Fortune Quotes - Page 23

• Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

  Anthony Trollope

  Shy, Fickle, Jade

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels (Unabridged): The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds...”, p.4483, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• When young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a disposition.

  Anthony Trollope

  Father, Book, Blessed

  Anthony Trollope (1862). “Framley Parsonage: A Novel”, p.9

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• The worth of a wife is a man's good fortune;
  His jewels are his good children.

  Thiruvalluvar

  Children, Men, Jewels

  "Tirukkural". Book by Thiruvalluvar, 1840.

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• Fantastic fortune thou deceitful light, That cheats the weary traveler by night, Though on a precipice each step you tread, I am resolved to follow where you lead.

  Aphra Behn

  Night, Light, Steps

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• Moreover, a true Christian will not ascribe any prosperity to his own diligence, industry, or good fortune, but he will acknowledge that God is the author of it.

  John Calvin

  Christian, Prosperity, Diligence

  John Calvin (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.43, Baker Books

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• Strange is the vigour in a brave man's soul. The strength of his spirit and his irresistible power, the greatness of his heart and the height of his condition, his mighty confidence and contempt of danger, his true security and repose in himself, his liberty to dare and do what he pleaseth, his alacrity in the midst of fears, his invincible temper, are advantages which make him master of fortune.

  Thomas Traherne

  Heart, Greatness, Men

  "The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, B.D". Book edited by Bertram Dobell, London: Bertram Dobell, p. LVII, "Christian Ethicks" (1675), 1903.

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• Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and "fashionable") the composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.

  Giordano Bruno

  Principles, Substance, Elements

  "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast". Book by Giordano Bruno, 1584.

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• Let it be our endeavour, let it be our task, to keep alight the torch of imperial patriotism, to hold fast the affection and the confidence of our kinsmen across the seas; so that in every vicissitude of fortune the British Empire may present an unbroken front to all her foes, and may carry on even to distant ages the glorious traditions of the British flag.

  Joseph Chamberlain

  Sea, Age, Torches

  Joseph Chamberlain (1897). “Foreign & Colonial Speeches”, London ; New York : Routledge

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• My sonnet asserts that the sonnet still lives. My epic, should such fortune befall me, asserts that the heroic narrative is not lost - that it is born again.

  James Fenton

  Epic, Narrative, Heroic

  "An Introduction to English Poetry". Book by James Fenton, 2002.

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• I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling, I've felt all its favours and found its decay; Sweet was its blessing, kind its caressing, But now it is fled, fled far, far away.

  Richard Cobden

  Sweet, Blessing, Decay

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• It is a great good fortune, as Stendhal said, for one "to have his passion as a profession.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Passion, Said, Profession

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1988). “In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays”, p.4, Northwestern University Press

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• Writers are always envious, mean-minded, filled with rage and envyat other's good fortune. There is nothing like the failure of a close friend to cheer us up.

  Peter Carey

  Cheer, Mean, Close Friends

  2002 In the Observer, 18 Aug.

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• They, the conservatives, are the real outsides, they tell us, gazing with disgust upon the ludicrous manners of the high and mighty. Or, they tell us, they are rough-and-ready proles, laughing along with us at the efforts of our social "betters" to reform and improve us. That they are often, in fact, people of privilege doing their utmost to boost the fortunes of a political party that is the traditional tool of the privileged is a contradiction that does not trouble them.

  Thomas Frank

  Real, Party, Laughing

  "What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America". Book by Thomas Frank, June1, 2004.

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• I started acting when I was 13, so acting has been, with great fortune, my job since I could get a job.

  Carla Gugino

  Jobs, Acting, Has Beens

  "A little white lie made Carla Gugino Troop Beverly Hills' tallest scout". Interview with Erik Adams, www.avclub.com. June 17, 2015.

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• I am certain that there are two things in life which are dependable: the delights of the flesh and the delights of literature. I have had the good fortune to enjoy them both equally.

  Peter Greenaway

  Things In Life, Two, Together

  "Fictional character: Nagiko". "The Pillow Book", www.imdb.com. 1996.

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• No, liberty is not made for us: we are too ignorant, too vain, too presumptious, too cowardly, too vile, too corrupt, too attached to rest and to pleasure, too much slaves to fortune to ever know the true price of liberty. We boast of being free! To show how much we have become slaves, it is enough just to cast a glance on the capital and examine the morals of its inhabitants.

  Jean-Paul Marat

  Ignorant, Being Free, Liberty

  L'Ami du peuple newspaper, No. 559, August 27, 1791.

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• In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.

  Thomas Malthus

  Adversity, Class, Realizing

  "Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application". Book by Thomas Robert Malthus, Book II, Chapter I, "On The Progress of Wealth", Section X, p. 437, 1836.

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• The young nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own expenses in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony-unlike the former Huguenot emigration to Brazil--was evidently subordinate. The adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith.

  Francis Parkman

  Religious, Expectations, Volunteer

  Francis Parkman (1871). “Pioneers of France in the New World”, p.60

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• They still talk about the night that Augie Pabst, a fresh-faced heir to the brewing fortune, drove a rented Falcon into the swimming pool of the Mark Thomas Inn in Monterey, California. His reviews were so good that he repeated the act at a Howard Johnson's outside Denver.

  Brock Yates

  Swimming, Night, California

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• Unlike conventional jocks, who tend to sell aluminum siding and give canned speeches to parochial-school athletic banquets in the off-season, race drivers never shuck their image when they leave the stadium. They are supposed to be zany, nomadic soldiers of fortune who are involved in wild endeavors during every waking moment.

  Brock Yates

  School, Race, Giving

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• So powerfully does fortune appear to sway the destinies of men, putting a silver spoon into one man's mouth, and a wooden one into another's, that some of the most sagacious of men, as Cardinal Mazarin and Rothschild, seem to have been inclined to regard luck as the first element of worldly success; experience, sagacity, energy, and enterprise as nothing, if linked to an unlucky star.

  William Mathews

  Stars, Destiny, Men

  William Mathews (1874). “Getting on in the World: Or, Hints on Success in Life”, p.23, Belford Bros.

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• If we live by subhuman means we might as well never have had the good fortune to be born human.

  Ihara Saikaku

  Mean, Might, Born

  Saikaku Ihara (1959). “The Japanese Family Storehouse: Or, The Millionaire's Gospel Modernised. Nippon Eitai-gura, Or Daifuku Shin Chōja Kyō (1688)”, Cambridge University Press

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• Like ice beneath the sun's rays - to such poverty did he fall...his fortune melted to water.

  Ihara Saikaku

  Fall, Ice, Water

  "The Japanese Family Storehouse" by Ihara Saikaku, (Book III, ch. 5), 1688.

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• The occupation of the stock-jobber yields no new or useful product; consequently having no product of his own to give in exchange, he has no revenue to subsist upon, but what he contrives to make out of the unskilfulness or ill-fortune of gamesters like himself.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Yield, Giving, Occupation

  Jean Baptiste Say (1854). “A treatise on political economy, or, the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth”, p.481

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• Luck, if it mean nothing more than an event of which the cause is not apparent, is a term that may be employed without error; but if it means, as it generally does, an event which has no cause at all, a mere chance, it is a bad word, a heathen term; drop it from your vocabulary; trust nothing to luck, nor expect anything from it; avoid all practical use or dependence upon this or its kindred words, fate, chance, fortune.

  John Angell James

  Mean, Fate, Errors

  John Angell James (1851). “The young man's friend and guide through life to immortality”, p.180

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