“To find accidently a handwritten letter of some old friend in a trunk. Ah, is this not happiness?”

“A great friendship was like a great work of art, he thought. It took time and attention, and a spark of something that was impossible to describe. It was a happy, lucky accident, finding some kindred part of yourself in a total stranger.”

“I wake up in the morning and seem to hear some one in the house sighing and saying that last night some one died. I immediately ask to find out who it is, and learn that it is the sharpest, most calculating fellow in town. Ah, is this not happiness?”

“A technique succeeds in mathematical physics, not by a clever trick, or a happy accident, but because it expresses some aspect of a physical truth.”

“By many a happy accident.”

“There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.”

“I think it a very happy accident.”

“Sir, you must be all caution and no fear, and you'll find true what our old friend Archimedes said some while ago.
: If a man do but keep himself sober and stout,
The world as he'd have it must needs turn about.
:* Letter to John Stansfield (c. 1717), as quoted in "How to move the World" in The Poems of John Byrom (1894), p. 9”

“It is no small comfort that God hath written some Scriptures to you which He hath not to others. Read these, and think God is like a friend who sendeth a letter to a whole house and family, but who speaketh in His letter to some by name that are dearest to Him in the house.”

“Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.”