoxically, is the text being written or to be written."
Tim Berners-Lee
Computer Scientist
"Innovation is serendipity, so you don't know what people will make."
Coco Chanel
Fashion Designer
"I don't understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little - if only out of politeness. And then, you never know, maybe that's the day she has a date with destiny. And it's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny."
Sally Mann
Photographer
"Like all photographers, I depend on serendipity I pray for what might be referred to as the angel of chance."
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Serendipity quotes (page 1 of 5)
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"Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet."
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"You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it."
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"...maximize the serendipity around you."
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"Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues."
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"It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean."
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"If something is going on, I hear about it. I like to talk to people, I socialise. Television is a waste of time. Human contact is what matters."
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"There'll always be serendipity involved in discovery."
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"The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. Sometimes I think it's magical."
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"We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through fabric of illusion. Many refuse to admit it: I feel a mystery exists. There are certain times, when, as on the whisper of the wind, there comes a clear and quiet realization that there is indeed a presence in the world, a nonhuman entity that is not necessarily inhuman."
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"Most of us have one big idea at some point in our lives. That Eureka! moment. It comes to us all in different ways, often by chance of serendipity."
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"Travel light and trust in serendipity."
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"When you broadcast your book reading voluntarily, it creates moments of fascinating serendipity."
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"Without question, we make choices - and those choices have consequences. So can you control your own destiny? To a degree, certainly. Must you have faith in serendipity? Without question, you'd better. Otherwise you're foolish."
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"Serendipity looks a lot like creativity, at least at a distance, and if I can tap into these ways in which one thing resembles another."
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