Fortune Quotes - Page 39

• There is a growing feeling that perhaps Texas is really another country, a place where the skies, the disasters, the diamonds, the politicians, the women, the fortunes, the football players and the murders are all bigger than anywhere else.

  Pete Hamill

  Football, Country, Player

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• I think that a young state, like a young virgin, should modestly stay at home, and wait the application of suitors for an alliance with her; and not run about offering her amity to all the world; and hazarding their refusal. Our virgin is a jolly one; and tho at present not very rich, will in time be a great fortune, and where she has a favorable predisposition, it seems to me well worth cultivating.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Running, Home, Thinking

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• According to Solomon, life and death are in the power of the tongue; and as Euripides truly affirmeth, every unbridled tongue in the end shall find itself unfortunate; for in all that ever I observed in the course of worldly things, I ever found that men's fortunes are oftener made by their tongues than by their virtues, and more men's fortunes overthrown thereby, also, than by their vices.

  Walter Raleigh

  Men, Life And Death, Speech

  Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Birch, William Oldys (1829). “Miscellaneous works”, p.564

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• This is the message of your life and my life - it’s that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it: Panta Rhei. All flows, nothing lasts. Not your enemies, not your fortune, not who you sleep with at night, not the books, not the house in Saint-Tropez, not even the children - nothing lasts. To the degree that you avert your gaze from this truth, you build the potential for pain into your life. Everything is this act of embracing the present moment, the felt presence of experience, and then moving on to the next felt moment of experience. It’s literally psychological nomadism is what it is.

  Terence McKenna

  Children, Pain, Moving

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• Those who wander in the world avowedly and purposely in pursuit of happiness, who view every scene of present joy with an eye to what may succeed, certainly are more liable to disappointment, misfortune and unhappiness, than those who give up their fate to chance and take the goods and evils of fortune as they come, without making happiness their study, or misery their foresight.

  Fanny Burney

  Happiness, Disappointment, Giving Up

  Frances Burney, Fanny Burney (2015). “Complete Works of Frances Burney (Delphi Classics)”, p.3747, Delphi Classics

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• The majority of America's colossal fortunes have been made by entering industries in their early stages and developing leadership in them.... Think of what opportunities the present and the future contain in such fields as ship-building and ship-owning, aircraft, electrical development, the oil industry, different branches of the automotive industry, foreign trade, international banking, invention, the chemical industry, moving pictures, color photography, and, one night add, labor leadership.

  B. C. Forbes

  Photography, Moving, Thinking

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• How much in this world is charged to chance or fortune, or veiled under a more devout name, and accorded to Providence; while, when we come to look honestly into affairs, we find it to be a debt of our own accumulation, and one which we must inevitably pay.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Names, Looks, Debt

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• Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Life, Opportunity, Goal

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• The loss of fortune to a true man is but the trumpet challenge to renewed exertion, not the thunder stroke of destruction.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Loss, Men, Challenges

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• Neither the gifts nor the blows of fortune equal those of nature.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Blow, Equal

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• That is a most wretched fortune which is without an enemy.

  Publilius Syrus

  Enemy, Wretched

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• A great fortune enslaves its owner.

  Publilius Syrus

  Owners

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• Fortune is never satisfied with bringing one sorrow.

  Publilius Syrus

  Sorrow, Satisfied

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• Fortune, by being too lavish of her favours on a man, only makes a fool of him.

  Publilius Syrus

  Men, Fool, Favour

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• Many fortunes, like rivers, have a pure source, but grow muddy as they grow large.

  Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

  Rivers, Source, Grows

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• Arrogance is a weed which grows upon a dunghill; it is from the rankness of the soil that she has her height and spreadings: witness, clowns, fools, and fellows, who from nothing, are lifted up some few steps on fortune's ladder: where, seeing the glorious representment of honour above them, they are so eager to embrace it, that they strive to leap thither at once, and by over-reaching themselves in the way, they fail of the end, and fall.

  Owen Feltham

  Weed, Growing Up, Fall

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• Misery and misfortune is all one; and of misfortune fortune hath only the gift.

  Philip Sidney

  Misery, Misfortunes

  Sir Philip Sidney (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney (Illustrated)”, p.396, Delphi Classics

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• The oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life. Indeed, his chance to live at all is slim, and if he should survive the arrows of his own outrageous fortune and in the two weeks of his carefree youth find a clean smooth place to fix on, the years afterwards are full of stress, passion, and danger.

  M. F. K. Fisher

  Stress, Passion, Oysters

  M. F. K. Fisher (2016). “Consider the Oyster”, p.7, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• The pilot who is always dreading a rock or a tempest must not complain if he remain a poor fisherman. We must at times trust, something to fortune, for fortune has often some share in what happens.

  Pietro Metastasio

  Rocks, Pilots, Complaining

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• Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.

  Henry Home, Lord Kames

  Pain, Pleasure, Peasants

  Henry Home (lord Kames.) (1818). “Introduction to the art of thinking, to which is prefixed an original life of the author”, p.32

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• Be not arrogant when fortune smiles, or dejected when she frowns.

  Decimius Magnus Ausonius

  Arrogant, Dejected

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• Fortune blinds men when she does not wish them to withstand the violence of her onslaughts.

  Livy

  Men, Wish, Doe

  "History of Rome". Book by Livy. Book V, section 37,

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• Good fortune and a good disposition are rarely given to the same man.

  Livy

  Men, Luck, Disposition

  "History of Rome". Book by Livy. Book XXX, section 42,

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• With a clear sky, a bright sun, and a gentle breeze, you will have friends in plenty; but let fortune frown, and the firmament be overcast, and then your friends will prove like the strings of the lute, of which you will tighten ten before you find one that will bear the stretch and keep the pitch.

  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

  Friendship, Sky, Sun

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• The Spaniards have a saying that there is no man whom Fortune does not visit at least once in his life.

  Donald Grant Mitchell

  Men, Doe, Spaniards

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