Fortune Quotes - Page 38

• Fortune, by being too lavish of her favours on a man, only makes a fool of him.

  Publilius Syrus

  Men, Fool, Favour

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• No fortune is so good but that you may find something to grumble about.

  Publilius Syrus

  May

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• No hour brings good fortune to one man without bringing misfortune to another.

  Publilius Syrus

  Men, Hours, One Man

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• Many fortunes, like rivers, have a pure source, but grow muddy as they grow large.

  Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

  Rivers, Source, Grows

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• Arrogance is a weed which grows upon a dunghill; it is from the rankness of the soil that she has her height and spreadings: witness, clowns, fools, and fellows, who from nothing, are lifted up some few steps on fortune's ladder: where, seeing the glorious representment of honour above them, they are so eager to embrace it, that they strive to leap thither at once, and by over-reaching themselves in the way, they fail of the end, and fall.

  Owen Feltham

  Weed, Growing Up, Fall

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• The heavens do not send good haps in handfuls; but let us pick out our good by little, and with care, from out much bad, that still our little world may know its king.

  Philip Sidney

  Kings, Heaven, World

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.174

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• Misery and misfortune is all one; and of misfortune fortune hath only the gift.

  Philip Sidney

  Misery, Misfortunes

  Sir Philip Sidney (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney (Illustrated)”, p.396, Delphi Classics

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• The judgment of the world stands upon matter of fortune.

  Philip Sidney

  World, Matter, Judgment

  Sir Philip Sidney (1725). “The works of the Honourable Sir Philip Sidney, kt., in prose and verse”, p.178

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• Many a man has a kind of a kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken glass are his own merits and fortunes; and they fall into harmonious arrangements, and delight him, often most mischievously and to his ultimate detriment; but they are a present pleasure.

  Arthur Helps

  Fall, Men, Glasses

  Arthur Helps (1873). “Friends in Council: A Series of Readings and Discourse Thereon”, p.25

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• The oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life. Indeed, his chance to live at all is slim, and if he should survive the arrows of his own outrageous fortune and in the two weeks of his carefree youth find a clean smooth place to fix on, the years afterwards are full of stress, passion, and danger.

  M. F. K. Fisher

  Stress, Passion, Oysters

  M. F. K. Fisher (2016). “Consider the Oyster”, p.7, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• The pilot who is always dreading a rock or a tempest must not complain if he remain a poor fisherman. We must at times trust, something to fortune, for fortune has often some share in what happens.

  Pietro Metastasio

  Rocks, Pilots, Complaining

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• Fortune is the best school of courage when she is fraught with anger, in the same way as winds and tempests are the school of the sailorboy.

  Pietro Metastasio

  School, Wind, Way

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• Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.

  Henry Home, Lord Kames

  Pain, Pleasure, Peasants

  Henry Home (lord Kames.) (1818). “Introduction to the art of thinking, to which is prefixed an original life of the author”, p.32

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• Be not arrogant when fortune smiles, or dejected when she frowns.

  Decimius Magnus Ausonius

  Arrogant, Dejected

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• He is truly a man who will not permit himself to be unduly elated when fortune's breeze is favorable, or cast down when it is adverse.

  Livy

  Adversity, Men, Prosperity

  "History of Rome". Book by Livy. Book XLV, section 8,

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• It is when fortune is the most propitious that she is least to be trusted.

  Livy

  Trust, Trusted

  "History of Rome". Book by Livy. Book XXX, section 30,

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• Fortune blinds men when she does not wish them to withstand the violence of her onslaughts.

  Livy

  Men, Wish, Doe

  "History of Rome". Book by Livy. Book V, section 37,

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• Good fortune and a good disposition are rarely given to the same man.

  Livy

  Men, Luck, Disposition

  "History of Rome". Book by Livy. Book XXX, section 42,

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• Beauty is fading, nor is fortune stable; sooner or later death comes to all.

  Propertius

  Death, Fading, Sooner Or Later

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• With a clear sky, a bright sun, and a gentle breeze, you will have friends in plenty; but let fortune frown, and the firmament be overcast, and then your friends will prove like the strings of the lute, of which you will tighten ten before you find one that will bear the stretch and keep the pitch.

  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

  Friendship, Sky, Sun

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• The Spaniards have a saying that there is no man whom Fortune does not visit at least once in his life.

  Donald Grant Mitchell

  Men, Doe, Spaniards

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• We rise to fortune by successive steps; we descend by only one.

  Stanisław I Leszczyński

  Steps

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• The result was magnificent . . . I became the father of two girls and two boys, lovely children by good fortune they all look like my wife.

  Arthur Rubinstein

  Girl, Children, Father

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• the lady is almost the only picturesque survival in a social order which tends less and less to tolerate the exceptional. ... In the age-long war between men and women, she is a hostage in the enemy's camp. Her fortunes do not rise and fall with those of women but with those of men.

  Emily James Smith Putnam

  War, Fall, Men

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• That power of the Gods which orders for the good things which are not uniform, and which happen contrary to expectation, is commonly called Fortune, and it is for this reason that the Goddess is especially worshipped in public by cities; for every city consists of elements which are not uniform.

  Sallust

  Order, Cities, Expectations

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