Archive

Quotes

’Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables?

—Thomas Browne, 1642

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

—Cormac McCarthy, 2005

Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed.

—Joan Didion, 2005

Casting lots causes contentions to cease, and keeps the mighty apart.

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

Good fortune is light as a feather, but nobody knows how to hold it up. Misfortune is heavy as the earth, but nobody knows how to stay out of its way.

—Zhuangzi, c. 300 BC

Some folks want their luck buttered.

—Thomas Hardy, 1886

We do not suffer by accident. 

—Jane Austen, 1813

Misfortune, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1938

Good fortune turns aside destruction by a great god.

—Instructions of Ankhsheshonqy, c. 100 BC

Fortune resists half-hearted prayers. 

—Ovid, 8

To hold a throne is luck; to bestow it, virtue.

—Seneca the Younger, c. 45

A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.

—Christina Stead, 1938