Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Fortune

"To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; no more; and, by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?" - William Shakespeare

"Accept the responsibility for making yourself happy independent of good or bad fortune, you will be determined to work on your thought patterns instead of chasing illusions." - Zelig Pliskin

"Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favored by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune’s greedily coveted favors, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity." -

"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." -

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

"In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself. Most rich men in democracies are therefore constantly haunted by the desire of obtaining wealth, and they naturally turn their attention to trade and manufactures, which appear to offer the readiest and most efficient means of success. In this respect they share the instincts of the poor without feeling the same necessities; say, rather, they feel the most imperious of all necessities, that of not sinking in the world. " - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

"Fear nothing but what thy industry may prevent; be confident of nothing but what fortune cannot defeat; it is no less folly to fear what is impossible to be avoided than to be secure when there is a possibility to be deprived. " - Francis Quarles

"Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and "fashionable") the composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible." - Giordano Bruno, born Filippo Bruno

"How often are we forced to charge fortune with partiality towards the unjust!" - Henry Clay

"Whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. " - Herman Hesse

"I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. " - Herman Hesse

"Secret forces are bringing compatible spirits together. If the man permits himself to be led by this ineffable attraction, good fortune will come his way. When deep friendships exist, formalities and elaborate preparations are not necessary" - I Ching, Book of Changes or Zhouyi NULL

"Indeed, in a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen." - John Marshall

"Rejoice in the success, promotion and good fortune of the other. In doing so, you attract good fortune to yourself." - Joseph Murphy

"Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

"Men are seldom blessed with good fortune and good sense at the same time." - Livy, formally Titus Livius, aka Titus Livy NULL

"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." -

"Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and the movements and changes in the world around him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, 'This I am today; that I will be tomorrow.' The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds." - Louis L'Amour, fully Louis Dearborn L'Amour

"Action makes more fortune than caution." -

"The time of human life is but a point, and the substance is a flux, and its perceptions dull, and the composition of the body corruptible, and the soul a whirl, and fortune inscrutable, and fame a senseless thing…. What then is there which can guide a man? One thing and only one, philosophy. " - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"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." - Charles De Montesquieu, formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"Each of us A cell of awareness / Imperfect and incomplete / Genetic blends / With uncertain ends / On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet." - Neil Peart

"Believe me, my dear fellow, that so long as people refuse to give up everything for the sake of which they attack and devour each other on earth, that so long as they refuse to think of putting their spiritual fortune in order, there will be no fair distribution of earthly fortunes, either." - Nikolai Gogol, fully Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol or Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol

"Extremes touch: he who wants no favors: from fortune may be said to have obtained the very greatest that she can bestow, in realizing an independence which no changes can diminish." - Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

"Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world. " - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other." - Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL

"Women are the fulfilled sex. Through our children we are able to produce our own immortality, so we lack that divine restlessness which sends men charging off in pursuit of fortune or fame or an imagined Utopia. That is why we number so few geniuses among us. The wholesome oyster wears no pearl, the healthy whale no ambergris, and as long as we can keep on adding to the race, we harbor a sort of health within ourselves." - Phyllis McGinley

"O, how full of error is the judgment of mankind. They wonder at results when they are ignorant of the reasons. They call it fortune when they know not the cause, and thus worship their own ignorance changed into a deity." - Pietro Metastasio, aka Metastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi

"Very distasteful is excessive fame to the sour palate of the envious mind, who hears with grief his neighbors good by name, and hates the fortune that he ne’er shall find. " - Pindar NULL

"Wrapt up in error is the human mind, and human bliss is ever insecure; Know we what fortune yet remains behind? Know we how long the present shall endure?" - Pindar NULL

"Compassion and shame come over one who considers how precarious is the origin of the proudest of living beings: often the smell of a lately extinguished lamp is enough to cause a miscarriage. And to think that from such a frail beginning a tyrant or butcher may be born! You who trust in your physical strength, who embrace the gifts of fortune and consider yourself not their ward but their son, you who have a domineering spirit, you who consider yourself a god as soon as success swells your breast, think how little could have destroyed you!" - Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL

"Ought a man to be confident that he deserves his good fortune, and think much of himself when he has overcome a nation, or city, or empire; or does fortune give this as an example to the victor also of the uncertainty of human affairs, which never continue in one stay? For what time can there be for us mortals to feel confident, when our victories over others especially compel us to dread fortune, and while we are exulting, the reflection that the fatal day comes now to one, now to another, in regular succession, dashes our joy." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

"People differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community." - Pope Leo XIII, born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci NULL

"Change yourself, and fortune will change. " - Portuguese Proverbs

"If you have no enemies, then fortune passed you by." - Portuguese Proverbs

"There are never any occasions when you need think yourself safe because you wield the weapons of Fortune: fight with your own. Fortune does not furnish arms against herself and so men equipped against their foes are unarmed against Fortune herself." - Posidonius, aka Posidonius of Rhodes or Posidonius of Apameia (meaning "of Poseidon") NULL

"My daughter’s direct, spontaneous, and affectionate nature released me from many of the protective mechanisms I had developed, above all the fear that my love might be exploited. With her I had no need to protect myself. At last I could love, trust, and be tender without any apprehensions about my openness being misused for corrective educational purposes – as was the case with my mother – or my feelings being hurt. As I did not have the good fortune of enjoying an open and warmhearted relationship with my mother, this new opportunity for communication – for all its tragic aspects and the restrictions it brought with it – was more of a blessing than anything else… The spontaneity with which my daughter expressed her childlike, innocent, affectionate nature at whatever age she happened to be, and her sensitivity to insincerity and disingenuousness in whatever form, gave my life new dimensions and new objectives." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski

"It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme. Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgment — all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual... The greatest scientific deed of her life — proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them — owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of experimental science has not often witnessed." - Albert Einstein

"It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL

"Their shields are black, their bodies dyed. They choose dark nights for battle, and, by the dread and it is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL

"The fashions of human affairs are brief and changeable, and fortune never remains long indulgent." - Quintus Curtius Rufus

"It is a pitiful fortune that is not without enemies." - Publius Syrus

"When fortune flatters, she does it to betray." - Publius Syrus

"Whom fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad." - Publius Syrus

"Extremes of fortune are true wisdom's test, and he's of men most wise who bears them best." - Richard Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough

"What is so hateful to a poor man as the purse-proud arrogance of a rich one? Let fortune shift the scene, and make the poor man rich, he runs at once into the vice that he declaimed against so feelingly; these are strange contradictions in the human character." - Richard Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough

"That's my window. This minute So gently did I alight From sleep--was still floating in it. Where has my life its limit And where begins the night? I could fancy all things around me Were nothing but I as yet; Like a crystal's depth, profoundly Mute, translucent, unlit. I have space to spare inside me For the stars, too: so full of room Feels my heart; so lightly Would it let go of him, whom For all I know I have started To love, it may be to hold. Strange, as if never charted, Stares my fortune untold. Why is it I am bedded Beneath this infinitude, Fragrant like a meadow, Hither and thither moved, Calling out, yet fearing Someone might hear the cry, Destined to disappearing Within another I. " - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"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." - Randolph Bourne, fully Randolph Silliman Bourne

"I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense... symbolic of themselves. I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller - to find out how they are." - Richard Avedon