An occasion, catalyst, or tripwire†permits the poet to reach into herself and haul up whatever nugget of the human condition distracts her at the moment, something that can't be reached in any other way.

-Ackerman, Diane
Quoted in the NewYork Times,10 Mar1991.

It is this tendency to play with manic enthusiasm on every possible occasion that distinguishes the amateur jazz musician from the professional, often to the public detriment of the latter, who are regarded as snootyand unfriendly.

-Lyttelton, Humphrey Richard Adeane
  Why No Beethoven?, ch.1.

Yet once more,O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never-sere I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.

-Milton,John
  Lycidas, opening lines.

Stalin†that great lover of peace, a man of giant stature who moulded, as few other men have done, the destinies of his age† The occasion is not merely the passing away of a great figure but perhaps the ending of an historic era.

-Nehru,Jawaharlal
   Tribute, Indian Parliament, 9 Mar.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

-Poe, EdgarAllan
  'The Black Cat', in the United States Saturday Post,19 Aug.

Sir, there isno Levitical degreesbetween nations, and on this occasion I can see neither sin nor shame in marrying our own sister.

-Roche, Sir Boyle
c.1800  Debate on theAct of Union between Great Britain and Ireland, Irish Houseof Commons, quotedin SirJonahBarrington Personal Sketches and Recollections of his ownTimes (1827).

   [Lord Rosebery] was a man who never missed an occasion to let slip an opportunity.

-Shaw, George Bernard
Quoted byWinston Churchill in Great Contemporaries (1937). English jurist,  Attorney General  (1945^51)  and President of the Board  of Trade  (1951).  He  established  his  reputation  as  chief British  prosecutor  at  the  Nuremberg Trials  (1945^6),  and  as prosecutor  in  the  Fuchs  atom  spy  case  (1950).  He was  made  a life peer in1959.

Fate,Time,Occasion,Chance, and Change? To these All things are subject but eternal love.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  Prometheus Unbound, act 2, sc.4, l.119^20.

The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention. He generally becomes asstupidand ignorant asit ispossible for a human creature to become.

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.5, ch.1, pt.3, article 2.