Fortune Quotes

1. "I spent, as you know, a year and a half in a clergyman's family and heard almost every Tuesday the very best, most earnest and most impressive preacher it has ever been my fortune to meet with, but it produced no effect whatever on my mind."
Author: Alfred Russel Wallace

2. "A foolish man thinks he knows everything. A wise man knows he doesn't," Finn replied absently, still looking down at the book."That's such a fortune-cookie answer," I said with a laugh, and even he smirked at me."
Author: Amanda Hocking

3. "The woman who can create her own job is the woman who will win fame and fortune."
Author: Amelia Earhart

4. "Fortune has played me a sad trick by letting me live on and on."
Author: Belle Boyd

5. "The special skill of the politician consists in knowing what passions can be most easily aroused, and how to prevent them, when aroused, from being harmful to himself and his associates...Moreover, since politicians are divided into rival groups, they aim at similarly dividing the nation, unless they have the good fortune to unite it in war against some other nation."
Author: Bertrand Russell

6. "Politicians do not find any attractions in a view which does not lend itself to party declamation, and ordinary mortals prefer views which attribute misfortune to the machinations of their enemies."
Author: Bertrand Russell

7. "Do not by any means destroy yourself, for if you live you may yet have good fortune, but all the dead are dead like."
Author: C.S. Lewis

8. "Winter denial: therein lay the key to California Schadenfreude--the secret joy that the rest of the country feels at the misfortune of California. The country said: "Look at them, with their fitness and their tans, their beaches and their movie stars, their Silicon Valley and silicone breasts, their orange bridge and their palm trees. God, I hate those smug, sunshiny bastards!" Because if you're up to your navel in a snowdrift in Ohio, nothing warms your heart like the sight of California on fire. If you're shoveling silt out of your basement in the Fargo flood zone, nothing brightens your day like watching a Malibu mansion tumbling down a cliff into the sea. And if a tornado just peppered the land around your Oklahoma town with random trailer trash and redneck nuggets, then you can find a quantum of solace in the fact that the earth actually opened up in the San Fernando Valley and swallowed a whole caravan of commuting SUVs."
Author: Christopher Moore

9. "Scratch any fortune and you'll find blood only a generation or two back...child labor in mines or mills...Slavery. Drugs. Stock swindles. Wasting nature with clear-cuts, pollution, harvesting to extinction. Monopolies. Disease. War. Every fortune comes out of something unpleasant."
Author: Chuck Palahniuk

10. "Emma?" "Hmm?" "You took everything I told you really well." "I've never understood the woe-is-me thing. I mean, the hottest guy in town just told me he wants me badly enough to bite me and make me like him, and now he wants to drag me home and ravish me. I'm going to, what, run screaming into the night? Oh, no! I'm a Puma now! My life is over! Sob!" Emma rolled her eyes. "I mean, don't get me wrong, it's freaking me out a bit, and it's probably going to cost me a fortune in bikini waxing, but it's not the end of my world." Max nearly ran off the road. "You get a bikini wax?" "Wouldn't you like to know?" "Hell yes."
Author: Dana Marie Bell

11. "Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit.Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams--like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams."
Author: David Mamet

12. "If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising."
Author: David Ogilvy

13. "My appeal to the rich is, Deal liberally with your poor brethren, and use your means to advance the cause of God. The worthy poor, who are made poor by misfortune and sickness, deserve your especial care and help."
Author: Ellen G. White

14. "My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life."
Author: Elyn R. Saks

15. "In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out, and with it the fortunes of the hacker tribe."
Author: Eric S. Raymond

16. "Rock 'n Roll: The most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear."
Author: Frank Sinatra

17. "It is always hard to leave a home a drama a way of life a life. So I sat there warm and safe that night held by the sea and a good man and my own good fortune victim and witness to all the transitory sweetness like Gatsby's dreams that stood before and behind me."
Author: Gail Caldwell

18. "I'm really not quite as frippery a fellow as you seem to think! I own that in my grasstime I committed a great many follies and extravagances, but, believe me, I've long since out-grown them! I don't think they were any worse than what nine out of ten youngsters commit, but unfortunately I achieved, through certain circumstances, a notoriety which most young men escape. I was born with a natural aptitude for the sporting pursuits you regard with so much distrust, and I inherited, at far too early an age, a fortune which not only enabled me to indulge my tastes in the most expensive manner imaginable, but which made me an object of such interest that everything I did was noted, and talked of. That's heady stuff for greenhorns, you know! There was a time when I gave the gossips plenty to talk about. But do give me credit for having seen the error of my ways!"
Author: Georgette Heyer

19. "Why, when people are leaving their partners because they're having an affair with someone else, do they think it will seem better to pretend there is no one else involved? Do they think it will be less hurtful for their partners to think they just walked out because they couldn't stand them any more and then had the good fortune to meet some tall Omar Sharif-figure with a gentleman's handbag two weeks afterwards while the ex-partner is spending his evenings bursting into tears at the sight of the toothbrush mug? It's like those people who invent a lie as an excuse rather than the truth, even when the truth is better than the lie."
Author: Helen Fielding

20. "She believes in the words of her fortune teller, but really, anyone could have told her that if you have to stop doing the thing you love, it will kill you."
Author: Helen Humphreys

21. "Best followed now is this life, by hurrying, like itself, to a close.Few things remain.He was repulsed in efforts after a pension by certain caprices of law. His scars proved his only medals. He dictated a little book, the record of his fortunes. But long ago it faded out of print--himself out of being--his name out of memory. He died the same day that the oldest oak on his native hills was blown down."
Author: Herman Melville

22. "In the same proportion Russia is the misfortune of Europe and the Israelites."
Author: Isaac Mayer Wise

23. "Fortunately, due to a terrible misunderstanding, I soon found myself working as a consultant to the World Bank. I am not exactly sure what it was that led the World Bank to believe I had any expertise in infrastructure finance. I had never even balanced a checkbook. I hadn't even tried. There is not much reason to balance a checkbook when your checking account rarely tops the three-figure mark. And so, to the Third World countries who had the misfortune of working with me on their infrastructure projects, I wish to apologize."
Author: J. Maarten Troost

24. "Joe sighed and eyed me sceptically, ‘I offer him a place in history, in the universe, sacrifice and all that shit and he squeals like a little pig. You offer him a last fuck and he plunges right in headfirst. I don't get it.'‘He's a Jock, a common man with common needs, he doesn't want fame and fortune all he wants is full belly and an empty ball sack. My father always said find the right stick son and give the fucker a poke."
Author: J.W. Murison

25. "Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, all according to the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting."
Author: Jack London

26. "Fortune"
Author: Jane Austen

27. "But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them."
Author: Jane Austen

28. "Mrs. Parker was as evidently a gentle, amiable, sweet-tempered woman, the properest wife in the world for a man of strong understanding but not of a capacity to supply the cooler reflection which her own husband sometimes needed; and so entirely waiting to be guided on every occasion that whether he was risking his fortune or spraining his ankle, she remained equally useless."
Author: Jane Austen

29. "Do not be sad. Or think Adieu. Never Adieu. We will watch the sun set again - many times, and perhaps we'll see the Emerald Drop, the green flash that brings good fortune. And you must laugh and chatter as you used to do - telling me about the battle off the Saints or the picnic at Marie Galante - that famous picnic that turned into a fight. Or the pirates and what they did between voyages. For every voage might be their last. Sun and sangoree's a heady mixture. Then - the earthquake. Oh yes, people say that god was angry at the things they did, woke from his sleep, one breath and they were gone."
Author: Jean Rhys

30. "All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows."
Author: Jean Jacques Rousseau

31. "Death always knew how to connect vice with misfortune."
Author: Jindřich Štyrský

32. "The gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about." Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; "tout aboutit en un livre," everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmé speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is the same; the idea that we are made for art, we are made for memory, we are made for poetry, or perhaps we are made for oblivion. But something remains, and that something is history or poetry, which are not essentially different."
Author: Jorge Luis Borges

33. "Once there was a gypsy queen who wore on her wrist a chain of six lucky charms - a golden crown, a silver horse, a butterfly caught in amber, a cat's eye shell, a bolt of lightning forged from the heart of a falling star, and the flower of the rue plant, herb of grace. The queen gave each of her six children one of the charms as their lucky talisman, but ever since the chain of charms was broken, the gypsies had been dogged with misfortune."
Author: Kate Forsyth

34. "For all of my fortune, there are many with misfortune that need a hand."
Author: Laura San Giacomo

35. "I've seen enough death."A single angel rose in the darkness from the circle they'd formed around the Qayom Malak. "If she can't do it, she can't do it.""Shut up, Cam," Arriane said. "Sit down.Cam stepped forward, approaching Luce. His narrow frame cast its shadow across the Slab. "We've taken it this far. You can't say we haven't given it every kind of shot." He turned to face the others. "But maybe she just can't. There is only so much you can ask a person to do. She wouldn't be the first filly anybody lost a fortune on. So what if she happens to be the last?"His tone did not match his words, and neither did his eyes, which said with desperate sincerity, You can do this. You have to."
Author: Lauren Kate

36. "Up to a point a person's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, "This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow."
Author: Louis L'Amour

37. "Indeed, wretched the man whose fame makes his misfortunes famous."
Author: Lucius Accius

38. "In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors."
Author: Marcus Aurelius

39. "I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self."
Author: Mary Shelley

40. "Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea."
Author: Nikos Kazantzakis

41. "Fortune, how fickle and how vain thou art,"
Author: Patrick Branwell Brontë

42. "Memorial Day isn't just about honoring veterans, its honoring those who lost their lives. Veterans had the fortune of coming home. For us, that's a reminder of when we come home we still have a responsibility to serve. It's a continuation of service that honors our country and those who fell defending it."
Author: Pete Hegseth

43. "Knuckleballers don't keep secrets. It's as if we have a greater mission beyond our own fortunes. And that mission is to pass it on, to keep the pitch alive. Maybe that's because we are so different, and the pitch is do different, but I think it has more to do with the fact that this is a pitch that almost all of us turn to in desperation. It is what enables us to keep pitching stay in the big leagues, when everything else has failed. So we feel gratitude toward the pitch. It becomes way more than just a means to get and out.It becomes a way of life."
Author: R.A. Dickey

44. "As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes."
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

45. "Percy and Reyna occupied matching praeters' chairs on the dais, which made Percy self-conscious. It wasn't easy looking dignified wearing a bedsheet and a purple cape. "The camp is safe," Octavian continued. " I'll be the first to congragulate our heroes for bringing back the legion's eagle and so much Imperial gold! Truly we have been blessed with good fortune. But why do more? Why tempt fate?" "I'm glad you asked." Percy stood, taking the question as an opening. Octavian stammered, " I wasn't--""--Part of the quest," Percy said. "Yes I know. And your'e wise to let me explain, since I was."
Author: Rick Riordan

46. "I just wish moments weren't so fleeting!' Isaac called to the man on the roof, 'They pass so quickly!' 'Fleeting?!' responded the tilling man, 'Moments? They pass quickly?! . . . Why, once a man is finished growing, he still has twenty years of youth. After that, he has twenty years of middle age. Then, unless misfortune strikes, nature gives him twenty thoughtful years of old age. Why do you call that quickly?' And with that, the tilling man wiped his sweaty brow and continued tilling; and the dejected Isaac continued wandering. 'Stupid fool!' Isaac muttered quietly to himself as soon as he was far enough away not to be heard."
Author: Roman Payne

47. "Let every man in mankind's frailty consider his last day; and let none presume on his good fortune until he find Life, at his death, a memory without pain."
Author: Sophocles

48. "About your easy heads my prayersI said with syllables of clay.What gift, I asked, shall I bring nowBefore I weep and walk away?Take, they replied, the oak and laurel.Take our fortune of tears and liveLike a spendthrift love. All we askIs the one gift you cannot give."
Author: Tana French

49. "Perhaps the only reason they survived, Stencil reasoned, was that they were not alone. God knew how many more there were with a hothouse sense of time, no knowledge of life, and at the mercy of Fortune."
Author: Thomas Pynchon

50. "None of us makes it through this life without problems and challenges—and sometimes tragedies and misfortunes. After all, in large part we are here to learn and grow from such events in our lives. We know that there are times when we will suffer, when we will grieve, and when we will be saddened. However, we are told, "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." How might we have joy in our lives, despite all that we may face? Again from the scriptures: "Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you."
Author: Thomas S. Monson

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