Chance

Quotations about chance.

Sourced

• A girl in a convertible is worth five in the phonebook.
  • Warren Buffet, 2000 Chairman's Letter Berkshire Hathaway Inc., February 28, 2001.

• Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity. For Chance rarely conflicts with intelligence, and most things in life can be set in order by an intelligent sharpsightedness.
  • Democritus (ca. 4^th century BC).

• I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
  • Ecclesiastes 9:11, King James Bible.

• Le hasard, c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu quand il ne veut pas signer.
  • Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
  • Théophile Gautier, La croix de Berny (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1855), p. 28.

• Under the bludgeonings of chance
  My head is bloody, but unbowed.
  • William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), Invictus.

• In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.
  • Louis Pasteur, in a lecture, University of Lille (7 December 1854); reported in Houston Peterson, A Treasury of the World's Great Speeches (1954), p. 473.
  • Variant translation: Chance favors the prepared mind.

• Times go by turns, and chances change by course,
  From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.
  • Robert Southwell (1561-1595), Times go by Turns.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 92-93.

• How slight a chance may raise or sink a soul!
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1839), A Country Town.

• Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
  Perhaps turn out a sermon.
  • Robert Burns, Epistle to a Young Friend.

• Le hasard c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu, quand il ne veut pas signer.
  • Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign.
  • Anatole France, Le Jardin d'Epicure, p. 132. Quoted "Le hasard, en definitive, c'est Dieu".

• I shot an arrow into the air
  It fell to earth I knew not where;
  For so swiftly it flew, the sight
  Could not follow it in its flight.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Arrow and the Song.

• Next him high arbiter
  Chance governs all.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 909.

• Or that power
  Which erring men call chance.
  • John Milton, Comus (1637), line 587.

• Chance is blind and is the sole author of creation.
  • X. B. Saintine, Piccola, Chapter III.

• Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the fountain,
  Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade.
  • Walter Scott, Hail to the Chief, Lady of the Lake (1810), Canto II. Quoted by Senator Vest in nominating Bland in Chicago.

• Chance will not do the work—Chance sends the breeze;
  But if the pilot slumber at the helm,
  The very wind that wafts us towards the port
  May dash us on the shelves.—The steersman's part is vigilance,
  Blow it or rough or smooth.
  • Walter Scott, Fortunes of Nigel, Chapter XXII.

• I shall show the cinders of my spirits
  Through the ashes of my chance.
  • William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), Act V, scene 2, line 173.

• Against ill chances men are ever merry;
  But heaviness foreruns the good event.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act IV, scene 2, line 82.

• But as the unthought-on accident is guilty
  To what we wildly do, so we profess
  Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies
  Of every wind that blows.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 549.

• Quam sæpe forte temere eveniunt, quæ non audeas optare!
  • How often things occur by mere chance, which we dared not even to hope for.
  • Terence, Phormio, V. 1. 31.

• A lucky chance, that oft decides the fate
  Of mighty monarchs.
  • James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 1,285.

• Er spricht Unsinn; für den Vernünftigen
  Menschen giebt es gar keinen Zufall.
  • He talks nonsense; to a sensible man there is no such thing as chance.
  • Ludwig Tieck, Fortunat.

• Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
  • Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary.

Unsourced

• If you are too fortunate, you will not know yourself. If you are too unfortunate, nobody will know you.
  • Thomas Fuller

• I'll give you a definite maybe.
  • Samuel Goldwyn

• I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand.
  • Jonathan Swift

Anonymous

• He who waits for chance may wait for a year.
  • Proverb, published in The Jo|Chancef Negro History (1916).

• Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.

• Chance favours the prepared mind, but only if the other guy isn't as lucky as you are.

• A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
  • English proverb