Coincidence

“ There was an unpleasant coincidence tangled up in the events of the past few minutes, if you bothered to figure it out, but a scientist ought to have a healthy disregard for coincidences. ”

“ A mere coincidence, an accident, you may object; an unlucky oversight which cannot be fairly alleged against the art of our times. Pardon me: there may be coincidences and accidents in other matters, but there are none in art; because the essence of art is to sacrifice even the finest irrelevancies, to subordinate the most refractory details, to subdue coincidence and accident into seeming purpose and harmony. ”

“ Marching columns of dead events.
I was tender, and, often, true;
Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
Always saw what the end would be.
We’re as Nature has made us—hence
I loved them until they loved me. ”

“ One talks lightly of coincidence and of chance; but who that has walked through life observingly has not been driven to pause with sad questioning before accidents and occurrences that seem as though some conscious malignity in things had arranged them? ”

“ But when we find that an even closer coincidence immediately presents itself, which manifestly is a coincidence only, the force of the evidence before derived from mere coincidence is pro tanto shaken. ”

“ Coincidence accounts for much, and imagination for more, since it is not the vision itself, but the memory of the vision, that is later brought into comparison with actual facts. We all know how exceedingly hard it is to repeat, after a short lapse of time, all the circumstances and details of any occurrence. ”

“ Coincidences, I told myself, were things which popped up altogether too often on the printed page, and occurred altogether too seldom in actual life. It was a lazy man's way of reaching his end, that trick of riding the bumpers of Invention, of swinging and dangling from the over-wrenched arm-socket of Coincidence. ”

“ If a single coincidence may lead a person of sanguine disposition to believe that he has mastered a disease which had baffled all who were before his time, and on which his contemporaries looked in hopeless impotence, what must be the effect of a series of such coincidences even on a mind of calmer temper! ”

“ It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind. But it was unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the objection to bear upon me) , men of common sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary calculations of life. ”

“ Go a little further and admit that the more tense the act or word the more keen the pitch of the ethereal record, and one begins to appreciate what is really implied by what we call coincidence, and how it is that often, after many years, mysteries are solved that long baffled any approach to solution. ”

“ Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities—that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration. In the present instance, had the gold been gone, the fact of its delivery three days before would have formed something more than a coincidence. ”

“ Indeed it is impossible to set limits to such coincidence, for it would indeed be extraordinary if extraordinary coincidences never occurred. ”

“ In the matter of coincidences there are, as in other cases, two wonderful extremes with every intermediate degree. At one end we have the confident people who can attribute anything to casual coincidence; who allow Zadok Imposture and Nathan Coincidence to anoint Solomon Selfconceit king. At the other end we have those who see something very curious in any coincidence you please, and whose minds yearn for a deep reason. A speculator of this class happened to find that Matthew viii. ”

“ The great ghost-paradox, and its theory of coincidences, will rise to the surface in the mind of every one. But the use of the word coincidence is here at variance with its common meaning. When A is constantly happening, and also B, the occurrence of A and B at the same moment is the mere coincidence which may be casualty. But the case before us is that A is constantly happening, while B, when it does happen, almost always happens with A, and very rarely without it. ”

“ The only explanation, if we reject the idea of a mere coincidence, seems to be, that quite apart from opportunity, the exceptional stir and fervour of national life evokes or may evoke qualities which in ordinary times lie dormant, unknown even to their possessors. ”

“ This illustrates the Sarceyan principle above referred to, which Professor Brander Matthews has re-stated in what seems to me an entirely acceptable form--namely, that improbabilities which may be admitted on the outskirts of an action, must be rigidly excluded when the issue is joined and we are in the thick of things. Coincidences, in fact, become the more improbable in the direct ratio of their importance. We have all, in our own experience, met with amazing coincidences; but how few of us have ever gained or lost, been made happy or unhappy, by a coincidence, as distinct from a chance! ”

“ But the kind of evidence now to be considered—the coincidence of some spontaneous affection of the percipient with some event in the life-history of the person presumed to be the agent, as when one sees the apparition of a friend at the time of his death—is of inferior cogency in two ways. ”

“ It has been remarked by many that we mortals are surrounded by coincidence, and least observe Fate at its nearest approach, so that friends meet or leave us unexpectedly, and that the accidents of our lives make part of a continual play. ”

“ But the coincidence is strange, and once more shows, if further examples of the fact are needed, how impotent are the efforts of imagination to vie with hidden truths—even with the hidden truths of this small and trodden world. ”

“ We expect a certain amount of repeated coincidence without supposing causal connexion. If certain events are repeated very often within our experience, if they have great positive frequency, we may observe them happening together more than once without concluding that the coincidence is more than fortuitous. ”

“ It is impossible that so many coincidences could be the result of chance! Is it not plain that there must have been a common tie among all these bodies, that they are only parts of what must once have been a single mass? ”

“ The purely casual coincidence, from which there is no escape except the actual doctrine of special providences, carried down to a very low point of special intention, requires a junction of the things the like of each of which is always happening. ”

“ If it were a mere coincidence, or combination of ordinary circumstances, it would not happen so often, and people would not be led to speak of the long-absent always at the moment when they are just about to present themselves before them. ”

“ Though I know what extraordinary coincidences are perpetually happening in the experience of all of us, still I cannot accept coincidences as explaining the fulfillment of the Visions which our own eyes have seen. All I can sincerely say for myself is, what I think it will satisfy you to know, that I have learned to view the purpose of the Dream with a new mind. ”

“ It's only a coincidence."
"Well, then, if it's merely a coincidence, we may let it rest. If the old woman's dictum was a real prediction, we may also let it rest. That it has half come true lessens the chances for the other half."
The reader may detect a flaw in David's logic; but it was quite good enough for Emma. ”

“ The thousand little things generally ranked as coincidence are really illustrations of this law. One thinks intently of a friend whom, perhaps, he has not met, or heard from, for years, and, presto, a letter, or the person himself appears. ”

“ I 've known some odd ones which seem'd really plann'd Prophetically, or that which one deems A 'strange coincidence,' to use a phrase By which such things are settled now-a-days. ”

“ So this observed lady stopped and observed Noble, who in return observed her not at all, being but semi-conscious. Looked upon thoughtfully, it is a coincidence that we breathe; certainly it is a mighty coincidence that we speak to one another and comprehend ”

“ The most ordinary coincidences--and think, my dear sir, that there are myriads of circumstances, of more or less importance, occurring every twenty-four hours in this motley world, and that it is a mathematical certainty that a certain proportion of these myriads should be coeval and should bear some relation to each other--the most ordinary coincidences, I repeat, are outrageously magnified by their imaginations when, say, sickness or death is concerned. A woman wakes up in the night, and in the darkness hears a ticking--tick, tick, tick! ”

“ Brougham, Oct. 16, 1862.—I have just been copying out from my journal the account of this strange dream, certissima mortis imago. Soon after my return there arrived a letter from India announcing G——'s death, and stating that he died on the 19th of December! Singular coincidence! Yet when one reflects on the vast number of dreams which night after night pass through our brains, the number of coincidences between the vision and the event are perhaps fewer and less remarkable than a fair calculation of chances would warrant us to expect. ”

“ The number of instances investigated is too small to establish a law of cause and effect. (b) In the more remarkable predictions, reasoning upon existing conditions and tendencies, a shrewd guess or a mere coincidence can account for the fulfilment. ”

“ I know that things in stories never happen by accident or coincidence, but this isn't fiction—it's straight goods. Believe me, it took a half a dozen accidents to make a hero out of me, though, of course, until right recently I wouldn't admit it in public print. ”

“ Events of this kind, which in the minds of many seem to point to a mysterious sympathy between two individuals, are explained by others as simply the result of "fancy and coincidence." Any one, it is argued, may fall into a brown study, and emerge from it with a stare, and the notion that he heard his name spoken. ”

“ No rule can be given for discriminating between coincidences which are casual and those which are the effects of law. By a fortuitous or casual coincidence, we mean an agreement between events, which nevertheless arise from wholly independent and different causes or conditions, and which will not always so agree. ”

“ But coincidences of this kind are, after all, natural enough, considering that the circle of human feeling and action is limited, and that in all ages and countries like conditions must give rise to much the same sequence of events. ”

“ The singular connexions of causes and effects, to which you have just referred, make superstition less to be wondered at, particularly amongst the vulgar; and when two facts naturally unconnected, have been accidentally coincident, it is not singular that this coincidence should have been observed and registered, and that omens of the most absurd kind should be trusted in. ”

“ If you see, in those curious coincidences that are ever occurring in life, nothing more than hazard, you at once abandon all idea of governing human actions. If, on the other hand, you read them too implicitly, and accept them as indications for the future, you rush into fatalism. For my own part, I think less of the events themselves, than as they originate or evoke sentiments in two parties, who, though previously known to each, only discover on some sudden emergency a wonderful agreement in sentiment and feeling. ”

“ By attentive reflection on the phenomena themselves, and on all the circumstances which precede or follow them, we shall be able to discover the relations which they mutually bear, and to distinguish their casual coincidence, or succession, from those invariable relations which nature has established among them as causes and effects. ”

“ Nature, assuredly, has provided us with coincidences so lavishly that we may well go about in amazement. Even the fiction of Mr William Le Queux is not quite so abundant in strange coincidences as the life of the most ordinary man you could see reading a halfpenny newspaper. ”

“ In historical and social matters, coincidences are frequently pointed out which are due to chance, although there is always a strong popular tendency to regard them as the work of design, or as having some hidden meaning. ”

“ Persons disposed to take the rational view may, under these circumstances, be interested in hearing of a coincidence relating to the present story, which actually happened, and which in the matter of "extravagant improbability" sets anything of the same kind that a novelist could imagine at flat defiance. ”

“ From the commencement of your conversation we looked at each other, and conjectured much with regard to ourselves, whether what was said had reference to us or not; for we reflected that many coincidences take place in life. ”

“ These fit the men or women intended, but they also fit a crowd of other people. The description given by the scryer then may come right by a fortuitous coincidence, or may be too credulously recognised.
The complex of coincidences, however, could not be attributed to chance selection out of the whole possible field of conjecture. We must remember, too, that a series of such hits increases, at an enormous rate, the odds against accidental conjecture. ”