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Saint Patrick's Day Quotes

No Irish collection sits under this page. It comes from two others, luck and friendship, which is about as close as a mechanical match can get to a day of toasts. The luck page leans on Seneca, Livy and Shakespeare, and on Horace’s complaint about Fortune, so expect fortune in the Roman sense rather than the four-leaf kind.

Two of its entries, from Torquato Tasso, are flagged misattributed. If you want an Irish writer, use the search box. Wilde and Shaw are both on the site.

Random quote on Saint Patrick's Day

Most quoted on saint patrick's day:

Hairbreadth missings of happiness look like the insults of Fortune.

Henry Fielding The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)

Who is there, my friend, can climb to the sky?
Only the gods dwell forever in sunlight.
As for man, his days are numbered,
whatever he may do, it is but wind.

Gilgamesh

A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend.

Eric Hoffer Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

Friends share music with each other, they don't allow themselves to be divided by a system that says that nobody is supposed to have copies.

Richard Stallman LibrePlanet Keynote Speech (2015)

These are called the pious frauds of friendship.

Henry Fielding Amelia (1751)

You are either lucky in this department or you aren't—and you cannot make your own luck.

Sam Harris Free Will (2012)

You need friends to keep you on your feet, and enemies to keep you on your toes.

Gregory Benford Beyond Infinity (2004)

The aim of science is to reduce the scope of chance.

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

As life runs on, the road grows strange
With faces new, and near the end
The milestones into headstones change,
'Neath every one a friend.

James Russell Lowell Heartsease and Rue (1888)

Friendship craves
The commerce of the mind, not the exchange
Of emulous feasts that foster sycophants.

Alfred Austin Savonarola (1881)

I can't think that it would be terrible of me to say — and it is occasionally true — that I need physics more than friends.

Robert Oppenheimer

So, Damocles, since this life delights you, do you wish to taste it yourself and make trial of my fortune?

Dionysius I of Syracuse

Levin wanted friendship and got friendliness; he wanted steak and they offered spam.

Bernard Malamud

O Farid ! Friend is not hidden; everywhere He is openly manifest. Darkness is all pervaise Light. Only it has been named differently.

Khwaja Ghulam Farid The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

Logic and luck will not meet without action.

Hossein Nuri The Last Festival (2000)

There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it.

William Gilmore Simms

As two floating planks meet and part on the sea,
O friend! so I met and then drifted from thee.

William R. Alger

The theory of probability combines commonsense reasoning with calculation. It domesticates luck, making it subservient to reason.

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

Right in the Heart of the African Jungle a small white man lives. Now there is one extraordinary fact about him that he is the friend of all animals.

Gerald Durrell Written by Durrell at age ten (1935)

Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992)

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