Fortune Quotes - Page 34

• When worse may yet befall, there's room for prayer,
  But when our fortune's at its lowest ebb,
  We trample fear beneath our feet, and live
  Without a fear of evil yet to come.

  Ovid

  Prayer, Future, Feet

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• With wavering steps does fickle fortune stray,
  Nowhere she finds a firm and fixed abode;
  But now all smiles, and now again all frowns,
  She's constant only in inconstancy.

  Ovid

  Doe, Fickle, Wavering

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• Beneath the sun's rays our shadow is our comrade;
  When clouds obscure the sun our shadow flees.
  So Fortune's smiles the fickle crowd pursues,
  But swift is gone whenever she veils her face.

  Ovid

  Clouds, Shadow, Rays

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• Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently for the most part, very prone to credulity.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Religion, Useless

  Baruch Spinoza (2017). “A Theologico-Political Treatise”, Jovian Press

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• The goods of Fortune, even such as they really are, still need taste to enjoy them. It is the enjoying no the possessing, that makes us happy.

  Michelangelo

  Character, Needs, Taste

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• Fortune is an evil chain to the body, and vice to the soul.

  Epictetus

  Evil, Soul, Vices

  Epictetus (1807). “The Works of Epictetus: Consisting of His Discourses in Four Books Preserved by Arrian, the Enchiridion, and Fragments”, p.341

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• The shimmering night does not stay for mortals, not misfortunes, nor wealth, but in a moment it is gone, and to the turn of another comes joy and loss.

  Sophocles

  Change, Loss, Night

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• Fortune never helps the fainthearted.

  Sophocles

  Helping, Cowardice

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• Fortune, honour, beauty, youth,
  Are but blossoms dying;
  Wanton pleasures, doting love,
  Are but shadows flying.

  Thomas Campion

  Flying, Shadow, Dying

  Joseph Haslewood, Edmund Bolton, Thomas Campion, George Gascoigne, Samuel Daniel (1815). “Ancient critical essays upon English poets and poesy”, p.14

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• When we think back to our forefathers, with their sedentary lives of forest-chopping, railroad-building, fortune-founding, their fox-hunting and Indian taming, their prancing about in the mazurka and the polka, with their coattails flying and their bustles bouncing, to say nothing of their all-day sessions with the port and straight bourbon,... we must realize that we are a nation, not of neurasthenics, but of sissies and slow-motion sports.

  Robert Benchley

  Sports, Exercise, Thinking

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• Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune.

  Plutarch

  Greatness, Giving, Mind

  Plutarch (2000). “The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Volume II: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.64, Modern Library

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• In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.

  Stendhal

  Success, Calling, World

  Stendhal (2016). “The Red and the Black: World Classics”, p.51, World Classic

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• The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love, my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.

  Stendhal

  Ambition, Power, Men

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• Don't spend all of your money a quarter at a time. Save up and buy something special, something fine, something of lasting value, or something that will give you rich memories for a lifetime. Remember, all that candy money can add up to a small fortune.

  Jim Rohn

  Motivational, Money, Memories

  FaceBook post by Jim Rohn from Mar 08, 2012

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• We were expelled from Paradise, but it was not destroyed. The expulsion from Paradise was in one sense a piece of good fortune, for if we had not been expelled, Paradise would have had to be destroyed.

  Franz Kafka

  Luck, Pieces, Paradise

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• The histories of the lives and fortunes of men are full of instances of this nature,--where favorable times and lucky accidents have done for them, what wisdom or skill could not.

  Laurence Sterne

  Men, Skills, Luck

  Laurence Sterne (1873). “The Works of Laurence Sterne ...: With a Life of the Author”, p.90, London : Bickers, H. Sotheran

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• I made my fortune by being able to spot a certain kind of man.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Able, Kind

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.567, Hamilton Books

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• I am persuaded that foolish writers and foolish readers are created for each other; and that fortune provides readers as she does mates for ugly women.

  Horace Walpole

  Writing, Doe, Ugly

  Horace Walpole, Peter Cunningham (1857). “The letters of Horace Walpole, earl of Orford”, p.494

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• Before a man dies, hold back and call him not happy but lucky.

  Herodotus

  Happy, Death, Men

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• But if you know that you are a man too, and that even such are those that rule, learn this first of all: that all human affairs are a wheel which, as it turns, does not allow the same men always to be fortunate.

  Herodotus

  Change, Men, Doe

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• When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child

  Johan Huizinga

  Children, Distance, Sadness

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• Though a censure lies against those who are poor and proud, yet is Pride sooner to be forgiven in a poor person than in a rich one; since in the latter it is insult and arrogance; in the former, it may be a defense against temptations to dishonesty; and, if manifested on proper occasions, may indicate a natural bravery of mind, which the frowns of fortune cannot depress.

  Samuel Richardson

  Depressing, Lying, Pride

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• Manners make often fortunes.

  John Ray

  Manners

  John Ray (1737). “A compleat Collection of English Proverbs, also the most Celebrated Proverbs of the Scotch, Italian, French, Spanish and other Languages”, p.13

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• The great charm of poetry consists in lively pictures of the sublime passions, magnanimity, courage, disdain of fortune; or thoseof the tender affections, love and friendship; which warm the heart, and diffuse over it similar sentiments and emotions.

  David Hume

  Heart, Passion, Poetry

  David Hume (1758). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.453

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• Every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend.

  David Hume

  Spring, Intelligent, Secret

  David Hume (1788). “An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion”, p.374

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