Serendipity
Serendipity: to make accidental pleasant
discoveries of things not being sought.
The word serendipity was coined by Horace
Walpole in 1754, in a letter he wrote to his friend, Horace Mann,
the English resident in Florence.
"I once read a silly fairy tale, called
The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they
were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things
which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered
that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately,
because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse
than on the right—now do you understand serendipity?
One of the most remarkable instances of
this accidental sagacity (for you must observe that no discovery of
a thing you are looking for, comes under this description) was of my
Lord Shaftsbury, who happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's,
found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the
respect with which her mother treated her at table."
|
