Archive

Quotes

Luck is believing you’re lucky. 

—William Carlos Williams, 1947

Good fortune turns aside destruction by a great god.

—Instructions of Ankhsheshonqy, c. 100 BC

Some folks want their luck buttered.

—Thomas Hardy, 1886

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

Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed.

—Joan Didion, 2005

It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear. 

—Charlotte Brontë, 1847

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

—Thomas Browne, 1642

We do not suffer by accident. 

—Jane Austen, 1813

Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.

—E.B. White, 1944

Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance.

—Calvin Coolidge, 1932

Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal.

—David Hume, 1742

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

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

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

—Christina Stead, 1938