Archive

Quotes

Some folks want their luck buttered.

—Thomas Hardy, 1886

To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1890

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

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

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

—Seneca the Younger, c. 45

We do not suffer by accident. 

—Jane Austen, 1813

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1938

Fortune resists half-hearted prayers. 

—Ovid, 8

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

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1610

Good fortune turns aside destruction by a great god.

—Instructions of Ankhsheshonqy, c. 100 BC

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

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

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

—Cormac McCarthy, 2005

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

—Christina Stead, 1938
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