Fortune And Luck Quotes

Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves. ~ Larry King

Luck affects everything; let your hook always be cast. ~ Ovid

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her. ~ Mark Twain

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered. ~ William Shakespeare

He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner. ~ Benjamin Franklin

When the sun sets at night and you lay your head down on your pillow, you must believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that your business will be successful. More than anyone, you, the business owner, should have incredible faith that you will experience prosperity. This journey is not about following a popular path that leads to fame and fortune, instead, it is about creating an extension of God's kingdom right here on earth. As beacons of light and salt of the earth, Christians should provide an example of what true victory means to the rest of the world. ~ V.L. Thompson

I believe that when a woman is given the chance to come to the defense of another woman, that is an opportunity that she should take in behalf of not only that woman; but in behalf of herself and all other women, everywhere. Men don't have low opinions of women because women are sluts and whores; but men have low opinions of women because they see how women compete with one another, pull one another down in order to rise above and backbite one another endlessly. There are men who have low opinions of women because of how women treat other women. They see that and they think, "What kind of a species can do that to their own species?" So if you really want the guy, why not get him by showing him what a true friend you are to your girlfriends? Or by showing him how happy you are for the good fortune of another woman and how much you admire her? And if he doesn't appreciate that then he doesn't deserve you! I know we've got a long, long way to go before we change the way our gender treats one another; but it's got to start somewhere and I suggest we start right now. ~ C. JoyBell C.

That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate? ~ Alexandre Dumas

But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment --in short, for the true talent for catastrophe -- Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day.
Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again. ~ George MacDonald Fraser

To the soldier, luck is merely another word for skill. ~ Patrick MacGill

The thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune. ~ Marcus Aurelius

I'm convinced that petting a puppy is good luck. ~ Meg Donohue

Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain. ~ Amy Tan

Chorus of women: [ ... ] Oh! my good, gallant Lysistrata, and all my friends, be ever like a bundle of nettles; never let you anger slacken; the wind of fortune blown our way. ~ Aristophanes

The president stopped and turned. "You are a soldier of fortune."
Gentry pushed him forward. "After expenses, I'm really more like a soldier of the middle class. ~ Mark Greaney

Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There is a kind of greatness which does not depend upon fortune;It is a certain manner that distinguishes us, and which seems to destine us for great things;It is the value we insensibly set upon ourselves;it is by this quality,that we gain the deference of other men,and it is this which commonly raises us more above them,than birth,rank,or even merit itself. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Anyone who manages to experience the history of humanity as a whole as his own history will feel in an enormously generalized way all the grief of an invalid who thinks of health, of an old man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of a lover deprived of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is perishing, of the hero on the evening after a battle that has decided nothing but brought him wounds and the loss of his friend. But if one endured, if one could endure this immense sum of grief of all kinds while yet being the hero who, as the second day of battle breaks, welcomes the dawn and his fortune, being a person whose horizon encompasses thousands of years, past and future, being the heir of all the nobility of all past spirit - an heir with a sense of obligation, the most aristocratic of old nobles and at the same time the first of a new nobility - the like of which no age has yet seen or dreamed of; if one could burden one's soul with all of this - the oldest, the newest, losses, hopes, conquests, and the victories of humanity; if one could finally contain all this in one soul and crowd it into a single feeling - this would surely have to result in a happiness that humanity has not known so far: the happiness of a god full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness that, like the sun in the evening, continually bestows its inexhaustible riches, pouring them into the sea, feeling richest, as the sun does, only when even the poorest fishermen is still rowing ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

As I get older, the present and the past shift and become the past and the future ... A lot of it is a new awareness of time and life and the wheel of fortune crushing you and lifting you and crushing you and lifting you. ~ Feist

That night I kept thinking about Pandora's box. I wondered why someone would put a good thing as Hope in a box with sickness and kidnapping and murder. It was fortunate that it was there, though. If not, people would have the birds of sadness nesting in their hair all the time, because of nuclear war and the greenhouse effect and bombs and stabbings and lunatics.
There must have been another box with all the good things in it, like sunshine and love and trees and all that. Who had the good fortune to open that one, and was there one bad thing down there in the bottom of the good box? Maybe it was Worry. Even when everything seems fine and good, I worry that something will go wrong and change everything. ~ Sharon Creech

Ivy League bumblers and drunks who had once pulled the levers of secret gov't in an age of high anxiety...These were the bastards who beat the bastards, unless it was all just dumb luck. ~ Henry Bromell

Well, there is nothing we can do about it. We have to put up with these snakes, dogs, and swine surrounding us and corrupting the Gospel both in doctrine and in life. Wherever there are faithful preachers they always have to take this. Such is the fortune of the Gospel in the world. ~ Martin Luther

Carmen kicked at the dirt. She couldn't equate finding the virus at home with good luck. It was powerful, this thing, ruthless, a perfectly honed survivor for who knew how many millennia. Perhaps it was old as life itself, a malevolent offshoot of the first sampling of creation. Yet Leigh and Daintith thought they could track it to its lair and swat it like some bothersome insect. ~ Patrick Lynch

He's been so successful, arguably the best quarterback ever to play the game. If you were trying to follow his footsteps, it would be incredibly difficult. I'd go crazy if I woke up every day and tried to compare myself to Peyton Manning. ~ Andrew Luck

When a man is down on his luck he seems to consume all he can get of coffee and doughnuts. ~ Robertson Davies

Good and bad luck is a synonym in the great majority of instances, for good and bad judgment. ~ John Lyman Chatfield

Let me do the talking, but follow my lead," said the Doctor. "You're my assistant. Your area of expertise is car mechanics."
"But I don't know the first thing about cars."
"Then you should be working at your local garage."
"What?"
"You'd fit in perfectly and earn a fortune on repeat business."
"I don't get you."
"That was humour, Kevin. I do it sometimes. ~ Mark Speed

We get success by hard work and failure by hard luck ~ Ravi Ranjan Goswami

Some men are born to good luck: all they do or try to do comes right - all that falls to them is so much gain - all their geese are swans - all their cards are trumps - toss them which way you will, they will always, like poor puss, alight upon their legs, and only move on so much the faster. The world may very likely not always think of them as they think of themselves, but what care they for the world? what can it know about the matter? ~ Jacob Grimm

The empiric easily degenerates into the quack. He does not know where his knowledge begins or leaves off, and so when he gets beyond routine conditions he begins to pretend-to make claims for which there is no justification, and to trust to luck and to ability to impose upon others-to "bluff." ~ John Dewey

If sophistication is a matter of being in control of our primary reactions, we may now be sophisticated. At least we shall be fairly confident of ourselves and may, with any luck, be confident of others. Our object will be to enjoy our selves. But to make sure that our names are permanently on the cast list, it will be advisable to be of interest to others. This aim must never be confused with the desire to be popular. ~ Quentin Crisp

a thousand dollars reward for whoever found him. But it came to nothing. Father Duchene and our friends down there are still looking. But the older I grow, the more I understand what it was I did that night on the mesa. Anyone who requites faith and friendship as I did, will have to pay for it. I'm not very sanguine about good fortune for myself. I'll be called to account when I least expect it. In ~ Willa Cather

The world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn't close your heart completely, but you couldn't leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes. ~ Liane Moriarty

The raft finally got here," he said.
Calypso snorted. Her eyes might have been red, but it was hard to tell in the moonlight. "You just noticed?"
"But if it only shows up for guys you like-"
"Don't push your luck, Leo Valdez," she said. "I still hate you."
"Okay."
"And you are not coming back here," she insisted. "So don't give me any empty promises."
"How about a full promise?" he said. "Because I'm definitely-"
She grabbed his face and pulled him into a kiss, which effectively shut him up.
For all his joking and flirting, Leo had never kissed a girl before. Well, sisterly pecks on the cheeck from Piper, but that didn't count. This was a real, full-contact kiss. If Leo had had gears and wires in his brain, they would've short-circuited.
Calypso pushed him away. "That didn't happen."
"Okay." His voice sounded an octave higher than usual. ~ Rick Riordan

Happiness is no longer a stroke of good luck, a moment of splendor wrung from the monotony of the everyday, it is our condition, our destiny. when the desirable becomes possible, it is immediately integrated into the category of the necessary. What used to be edenic is now ordinary. Social status is no longer determined soley by wealth or power, but also by appearance: it is not enough to be rich, you also have to look good, and this produces a new kind of discrimination and invidious comparison that is no less severe. There is a whole ethic of seeming to feel good about oneself that governs us and is supported by the smiling intoxication of advertising and merchandise. ~ Pascal Bruckner

Failing to meet your true destiny is a tragic act of free will. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Welcome to my world! I've been through it all, and I often pinch myself to believe my luck. I design jewlery, create cosmetics, perform comedy, act, lecture, write books, travel, have a fabulous daughter, and a phenomenal grandson-and I feel I'm the luckiest woman on the planet. ~ Joan Rivers

Why is it that sometimes our prayers seem not to be answered? This is a manifestation of the Buddha's wisdom, so that we can deepen our prayers, become stronger people, live more profound lives and secure deeper, more lasting good fortune. If our slightest prayer was answered immediately, we would become lazy and degenerate. And we could not hope to build a life of great dignity and substance. ~ Daisaku Ikeda

Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed. ~ Edward Young

We're [President Barack Obama and I] clear on the fact that we have to stay humble and prayerful. We have to dig down deep to our roots. When things come together, we know some of it is Barack, some of it is us-but a lot of it has nothing to do with either of us. ~ Michelle Obama

Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can plunge a family into conflict. They believe that the hands of a human beast will smoke when he slays a victim, and that this will cause him shame when a young maiden takes up residence in his home. They believe a thousand other simple things.
I ask of you a little of this childlike sympathy and, to bring us luck, let me speak four truly magic words, childhood's "Open Sesame":
Once upon a time ... ~ Jean Cocteau

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined brand,- as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership. ~ Peggy Noonan

Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck - and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky. ~ Michael Lewis

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned. ~ Ignazio Silone