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Chance is better than choice; it is more lordly. In its carelessness it is more lordly. Chance is God, choice is man.

— Elizabeth Bowen

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Luck

More quotes by Elizabeth Bowen

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends.

The Death of the Heart (1939)

It is thought that women inspire by their beauty; more often they do so by their longings.

A Time in Rome (1960)

Intimacies between women go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending up in small talk without loss of esteem.

The Death of the Heart (1939)

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself — in fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

The Death of the Heart (1939)

There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

The House in Paris (1935)

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In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night (1601)

O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?

Horace Satires (-35)

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Elizabeth Bowen (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.