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’Tis better to be fortunate than wise. John Webster, The White Devil
Fortune’s a right whore:
If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels,
That she may take away all at one swoop. ibid.
Some people are born with very little; some are fortunate enough to have it all. When I grew up, we didn’t have much. I had to hustle to get what I wanted ... but I had that hunger for more. I didn’t always make the right choices, but I learned from my mistakes. Curtis Jackson
We are so fortunate, as Australians, to have among us the oldest continuing cultures in human history. Cultures that link our nation with deepest antiquity. We have Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley that is as ancient as the great Palaeolithic cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux in Europe. Kevin Rudd
Fortunate people often have very favourable beginnings and very tragic endings. What matters isn’t being applauded when you arrive – for that is common – but being missed when you leave. Baltasar Gracian
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: the fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. Bertrand Russell
Those men and women are fortunate who are born at a time when a great struggle for human freedom is in progress. It is an added good fortune to have parents who take a personal part in the great movements of their time. I am glad and thankful that this was my case. Emmeline Pankhurst
I have had an amazingly fortunate life. I’m a child from Yorkshire, which is sort of like Cleveland without the pretty bits. Jeremy Clarkson
I’m one of the most fortunate people in the world. Rose Kennedy
I feel very fortunate to be compared to somebody so incredible. Michael Jackson’s an icon. Justin Timberlake
I don’t know if I believe in luck. I think I’m very fortunate. Eric Clapton
America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind. Norman Mailer
We ought to give thanks for all fortune: it is good because it is good; if bad, because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world, and the hope of our eternal country. C S Lewis
One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others. Robert A Heinlein
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit. Jonathan Swift
We do not know what is really good or bad fortune. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I’m swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune. David Attenborough
Diligence is the mother of good fortune. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, variations & attributions
It is fortune, not wisdom, that rules man’s life. Cicero
Chiefly the mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands. Francis Bacon, Essays: ‘Of Fortune’, 1625
If a man look sharply, and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible. ibid.
Behind every great fortune there is a crime. Francis Bacon
O fickle Fortune, why this cruel sporting?
Why thus torment us poor sons of day?
Nae mair your smiles can cheer me, nae mair your frowns can fear me,
For the flowers of the forest are a’ wade away. Alison Cockburn nee Rutherford 1713-94
O, I am fortune’s fool! William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, III i 136, Romeo to Benvolio
O fortune, O fortune, all men call thee fickle. ibid. III v 60, Juliet
But Fortune, O,
She is corrupted. William Shakespeare, King John II ii 54-55, Constance
Let fortune go to hell for it, not I. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice III ii 21, Portia to Bassiano
For herein Fortune shows herself more kind
Than is her custom; it is still her use
To live the wretched man outlive his wealth
To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow
An age of poverty, from which ling’ring penance
Of such misery doth she cut me off. ibid. IV i 264-269, Antonio to Portia et al
But in short space
It rained down fortune show’ring on your head. William Shakespeare, I Henry IV V i 46-47, Worcester to King Henry
Who know on whom fortune would then have smiled? William Shakespeare, II Henry IV IV i 131-132
Will fortune ever come with both hands full? ibid. IV iii 103, King Henry
And giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel,
That noble blind that stands upon the rolling,
restless shore. William Shakespeare, Henry V III vi 26-28, Pistol
Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind. And she is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you – which is the moral of it – that she is turning and inconstant and mutability and variation. And her foot, look you is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls and rolls and rolls. In good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description of it: Fortune is an excellent moral. ibid. III vi 29-36, Fluellen
Doth Fortune play the hussy with me now? ibid. V i 76, Pistol
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. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar IV iii 217
Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not to the lineaments of nature. William Shakespeare, As You Like It I ii 40-41, Rosalind to Celia
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 heart-ache, 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 despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office...’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet III i 56-73
How malicious is my fortune, that I must repent to be just! William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear III v 9-10, Edmund
To be worst,
The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in Esperance, lives not in fear:
The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter. ibid. IV i 3
I see men’s judgements are
A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them
To suffer all alike. William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra III xiii @30, Enobarbus