In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.
Luck Quotes
This page is about fortune in the old sense. Shakespeare leads, followed by Seneca, Livy, La Rochefoucauld and Publilius Syrus. Horace’s Satires have the line that opens the sourced list, an appeal to Fortune as the cruellest of heavenly powers for making game of life. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (1776) has vicissitudes of fortune that bury empires and cities in a common grave, and Thomas Gray, in 1761, wrote of a man too poor for a bribe and too proud to importune, who did not have the method of making a fortune.
Three entries are flagged misattributed. “Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign” is credited to Anatole France, and two passages are credited to Torquato Tasso, one about the fortunate extolling fortune and another comparing a day of fortune to a harvest.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.
O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?
Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half-way to meet it.
O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?
Anyone who won't take a chance now and then isn't worth a damn.
Chance is a funny thing and it is easily mistaken for portent.
I have a wife, I have sons; all these hostages have I given to fortune.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
As Bob Dylan forgot to say, "To live outside the law, you must be lucky."
Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
My life is lived, and I have played
The part that Fortune gave.
Men are seldom blessed with good fortune and good sense at the same time.