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Quotes

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

—Charlotte Brontë, 1847

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

—Cormac McCarthy, 2005

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

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

—E.B. White, 1944

Luck is believing you’re lucky. 

—William Carlos Williams, 1947

Luck takes the step that no one sees.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC

Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal.

—David Hume, 1742

Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed.

—Joan Didion, 2005

Fortune resists half-hearted prayers. 

—Ovid, 8

Good fortune turns aside destruction by a great god.

—Instructions of Ankhsheshonqy, c. 100 BC

We do not suffer by accident. 

—Jane Austen, 1813

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

—Seneca the Younger, c. 45
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