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Quotes about luck

56 quotes from 47 people

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He wanted to show that fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow.
W. W. Jacobs1863–1943The Monkey’s Paw (1902)In context
- Life & Death
Luck can often mean simply taking advantage of a situation at the right moment. It is possible to make your luck by being always prepared.
MKMichael Kordaborn 1933Success! (1977), p. 40
Chance and chance alone has a message for us… Only chance can speak to us.
Milan Kundera1929–2023The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Pt. 2, ch. 9
Che sera, sera,
What will be, shall be?
Christopher Marlowe1564–1593Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), spoken by FaustusIn context
- Life & Death
She was one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks.
Guy de Maupassant1850–1893The Necklace (1884)In context
- Women
How life is strange and changeful! How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!
Guy de Maupassant1850–1893The Necklace (1884)In context
- Life & Death
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
POP. J. O'Rourke1947–2022
- Government
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur1822–1895
In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur1822–1895Lecture, University of Lille (7 December 1854)
- Science
There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.
Thomas Pynchonborn 1937Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Pt. 3
- God
It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours’ bombardment unscathed. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.
Erich Maria Remarque1898–1970All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Chapter VIIn context
- War & Peace
Oftentimes a reverse has but made room for more prosperous fortune.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XCI: On the Lesson to be Drawn From the Burning of Lyons
- Failure
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars
William Shakespeare1564–1616King Lear (c. 1606), Act I, Scene II, spoken by EdmundIn context
- Responsibility
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Julius Caesar (1599), Act IV, Scene III, spoken by BrutusIn context
- Decisions
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
William Shakespeare1564–1616Sonnet 29 (1609)In context
- Emotion