Quotes About Fortune

All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.

I assert once again as a truth to which history as a whole bears witness that men may second their fortune, but cannot oppose it; that they may weave its warp, but cannot break it. Yet they should never give up, because there is always hope, though they know not the end and more towards it along roads which cross one another and as yet are unexplored; and since there is hope, they should not despair, no matter what fortune brings or in what travail they find themselves.

A total reverse of fortune, coming unawares upon a man who 'stood in high degree,' happy and apparently secure,-such was the tragic fact to the mediaeval mind. It appealed strongly to common human sympathy and pity; it startled also another feeling, that of fear. It frightened men and awed them. It made them feel that man is blind and helpless, the plaything of an inscrutable power, called by the name of Fortune or some other name,-a power which appears to smile on him for a little, and then on a sudden strikes him down in his pride.

A man who has cured himself of all ridiculous prepossessions, and is fully, sincerely, and steadily convinced, from experience as well as philosophy, that the difference of fortune makes less difference in happiness than is vulgarly imagined; such a one does not measure out degrees of esteem according to the rent-rolls of his acquaintance. ... his internal sentiments are more regulated by the personal characters of men, than by the accidental and capricious favors of fortune.

First the amendment of their own minds. For the removal of the impediments of the mind will sooner clear the passages of fortune than the obtaining fortune will remove the impediments of the mind.

Life could be vastly improved if we could count our blessings as self-actualizing people can and do, and if we could retain their constant sense of good fortune and gratitude for it.

Life is what our character makes it. We fashion it, as a snail does its shell. A man can say: I never made a fortune because it is not in my character to be rich.

In the time it takes for her to walk from the bathhouse at the seawall of Fortune's Rocks, where she has left her boots and has discreetly pulled off her stockings, to the waterline along which the sea continually licks the pink and silver sand, she learns about desire.

...great difficulties are felt at first and these cannot be overcome except by starting from experiments .. and then be conceiving certain hypotheses ... But even so, very much hard work remains to be done and one needs not only great perspicacity but often a degree of good fortune.

May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.

I've seen so many people in this business that made a fortune. They get old and broke and can't make any money. I tell you something... no one's going to play a benefit for Jimmy Dean.

We can easily become as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear. Although we can never rivet our fortune so tight as to make it impregnable, we may by our excessive prudence squeeze out of the life that we are guarding so anxiously all the adventurous quality that makes it worth living.

If I had my choice, I would do the same little independent films, but they would have $100 million budgets, so I could get paid a fortune and hang out in a huge trailer.

Hopefully, I will emerge more shining. If I have that good fortune, if I am blessed in that way - and I do feel I am in the middle of the blessing - then I have faith my service will be greater.

Fame an fortune are nothing if you're not happy and healthy.

Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.

Fortune helps the brave.

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

everything associated with weddings cost the same - a fortune.

Fortune favours the bold.

A happy marriage is still the greatest treasure within the gift of fortune.

A pawn, when separated from his fellows, will seldom or never make a fortune.

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.

For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy

It is not manly to turn one's back on fortune.

Let fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, so long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence.

The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted idea is worth a fortune to somebody.

When you find Fortune favorable, stride boldly forward, for she favors the bold, and being a woman, the young.

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.

Honesty is incompatible with amassing a large fortune.

While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination." (from "The Third and Final Continent")

It is a proverbial expression that every man is the maker of his own fortune, and we usually regard it as implying that every man by his folly or wisdom prepares good or evil for himself. But we may view it in another light, namely, that we may so accommodate ourselves to the dispositions of Providence as to be happy in our lot, whatever may be its privations.

The result showed that fortune helps the brave.

The Goddess Fortune is the devil's servant, ready to kiss any one's ass.

Technologically we now have four [seven!] billion billionaires on board Spaceship Earth who are entirely unaware of their good fortune.

We should strive to go on in fortune and misfortune like a clock during a thunderstorm.

From the beginning of the Radiation Laboratory, I have had the rare good fortune of being in the center of a group of men of high ability, enthusiastic and completely devoted to scientific pursuits.

Fortune's unjust; she ruins oft the brave, and him who should be victor, makes the slave.

The fortune of nations has often depended on accidents . . .

The fate of all of us here has been to know that we are prisoners of power. No one knows why us in particular, but what a great fortune!

A good disposition is more valuable than gold, for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.

Men may second fortune, but they cannot thwart her.

Merv Griffin, who developed Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, had a great line once. I used to personally answer all the mail that came in to Jeopardy! whether it was favorable or unfavorable, and Merv said, You know how I handle the nasty mail? I said no. He just grabbed it and folded it up and crunched it up and threw it in the wastebasket. He said, I don't bother with it.

According to an old French motto, Noblesse oblige - one must live up to one's name. The Rothschilds' condition of life has imposed on them a second motto: Richesse oblige - one must live up to one's fortune.

The greater part of mankind judge of men only by their fashionableness or their fortune.

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

The path of the knowledgeable, successful person, which only leads to supreme good fortune and great success is always directly in front of you.

From that moment on, the newspaper became a highly lucrative investment for those with a talent for making money or for publishers wanting to gain a fortune.