Havelock Ellis Quotes

I do try to let what is obviously unintended yet naturally good stay in.

As a 13-year-old girl, it was never my intention to be the center of world news.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

I find that my entire life has come to me, and things happened without me planning them. You know, I never asked to photograph Princess Diana, and that made me more famous than I wanted. I never asked to photograph Madonna, and that pushed me to another level. There are things that just take you into the limelight.

I tend to navigate by indirection, meaning that most of the major things in my life have happened when I've been thinking about something else.

Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they're made. So, for example, scientists didn't go out to design a CD machine: they designed a laser. But we got all sorts of things from a laser which we never remotely imagined, and we're still finding things for a laser to do.

The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

In every one of my scientific expeditions, the most significant findings were things I didn’t expect and was not originally what we were studying.

What's crazy about my life is that the biggest things that have happened just happen.

I never intended on playing as long as I have, but this is the way it's happened and I'm so grateful for it.

I've only ever had surprises. My whole career's a surprise!

Something devastating can happen to you, and it can have positive consequences. By the same token, something fantastic can happen, and it can bring a lot of trouble. That's life.

... even when we find not what we seek, we find something as well worth seeking as what we missed.

The folly of one man is the fortune of another.

Slightest accidents open up new worlds.

In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain -- that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.

I am not at all in favor of hard work for its own sake; many people who work very hard indeed produce terrible things, and should most certainly not be encouraged.

Our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance.

Things have always happened better for me than I could plan them to.

Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.

if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.

I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.

I thought that my invincible power would hold the world captive, leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip.

You look for one thing and you find another.

When many people individually get what they want, the result may be something they collectively dislike.