YourDictionary

accident quotes

  • I read about writers' lives with the fascination of one slowing down to get a good look at an automobile accident.

    - Kaye Gibbons
      In the NewYork Times,7  Jan.

  • His dominance is not that of one chosen as best fitted torule†but it issovereignty basedontheaccidentofsex.

    -Gilman and Charlotte Perkins Stetson
      Women and Economics:  A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, ch.1.

  • Body-line was not an incident, it was not an accident, it was not a temporary aberration. It was the violence and ferocity of our age expressing itself in cricket.

    - C(yril) L(ionel) R(obert) James
      Beyond the Boundary.

  • The greatest pleasure I know, is to do good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

    - Charles Lamb
      'Table Talk by the late Elia', in The Athenaeum,1834.

  • Four spectres haunt the poorold age, accident, sickness, and unemployment.We are going to exorcise them.We are going to drive hunger from the hearth.We meantobanishtheworkhousefromthehorizonofevery workman in the land.

    - David, 1st Earl Lloyd George (of Dwyfor)
      Speech, Reading,1  Jan.

  • 'I ought to say,'explained Pooh as they walked down to theshore of the island,'that it isn't just anordinary sort of boat. Sometimes it's a Boat, and sometimes it's more of an Accident. It all depends.' 'Depends on what?' 'On whether I'm on the top of it or underneath it.'

    - A(lan) A(lexander) Milne
      Winnie-the-Pooh, ch.9.

  • Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I had to die. The snow fell, the trees stood, the promise kept, And a child I slept.

    - Howard Nemerov
      New Poems,'The View from an  Attic Window'.

  • Nothing is accidental in the universethis is one of my Laws of Physicsexceptthe entire universeitself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

    -Myles na Gopaleen
      Do WhatYou Will,'The Summing-Up: Meredith Dawe'.

  • The best poem is that whose worked-upon unmagical passages come closest, in texture and intensity, to those moments of magical accident.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      Quite Early One Morning,'On Poetry'.

  • It was manifest to me that there was something in the Roman Catholic religion which made the priests very dear to the people; for I doubt whether in any village in England, had such an accident happened to the rector, all the people would have roused themselves at midnight to wreak their vengeance on the assailant.

    - Anthony Trollope
      Argosy,'Father Giles of Ballymoy', May.

  • Un poe'  me n'est jamais acheve  c'est toujours un accident qui le termine, c'est-a'  -dire qui le donne au public. A poem is never finished; it is always an accident that puts a stop to it, that gives it to the public.

    - Paul Vale  ry
      Litte  rature.

  •    The moving accident is not my trade; To freeze the blood I have no ready arts: 'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.

    -William Wordsworth
      'Hart-LeapWell', part 2, l.97^100.

  • Our banking system grew byaccident; and wherever something happens byaccident, it becomes a religion.

    -Walter Bigelow Wriston
      In BusinessWeek, 20 Jan.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Learn more about accident

link/cite print suggestion box