“No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected.”
Lynda Barry (1956) Cartoonist
Source: Cruddy
“Expect the unexpected, my mother once said. Because the unexpected most certainly will be expecting you.”
Source: The Iron Hunt
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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Marjorie M. Liu7
American writer 1979Related quotes
“Truly nothing is to be expected but the unexpected.”
Alice James (1848–1892) American diarist
As quoted in Alice James, Her Brothers — Her Journal (1934).
“Expect everything so that nothing comes unexpected.”
Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth
“Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.”
Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth
“He who does not expect will not find out the unexpected, for it is trackless and unexplored.”
Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher
Fragment 18, as quoted in The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments (1981) edited by Charles H. Kahn, p. 105
Variants:
He who does not expect the unexpected will not find it out.
The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments (1981) edited by Charles H. Kahn, p. 129
He who does not expect the unexpected will not find it, since it is trackless and unexplored.
As quoted in Helen by Euripides, edited by William Allan (2008), p. 278
Unless you expect the unexpected, you will not find it, for it is hidden and thickly tangled.
Rendering ἐὰν μή "unless" is more English-friendly without being inaccurate. As for the last clause, the point is that you can neither find it nor navigate your way through it. The alpha-privatives suggest using similar metaphoric adjectives to keep the Greek 'feel.' (S. N. Jenks, 2014)
Numbered fragments
“A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Dana Reeve (1961–2006) Actress, singer, activist
Middlebury College Address (2004)
Javier Marías (1951) Spanish writer
...y lo que me hace levantarme por las mañanas sigue siendo la espera de lo que está por llegar y no se anuncia, es la espera de lo inesperado, y no ceso de fantasear con lo que ha de venir.
Source: Todas las Almas [All Souls] (1989), p. 137