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Will Fortune never come with both hands full,
But write her fair words still in foulest letters?
She either gives a stomach, and no food;
Such are the poor, in health: or else a feast,
And takes away the stomach; such are the rich,
That have abundance, and enjoy it not.

— William Shakespeare

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Luck

More quotes by William Shakespeare

Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.

I am a man,
More sinn'd against than sinning.

King Lear (1605)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

As You Like It (1599)

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Hamlet (1600)

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Henry IV, Part 2 (1597)

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

Louis Pasteur

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)

Most coincidences are simply chance events that turn out to be far more probable than many people imagine.

Ivars Peterson The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari (1997)

Attribution

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