Spontaneity Quotes

“No matter how many plans you make or how much in control you are, life is always winging it.”
― Carroll Bryant

“Why not seize the pleasure at once? -- How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean, how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Plans are invitation to disappointment.”
― Derek Landy, Mortal Coil

“We can’t jump off bridges anymore because our iPhones will get ruined. We can’t take skinny dips in the ocean because there’s no service on the beach and adventures aren’t real unless they’re on Instagram. Technology has doomed the spontaneity of adventure and we’re helping destroy it every time we Google, check-in, and hashtag.”
― Jeremy Glass

“I may be going nowhere, but what a ride.”
― Shaun Hick

“I guess sometimes the greatest memories are made in the most unlikely of places, further proof that spontaneity is more rewarding than a meticulously planned life.”
― J.A. Redmerski, The Edge of Always

“Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her.”
― Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals

“To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, its unplanned, it's full of suprises.”
― Erma Bombeck

“Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else - above all, a travel bureau - arrange everything before-hand?”
― Richard Aldington, Death Of Hero

“But I give best when I give from that deeper place; when I give simply, freely and generously, and sometimes for no particular reason. I give best when I give from my heart.”
― Steve Goodier

“Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; his two-fold security. ”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“I said, but I have to go, there are so many places calling my name.”
― Nikki Rowe

“Say yes and you'll figure it out afterwards.”
― Tina Fey

“Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them."

[Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking (The Creativity Post, December 6, 2011)]”
― Michael Michalko

“Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art”
― Oscar Wilde

“Basketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice--perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing and running plays over and over again--and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. . . . spontaneity isn't random.”
― Malcolm Gladwell

“The charm of your society, my Sparrow, lies in not knowing what you will say next – though one rapidly learns to expect the worst!”
― Georgette Heyer, Sylvester or The Wicked Uncle

“The erotic state – again, a mixture of concentration and spontaneity – is a hypnoidal state, probably the most powerful kind that we are capable of experiencing, and it is in this condition that unexpected regions of the self are revealed, as the majority of people know from experience.”
― Peter Redgrove, The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real: Our Uncommon Senses and Their Common Sense

“Being spontaneous is being able to respond with confidence; calmly trusting that, whatever the outcome, you will have a positive if challenging experience that will lead to greater self-awareness and success.”
― Sylvia Clare, Trusting Your Intuition: Rediscover Your True Self to Achieve a Richer, More Rewarding Life

“You can devise all the plans in the world, but if you don’t welcome spontaneity; you will just disappoint yourself.”
― Abigail Biddinger

“In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very ‘gifted’ improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“There was something horribly depressing, she felt, about watching the weather report. That life could be planned like the perfect summer picnic drained it of spontaneity.”
― Galt Niederhoffer, The Romantics

“It was tragic how life had sucked her down to the bones, all her spontaneity her laughter and freedom had vanished. I knew then that I didn't ever want to be like that. Whatever happened, life was something too precious to give up on so easily.”
― Belinda Jeffrey, One Long Thread

“Some of the most thrilling things in life are done on impulse.”
― Syrie James, The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen

“Part of the problem about authenticity is that virtues aren't the only things that are habit forming: the more someone behaves in a way that is damaging to self or to others, the more "natural" it will both seem and actually be. Spontaneity, left to itself, can begin by excusing bad behavior and end by congratulating vice.”
― N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters

“On Tolkien: "His fussiness threatened to overwhelm his creativity.”
― Alister E. McGrath, C. S. Lewis: A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet

“Speaking of which, about assuming you had a condom—I just meant that you, with your experience, would be prepared for responsible sex, even if it were on the fly. An intelligent man is prepared for spontaneity.”
― Roberta Pearce, A Bird Without Wings

“A man's imperative command is not only to say "no" in cases where "yes" would be a sign of "disinterestedness," but also to say "no" as seldom as possible. One must part with all that which compels one to repeat "no," with ever greater frequency. The rationale of this principle is that all discharges of defensive forces, however slight they may be, involve enormous and absolutely superfluous losses when they become regular and habitual. Our greatest expenditure of strength is made up of those small and most frequent discharges of it. The act of keeping things off, of holding them at a distance, amounts to a discharge of strength,—do not deceive yourselves on this point!—and an expenditure of energy directed at purely negative ends. Simply by being compelled to keep constantly on his guard, a man may grow so weak as to be unable any longer to defend himself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo