Unexpected Discoveries Quotes

Sometimes you don't know what a book is about until you are finished with it and you're talking about it.

The wise traveler is he who is perpetually surprised.

The very nature of science is discoveries, and the best of those discoveries are the ones you don't expect.

For all its deranging effects, I am always grateful to Twitter for the interesting ideas it surfaces.

Discoveries that are anticipated are seldom the most valuable. ... It's the scientist free to pilot his vessel across hidden shoals into open seas who gives the best value.

What we seek we do not find - that would be too trim and tidy for so reckless and opulent a thing as life. It is something else we find.

Hopefully, the people that would look at a Good Charlotte record and dismiss it for maybe what they think is a certain kind of content, if they do discover something meaningful, then it's a nice surprise. I like those kinds of contradictions.

The world of the arts is by no means always comfortable, but neither is it likely ever to be boring. It is full of surprises, humor, traps for the unwary, and challenges to smugness. It is a world of moods as well as of revelation, of beliefs and fears, of unpleasant truth as well as of delicious fantasy. Perhaps it is arrogant to say that anyone who does not venture into this world is only half-interested in life. I say it, nonetheless.

What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it is really a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things.

I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before.

Some of our best and unexpected discoveries have been born out of crises - from the Second World War, for example, came Alan Turing's decoding machine, widely considered as the precursor to modern day computers and artificial intelligence.

I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing--that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around. They're the best moments in a day of writing -- when an image appears that you didn't know would be there when you started work in the morning.

A lack of seriousness has led to all sorts of wonderful insights.

If one does not expect the unexpected, one will not find it out, since it is not to be searched out, and difficut to compass.

The point is to stumble upon things in your life, and not plan them out.

Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.

Visiting a new town is like having a conversation. Places ask questions of you just as searchingly as you question them. And, as in any conversation, it helps to listen with an open mind, so you can be led somewhere unexpected. The more you leave assumptions at home, I've found, the better you can hear whatever it is that a destination is trying to say to you.

The short answer to 'Why do you write' is - I suppose I write for some of the same reasons I read: to live a double life; to go places I haven't been; to examine life on earth; to come to know people in ways, and at depths, that are otherwise impossible; to be surprised.

Innovation has a lot to do with your ability to recognise surprising and unusual phenomena.

Surprising and interesting things happen to those who keep their eyes and their minds open and alert!

In New York, you can just wake up and everything sorts itself out. I love that, not having a plan.

We have each other, and our stories twist and mingle like the twisting currents of a river. We hold each other tight as we spin and lurch across our lives. There are moments of great joy and magic. The most astounding things can lie waiting as each day dawns, as each page turns.

What is wonderful about a university like LSE is that you not only receive teaching of very high quality, you also learn where to find the knowledge you are seeking. And you make unexpected discoveries; it was a Marxist professor who introduced me to the work of Cardinal Newman, a great master of English prose as well as theology.

I believe in the magic of books. I believe that during certain periods in our lives we are drawn to particular books--whether it's strolling down the aisles of a bookshop with no idea whatsoever of what it is that we want to read and suddenly finding the most perfect, most wonderfully suitable book staring us right in the face. Unblinking. Or a chance meeting with a stranger or friend who recommends a book we would never ordinarily reach for. Books have the ability to find their own way into our lives.

Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.