Definition of Accidental

Accidental

Happening by chance, or unexpectedly; taking place not according to the usual course of things; casual; fortuitous; as, an accidental visit.

Nonessential; not necessary belonging; incidental; as, are accidental to a play.

A property which is not essential; a nonessential; anything happening accidentally.

Those fortuitous effects produced by luminous rays falling on certain objects so that some parts stand forth in abnormal brightness and other parts are cast into a deep shadow.

A sharp, flat, or natural, occurring not at the commencement of a piece of music as the signature, but before a particular note.

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Accidental Quotations

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.
Bertrand Russell

The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life.
Arthur Miller

It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread - the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.
Ivan Pavlov

The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.
Robert Anton Wilson

New developments in weapon systems during the 1950s and early 1960s created a situation that was most dangerous, and even conducive to accidental war.
Herman Kahn

Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
J. B. Priestley

Is anything accidental?
Norman Spinrad

I was an accidental actor. I was never formally trained.
David Soul

I've come to accept that the life of a frontrunner is a hard one, that he will suffer more injuries than most men and that many of these injuries will not be accidental.
Pele

The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid.
Branford Marsalis

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it's the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what's available, what somebody happens to play for you.
Gerry Mulligan

Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.
Joyce Carol Oates

When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.
William Kingdon Clifford

But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.
Jonathan Coe

I wish, naturally to prevent the possibility that someone may write an accidental, superficial, incomplete and perhaps untrue picture of me.
Conrad Veidt

Safe storage and child access prevention laws are critical steps as we seek to reduce the occurrence of accidental shootings and suicides involving guns.
Carl Levin

I still think my whole career was accidental. I didn't pursue it. I feel like I'm cheating sometimes.
Ben E. King

Well, it was kind of accidental that Jim started playing with us, although it wasn't sudden... we hadn't really looked around to think who could be a fifth member.
Kim Gordon

Drug use, within entire teams continues unabated. It is planned and deliberate cheating, with complex methods, sophisticated substances and techniques, and the active complicity of doctors, scientists, team officials and riders. There is nothing accidental about it.
Richard Pound

I have referred to myself as an accidental activist on more than one occasion.
Joan Blades

The accidental causes of science are only accidents relatively to the intelligence of a man.
Chauncey Wright

The attempted assassinations against me were not accidental.
Akhmad Kadyrov

In an age of synthetic images and synthetic emotions, the chances of an accidental encounter with reality are remote indeed.
Serge Daney

More Accidental Quotations

Accidental Translations

accidental in Dutch is incidenteel, toevallig
accidental in Finnish is muu
accidental in French is malheureuxse, accidentel
accidental in Italian is accidentale, infelice
accidental in Portuguese is acidental
accidental in Spanish is fortuito, accidental

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