Luck

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The lucky man is honored ... but earnest striving wins no praise at all. ~ Theognis of Megara
Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck. ~ Roald Amundsen

Luck is a chance happening, or that which happens beyond a person's control, and can be referred to as "good luck" or "bad luck".

Quotes[edit]

Alphabetized by author
  • Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.
  • No amount of careful planning can beat pure luck.
  • “It was just good luck, last minute luck.”
    “Your ‘luck’ was mostly sweat and intuition.”
  • With any luck. Stark smiled cynically. Not that he did not believe in luck. Rather, he had found it to be an uncertain ally.
  • As ill-luck would have it.
  • We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
  • I don't watch the ball. I watch them. Like I said — You make your own luck. Perception is reality. And it doesn't matter a tuppeny toss where the ball actually lands... Just as long as they see what I want them to see.
  • As they who make
    Good luck a god count all unlucky men.
  • Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances: It was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at the time, or, it was so then, and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
  • Some of you will be successful, and such will need but little philosophy to take them home in cheerful spirits; others will be disappointed, and will be in a less happy mood. To such, let it be said, “Lay it not too much to heart.” Let them adopt the maxim, “Better luck next time”; and then, by renewed exertion, make that better luck for themselves.
  • Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe.
  • Sometimes luck is with you and sometimes it's not with you. That's the way life is.
    • Roger Willis Mitchell, Sr., Trooper Tales: Plus Other Bizarre, Odd and Funny Stories (2003), p. 35
  • No one I met at this time — doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients — failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.
  • Elisa Maza: You have to quit! He's using you!
Derek Maza: It's my life! Butt out!
Goliath: QUIET! Both of you! You don't know how lucky you are to have siblings to fight with! All of my rookery brothers are dead! And there is nothing - NOTHING more important than family.
  • Luck is the residue of design.
    • Branch Rickey, as quoted in Psychology Applied to Work : An Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology (1982) by Paul M. Muchinsky, p. 482; this has often become paraphrased as : "Luck is the residue of hard work and design".
  • Sed res docuit id verum esse, quod in carminibus Appius ait, fabrum esse suae quemque fortunae.
    • But experience has shown that to be true which Appius says in his verses, that every man is the architect of his own fortune.
      • Sallust, Epistulae ad Caesarem senem, I.i.2.
  • Good luck in most cases comes through the misfortune of others.
    • Sir John Young “Jackie” Stewart (b. 1939), Scottish racing driver, businessman. From his interview with Martyn Lewis, in Lewis’ book, Reflections on Success (1997), p. 938.
  • The lucky man is honored ...
    But earnest striving wins no praise at all.
  • The only thing I ever learned was that some people are lucky and other people aren't and not even a graduate of the Harvard Business School can say why.
    • Kurt Vonnegut, as quoted in "The Sirens of Titan" by character Noel Constant.
  • It reminds us that a man driven to desire to possess a certain female is a highly purposive individual. We have already noted that evolution tends to mark time when individuals have no reason to evolve. The same applies to individuals; they may be talented and intelligent, and yet waste their lives because they somehow lack the motivation to make use of these faculties. The best piece of luck that can befall any individual is to have a strong sense of purpose.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations[edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 484.
  • O, once in each man's life, at least,
    Good luck knocks at his door;
    And wit to seize the flitting guest
    Need never hunger more.
    But while the loitering idler waits
    Good luck beside his fire,
    The bold heart storms at fortune's gates,
    And conquers its desire.
  • A farmer travelling with his load
    Picked up a horseshoe on the road,
    And nailed it fast to his barn door,
    That luck might down upon him pour;
    That every blessing known in life
    Might crown his homestead and his wife,
    And never any kind of harm
    Descend upon his growing farm.
  • Now for good lucke, cast an old shooe after mee.
  • Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half-way to meet it.
  • Felix ille tamen corvo quoque rarior albo.
    • A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.
    • Juvenal, Satires (early 2nd century), VII. 202.
  • "Then here goes another," says he, "to make sure,
    For there's luck in odd numbers," says Rory O'More.
  • Good luck befriend thee, Son; for at thy birth
    The fairy ladies danced upon the hearth.
  • And wheresoe'er thou move, good luck
    Shall fling her old shoe after.

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

Luckiest People In The World

Wikipedia
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