Great Throughts Treasury

"An aspiration is a joy for ever, 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 pleasure activity." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

"It is untrue to say a man has made his fortune when he is not capable of enjoying it." -

"An ounce of good fortune is worth a pound of discretion." -

"Not even a collapsing world looks dark to a man who is about to make his fortune." - E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White

"Many have been ruined by their fortunes; many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it, the great have become little, and the little great." - Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

"Here is a rule to remember in the future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not, “This is a misfortune,” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune.”" -

"Those who have had no share in the good fortune of the mighty often have a share in their misfortune." -

"Every man is the architect of his own fortune." -

"Lust for fame and fortune is like an intoxication. While a man is intoxicated, he doesn’t realize it. It’s only after it is all over that he realizes that everything is like an illusion. If men could realize this all the time, there would be much less trouble on earth, and there would be much happier people too." - Li Ju-chen

"By accident of fortune a man may rule the world for a time, but by virtue of love how may rule the world forever." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

"A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances; and if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

"Government consists mainly in so keeping your subjects that they shall be neither able nor disposed to injure you; and this is done by depriving them of all means of injuring you, or by bestowing such benefits upon them that it would not be reasonable for them to desire any change of fortune." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

" Where are we going? We came only to be born. Our home is beyond: In the realm of the defleshed ones. 4 I suffer: Happiness, good fortune never comes my way. Have I come here to struggle in vain? This is not the place to accomplish things. Certainly nothing grows green here: Misfortune opens its blossoms. " - Nahuatl Wise Men including Nezahualcoyotl NULL

"The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just fiction, it’s a part of our fortune. Our nervous system isn’t just a fiction, it’s a part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like the teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity." - Boris Pasternak, fully Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

"From fortune to misfortune is a small step, but from misfortune to fortune is a big step." - Yiddish Proverbs

"Moderation has been declared a virtue so as to curb the ambition of the great and console lesser folk for their lack of fortune and merit." -

"The march of good fortune has backward slips: to retreat one or two paces gives wings to the jumper." - Sa’ib of Tabriz, aka Mirza Muhammad Ali Sa'ib, Saib Isfahani or Sa'ib Of Esfahan NULL

"A good mind possesses a kingdom: a great fortune is a great slavery." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

"The soul is master of every kind of fortune: itself acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

"Fortune favors the brave." -

"The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambition." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"Our whole civilization is based on a hypothetical future and the idiocy of fortune-telling." - Stephen Vizinczey, born István Vizinczey

"A man is never so on trial as in the moment of excessive good fortune." -

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." - Honoré de Balzac

"He that waits upon fortune is never sure of a dinner." - Benjamin Franklin

"All fortune belongs to him who has a contented mind. Is not the whole earth covered with leather for him whose feet are encased in shoes?" -

"Love, the last defense against old age – the last, and for those whose good fortune it is to have some one person to care for, or who have learned the infinitely difficult art of loving all their neighbors, the best." -

"Love, the last defense against old age – the last, and for those whose good fortune it is to have some one person to care for, or who have learned the infinitely difficult art of loving all their neighbors, the best." -

"Love, the last defense against old age – the last, and for those whose good fortune it is to have some one person to care for, or who have learned the infinitely difficult art of loving all their neighbors, the best." -

"Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others." - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

"A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessings of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind." - Anacharsis NULL

"Every man is the architect of his own fortune." - Appius Claudius Caecus "the blind"

"It's only by the hard blows of adverse fortune that character is tooled." -

"The man who has been born into a position of wealth comes to look upon it as something without which he could no more live than he could live without air; he guards it as he does his very life; and so he is generally a lover of order, prudent and economical. But the man who has been born into a poor position looks upon it as the natural one, and if by any chance he comes in for a fortune, he regards it as a superfluity, something to be enjoyed or wasted, because, if it comes to an end, he can get on just as well as before, with one anxiety the less." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"When a man is governed by his passions he is in bondage. For a man under their control is not his own master, but is mastered by a fortune in whose power he is, so that he is often forced to follow the worst course though he sees the better one before him." -

"Ill Fortune never crush’t that man whom good Fortune deceived not." - Ben Jonson

"The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude." - Charles Caleb Colton

"A man's fortune must first be changed from within." - Chinese Proverbs

"Fortune reveals our virtues and vices, as light reveals material objects." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Happiness and misery depend as much on temperament as on fortune." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"It takes more strength of character to withstand good fortune than bad." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Moderation has been created a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Most people judge others either by the company they keep, or by their fortune." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The contempt of riches in the philosophers was a concealed desire of revenging on fortune the injustice done to their merit, by despising the good she denied them." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"There is a kind of greatness which does not depend upon fortune; it is a certain manner that distinguishes us, and which seems to destine us for great things; it is the value we insensibly set upon ourselves; it is by this quality that we gain the deference of other men, and it is this which commonly raises us more above them, than birth, rank, or even merit itself." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"We should manage our fortune as we do our health - enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"What we take for virtues is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry know how to arrange; and it is not always from valor and from chastity that men are valiant, an that women are chaste." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Luck is not chance – it’s toil – fortune’s expensive smile is earned." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"Fortune is an evil chain to the body, and vice to the soul." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL