Mischance Quotes

• Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Beauty, Beautiful, Attitude

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.175, University of Georgia Press

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Yield not thy neck To fortunes yoke, but let thy dauntless mind Still ride in triumph over all mischance.

  William Shakespeare

  Yield, Mind, Triumph

  William Shakespeare (1833). “The plays and poems of William Shakspeare”, p.504

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Peace, Hurt, War

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings”, p.937, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• I shall always be consistent and never change my ways so long as I am in my senses; but for the sake of precedent the Senate should beware of binding itself to support the acts of any man, since he might through some mischance suffer a change.

  Tiberius

  Change, Men, Long

  12 Copy quote

• Who doubting tyranny, and fainting under Fortune's false lottery, desperately run To death, for dread of death; that soul's most stout, That, bearing all mischance, dares last it out.

  Francis Beaumont

  Running, Soul, Doubt

  Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher (1750). “The Works of Francis Beaumont, and Mr. John Fletcher: The two noble kinsmen; Thierry and Theodoret; The woman-hater; The nice valour; The honest man's fortune; A masque; Four plays or moral representations in one”, p.433

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Pride, Political, Enemy

  Thomas Hobbes (2010). “Leviathan - Revised Edition”, p.312, Broadview Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Courage, Yoga

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• optimism, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with disproof - an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Beautiful, Fall, Adversity

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.175, University of Georgia Press

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Life, Adversity, Hands

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1969). “Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910”, p.181, W. W. Norton & Company

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Yield not thy neck
  To fortune's yoke, but let thy dauntless mind
  Still ride in triumph over all mischance.
  In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands
  that work on us.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Healing, Yield, Hands

  16 Copy quote

• We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Beauty, Faces, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• Although the season is joyful everywhere, / And mountain and valley are all verdant, / That would seem a truly small matter to him / Who has met mischance in love.

  Hadewijch

  Mountain, Valleys, Matter

  Hadewijch, Columba Hart (1980). “Hadewijch (CWS)”, p.165, Paulist Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• By some curious mischance, a couple of my plays managed to hit an area where commercial success was feasible. But it's wrong to think I'm a commercial playwright who has somehow ceased his proper function. I have always been the same thing - which is not a commercial playwright. I'm not after the brass ring.

  Edward Albee

  Couple, Thinking, Play

  "Conversations with Edward Albee". Book edited by Philip C. Kolin, 1988.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that to have known one good, old man-one man, who, through the chances and mischances of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm-branch, waving all discords into peace-helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each other more than many sermons

  George William Curtis

  Faith, Peace, Heart

  8 Copy quote

• At a period when Literature was wont to attribute the grief of living exclusively to the mischances of disappointed love or the jealousy of adulterous deceptions, he had said not a word of these childish maladies, but had sounded those more incurable, more poignant and more profound: wounds that are inflicted by satiety, disillusion and contempt in ruined souls tortured by the present, disgusted with the past, terrified and desperate of the future.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans

  Grief, Past, Profound

  Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain: (À rebours)”, p.111, BoD – Books on Demand

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Lying, Reality, Interesting

  Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Kerrigan (1968). “A Personal Anthology”, p.2, Grove Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  If we love one another, nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances may happen.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Brotherhood, May, Love One Another

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J. D. McClatchy (2000). “Poems and Other Writings”, p.81, Library of America

  81 Copy quote

  Show source