Inspiring Words Week - Serendipity

Yiota from 'shells and bells showers and flowers' has invited who wishes to join her in her 'Inspiring Words Week.'

At the risk of pejoratively being called 'Pollyanna' I have chosen one of my favourite words

Serendipity

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines it thus:

serendipity

/serrndippiti/
  • noun the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
  — DERIVATIVES
serendipitousadjective
serendipitouslyadverb.
  — ORIGIN from Serendip (a former name for Sri Lanka): coined by the English politican and writer Horace Walpole (1717-97), after The Three Princes of Serendip, a fairy tale in which the heroes were always making fortunate discoveries.
The following quotations come from my own 'Commonplace Book' as did my quotations yesterday. I have discovered them in many different places. 

'We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make our world.'Buddhist saying

'The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.'
Hippocrates ca. 460BC – ca 370BC

'Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.'Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel 1904 – 1991)

'I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.'Rita Rudner 1953 –

'Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.'

John Ruskin 1819 – 1900

'A house without a cat or dog is the house of a scoundrel.'Portuguese proverb

'In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.'Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900

'God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees and in the flowers and clouds and stars.'

Martin Luther 1483 – 1546

 'The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart.'
Mencius 372 – 289 BCE (most accepted dates) Book IV

'Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul.'
Koran

'Butterflies are self-propelled flowers.'
R A Heinlein 1907 - 1988