Quotes about happening
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“What happens if you get scared half to death twice?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“Everything that ever happened to you, you experienced right within you. Light and darkness, pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy—all of it happened within you. If someone touches your hand right now, you may think you are experiencing their hand, but the fact of the matter is you are only experiencing the sensations in your own hand. The whole experience is contained within. All human experience is one hundred percent self-created.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Pain, Pleasure, Thinking, Light

“When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Reading

“But believe me, just because the human mind can't imagine something happening… doesn't mean it won't.”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

Imagination

“In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.”

Alice Munro book Too Much Happiness

Source: "Too Much Happiness", in Too Much Happiness (2009)

Life

“The Shift hasn't happened yet, maybe it never will, but sometimes-just enough times to give me hope-my brain jars back into where it's supposed to be.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Hope, Time

“… inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.”

Terry Pratchett book Moving Pictures

Source: Moving Pictures

Personality

“You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Beauty, Evil

“The expected always happens”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour
to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my
world.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Death, World, Silence

“I'm always going to keep your heart safe, even if mine has to stop beating for that to happen.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Heart

“I'm very brave generally,' he went on in a low voice: 'only today I happen to have a headache.' (Tweedledum)”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Religion

“No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Back To Work, Life

“And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it's gone.”

Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith

Source: Wintersmith

Dreams, Memory

“There's nothing worse than waiting and not knowing what'll happen to you. Your own imagination can be crueler than any captor.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Imagination, Waiting

“This is my secret," he said. "I don't mind what happens.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Secret

“The world is teeming; anything can happen.”

John Cage book Silence: Lectures and Writings

Source: Silence: Lectures and Writings

World

“while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space,
the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Feeling, Time

“if you don't have peace, it isn't because someone took it from you; you gave it away. You cannot always control what happens to you, but you can control what happens in you.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Source: Be a People Person

Peace

“I put myself in the way of things happening, and they happened.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Way

“If you work really hard, and you're kind, amazing things will happen.”

Conan O'Brien (1963) American television show host and comedian

“In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven't are winnowed out.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

People, Courage

“this satsangh?’ You just drop that. You don’t have to get anything, okay? You don’t have to benefit from this. Just waste half a day and go. (Laughter) Really. ‘What should I get out of my meditation?’ Nothing. Just waste fifteen-twenty minutes every day. So do not meditate; just learn to waste some time. Nothing needs to happen. This is not about resting; this is not about becoming healthy; this is not about becoming enlightened; this is not about reaching heaven. All this is just wasting time. When you are not trying to be anything, not trying to get anywhere, you are being.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Himalayan Lust

Laughter, Learning, Time

“Nothing has happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Past, Future

“He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn’t happen to you every year.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Death

“Memory is the diary that chronicles things that never happened or couldn't possibly have happened.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Memory

“It's not where you start or even what happens to you along the way that's important. What is important is that you persevere and never give up on yourself.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Source: Something to Smile about: Encouragement and Inspiration for Life's Ups and Downs

Way, Perseverance

“The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

As quoted in My Favorite Quotations (1990) by Norman Vincent Peale

Success

“Do you know what happens when you play a country song backwards? You get your wife back, your dog back and your job back.”

Richard Belzer (1944) American actor and comedian

Dogs, Country

“Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

“It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Real life is not quite as it is in stories. In the old tales, bad things happen, and when the tale has unfolded and come to its triumphant conclusion, it is as if the bad things had never been. Life is not as simple as that, not quite.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

Life

“What happened to your hand?
It got hit by a mirror.
How'd that happen?
I lost my temper at myself.”

Wes Anderson (1969) American filmmaker

Source: Moonrise Kingdom

“The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“And what did I think
when I was small
and why did I forget?

And what else will I forget
when I grow older?

And if you forget
is it as if
it never happened?

Will none of the things
you saw or thought or dreamed
matter?”

Sharon Creech book Heartbeat

Source: Heartbeat

Dreams, Thinking, Forgetting

“Pay attention to what's happening around you. Read the book before you see the movie. Remember, though you, alone, are responsible for your own happiness, its still okay to feel responsible for someone else's. Liveto learn.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

Source: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned

Books, Feeling, Learning, Reading

“Tell someone you are going to rob them and all that will happen is that you'll get a reputation as a truthful man.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Truth

“We've already been killed, all of us. It happened so long ago, we've forgotten it.”

Yasmina Khadra (1955) Algerian writer

Source: Swallows of Kabul

“What does it matter where my body happens to be?' he said. 'My mind goes on working all the same.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And, as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly, they settled down to try to work how who was to blame.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Funny

“Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects."”

Mark Twain book A Horse's Tale

Acknowledgements
Twain does not quote Herodotus here, he only sums up what he believes to have been Herodotus' approach to the writing of history. Nevertheless, this apocryphal statement is now often quoted as being the very words of Herodotus.
A Horse's Tale (1907)

Time

“When someone leaves you once, you expect it to happen again. Eventually you stop getting close enough to people to let them become important to you, because then you don't notice when they drop out of your world.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Leaving Time

People, World

“the way i see it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up.”

Karen Hesse book Out of the Dust

Source: Out of the Dust

Money, Dreams, Hope, Way

“Frank Sinatra stopped his car. The light was red. Pedestrians passed quickly across his windshield but, as usual, one did not. It was a girl in her twenties. She remained at the curb staring at him. Through the corner of his left eye he could see her, and he knew, because it happens almost every day, that she was thinking, It looks like him, but is it? Just before the light turned green, Sinatra turned toward her, looked directly into her eyes waiting for the reaction he knew would come. It came and he smiled. She smiled and he was gone.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Smile, Cars, Girl, Thinking

“but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Variant: Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Life, Stupidity, Way

“The past is so much safer, because whatever's in it has already happened. It can't be changed; so, in a way, there's nothing to dread.”

Margaret Atwood book The Heart Goes Last

Source: The Heart Goes Last

Way, Change, Past

“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Variant: Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

love, Cute, Heart Touching, Romantic

“Pain is an event. It happens to you, and you deal with it in whatever way you can.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

Source: The Gun Seller

Pain, Way

“If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Reality

“Progress just means bad things happen faster.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

“But forgetting's not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn't happen to me”

John Fowles book The Collector

Variant: Forgetting’s not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn’t happen to me.
Source: The Collector

Forgetting

“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Friendship, Relationship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist

Time, Waiting

“True love is not a potion one person can swallow and another refuse to drink. It happens only when the souls of two join together to form one”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Source: Goddess of the Sea

Love, Soul, Drink, Personality

“When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. It’s someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really truly gone?”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Love, Life, Feeling, Personality

“Enjoy it. Because it's happening.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Do you know what happens when you always look before you leap?"

She reached out and touched his hand before hurrying toward the door.

"You hardly ever make the jump.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Key of Light

“When the medicine enters the body and stops the pain, the vibrations from the combined substances stop, and the various substances return to their original states, in which they emit their original vibrations. However, if these vibrations happen to damage other cell structures, then harmful side effects will result.”

Masaru Emoto (1943–2014) Japanese writer

Source: The Hidden Messages in Water

Pain

“There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me.”

Raymond Carver book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Source: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)

Love, Life, Hate, Time

“Will you let me go for Christ's sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Source: Death of a Salesman

Dreams, Christ

“One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Source: Untimely Meditations

“He always ran away from the battle with himself. Even in his own heart's privacy, he excused himself, saying, "If she hadn't said so-and-so, it would never have happened.”

D.H. Lawrence book Sons and Lovers

Source: Sons and Lovers

Heart

“Nothing has really happened unless it's been described [in words].”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these – ‘Chloe liked Olivia…’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Women, Reading

“Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

War, Courage, Understanding, Memory

“Deep down we've never been who we think we once were, and we only remember what never happened.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Prisoner of Heaven

Source: The Prisoner of Heaven

Thinking

“He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Linda
Death of a Salesman (1949)
Context: I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.

“The truth of God's love is not that He allows bad things to happen, it's his promise that he will be there with us--when they do.”

Janette Oke (1935) Canadian writer

Source: Love Comes Softly

Love, God, Truth

“… you canʹt
always choose how you love a person. Love isnʹt logical or
fair. It just happens.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: Evercrossed

Love, Personality

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym‎ [O Demônio e a srta Prym] (2000), p. x; this has also been misquoted as "A moment is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny."
Context: When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.

Courageous, Business, Life, Courage

“The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 8

History, Science

“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Source: Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass

Imagination, Learning, Time

“Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.”

Mark Strand (1934–2014) Canadian-American poet, essayist, translator

Source: Selected Poems

Love, Light

“His mind worked fast, flying in emergency supplies of common sense, as human minds do, to construct a huge anchor in sanity and prove that what happened hadn't really happened and, if it had happened, hadn't happened much.”

Terry Pratchett Thud!

Source: Thud!

Sense, Flying

“So - whatever happened to you?'
'Life. Life happened.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Life

“When you come to the edge of all the light you know,
and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown,
FAITH is knowing one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid to stand on
or you will be taught how to fly.”

Barbara Winter (1944)

Faith, Light, Flying

“What's happening is merely what's happening. How you feel about it is another matter.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Source: Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1

Feeling

“Arthur Dent: What happens if I press this button?
Ford Prefect: I wouldn't-
Arthur Dent: Oh.
Ford Prefect: What happened?
Arthur Dent: A sign lit up, saying 'Please do not press this button again.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Source: The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts

“Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Truth, Feeling

“It's overwhelming. I feel as if I am living in an illusion a dream where all things are possible. Amazing things do happen I know but always to someone else always in some far off place and time.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Dreams, Feeling, Time

“His eyes met mine and the rest of the room faded away. ―I‘m always going to keep your heart safe, even if mine has to stop beating for that to happen,‖ he told me softly.”

P. C. Cast book Tempted

Source: Tempted

Heart

“Actually I don't remember being born, it must have happened during one of my black outs.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

“Accidents did not just happen. From time to time they were carefully plotted, calculated, and arranged to one’s advantage-all, of course, under the cloak of happenstance.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Time

“She was still waiting for him to come back to her, even though he wasn't going to. She was still holding out for something that wasn't going to happen. She was good at waiting. That seemed like a sad thing to be good at.”

Ann Brashares book Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Sadness, Waiting

“You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now.”

Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) American actress, model

“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Future

“But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Truth

“What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything and it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Love

“Many public-school children seem to know only two dates—1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don't know what happened on either occasion.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Children, School

“The day will happen
whether or not you get up”

John Ciardi (1916–1986) American poet, professor, translator

“A fine glass vase goes from treasure to trash, the moment it is broken. Fortunately, something else happens to you and me. Pick up your pieces. Then, help me gather mine.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Help

“… we do not consider it as good engineering practice to consume a resource lavishly just because it happens to be cheap.”

Niklaus Wirth (1934) Swiss computer scientist

Niklaus Wirth (2013) " Project Oberon https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/PO.System.pdf". Section 2.3, p. 19.

“If […] the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 13.

Stupidity, Exercises, Intelligence, Thinking

“I receive letters every day asking me to write a manifesto and make a speech; that I am the only man who could do so with effect; and all that. Why should I? I warned the country about Ireland before the General Election and told them to be vigilant, or there would be something happen there, "worse even than famine or pestilence". It has happened. And there have been elections since the Irish Revolution in England, Wales and Scotland, and they have supported the policy of imbecility and treason that has brought about all this disaster.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Letter to Lady Chesterfield (22 December 1880), quoted in the Marquis of Zetland (ed.), The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield. Vol. II, 1876 to 1881 (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929), p. 305.
1880s

Support, Country