“Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for.”
Codex Alera, First Lord's Fury (2009)
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Jim Butcher 383
American author 1971Related quotes
“What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.”
Book 2, chapter 4. Compare: "I say the very things that make the greatest Stir / An' the most interestin' things, are things that did n't occur", Sam Walter Foss, Things that did n't occur.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)
“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”
"Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)"; similar expressions were used by others prior to Lennon's use of this line, and have been attributed to Betty Talmadge, Thomas La Mance, Margaret Millar, William Gaddis, and Lily Tomlin, but the earliest known published occurrence was the 1957 attribution of "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." to Allen Saunders in Reader's Digest, according to The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes
Lyrics, Double Fantasy (1980)
Variant: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
Variant: Life is what happens while you are making other plans.
Essays on Woman (1996), The Ethos of Woman's Professions (1930)
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
"The Summer Day"
New and Selected Poems (1992)
Variant: What will you do with your one precious, wild life?
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
“It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them.”
No. 58 (May 26, 1759)
The Idler (1758–1760)
Context: It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them.... Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.