“You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”
“A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.”
“You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.”Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
Story (1891-08), “The Red-Headed League,” The Strand Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 2
(Source)
Quotations about:
coincidence
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Coincidence means only a connection that’s not seen. Roots meet underground.
Charlotte Armstrong (1905-1969) American author [pseud. for Charlotte Armstrong Lewi, a.k.a. Jo Valentine]
The Dream Walker (1955)
(Source)
In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.
People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it.
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Russian-American author, polymath, biochemist
“The Planet that Wasn’t,” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (May 1975)
(Source)
But everyone assumes causation when they should be thinking coincidence, and correlation when they should be asking whether Twitter is really a reliable source of information.
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.
Sometimes I wonder whether if I’d been the one that went for coffee and not Leslie May my life would have been much less interesting and certainly much less dangerous. Could it have been anyone, or was it destiny? When I’m considering this I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, “Who knows why the fuck anything happens?”
Ben Aaronovitch (b. 1964) British author
Rivers of London [Midnight Riot] (2011)
People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.
Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances — it was somebody’s name, or he happened to be there at the time, or it was so then, and another day would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Essay (1860), “Worship,” The Conduct of Life, ch. 6
(Source)
Based on a course of lectures, "The Conduct of Life," delivered in Pittsburg (1851-03).
CALVIN: I’d say that crossed the line from Ironic Coincidence to Evil Omen.
