A body makes his own luck, be it good or bad.
unknown
Change yourself and fortune will change.
Portuguese (on fortune)
Good things come when you least expect them.
unknown
Great actions are not always true sons of great and mighty resolutions.
Samuel Butler (1612-1680)
Happy is the bride that the sun shines on.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
It is possible to have too much of a good thing.
Aesop (c.620-560 BC)
Lightning never strikes the same place twice.
P. H. Myers (1857)
May the wind be always at your back.
unknown
Sum up at night what thou hast done by day.
George Herbert (1593-1633)
The new boat will find the old stones.
Estonian (on perversity)
Venture a small fish to catch a great one.
English (on buying and selling)
When fortune calls, offer her a chair.
Yiddish (on fortune)
When fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your teeth.
Iranian
Diligence is the mother of good fortune.
Benjamin Disraeli
A wise man turns chance into good fortune.
Thomas Fuller
Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.
Julius Caesar
Fortune favors the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur
Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance.
Virgil
The day of fortune is like a harvest day, We must be busy when the corn is ripe.
Goethe
I’ve seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling, I’ve felt all its favours and found its decay.
Alison Cockburn
There is frequently a poison in fortune’s gifts.
Edward Counsel
The loss of fortune to a true man is but the trumpet challenge to renewed exertion, not the thunder stroke of destruction.
E.H. Chapin
Fortune may raise up or abuse the ordinary mortal, but the sage and the soldier should have minds beyond her control.
Sir Walter Scott
We make a goddess of Fortune … and place her in the highest heaven. But it is not fortune that is exalted and powerful, but we ourselves that are abject and weak.
Charles Caleb Colton
It is madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because by herself she is nothing and is ruled by prudence.
John Dryden
If a man’s fortune does not fit him, it is like the shoe in the story; if too large it trips him up, if too small it pinches him.
Horace
Fortune does not so much change men, as it unmasks them.
Anonymous
Fortune knocks at every man’s door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.
Mark Twain
Fortune is like glass
the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken.
Publilius Syrus
Fortune has something of the nature of a woman. If she is too intensely wooed, she commonly goes the further away.
Charles V
He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.
Benjamin Franklin
Good fortune and evil fortune come to all things alike in this world of time.
Moasi
Fortune is a great deceiver. She sells very dear the things she seems to give us.
Vincent Voiture
If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.
Francis Bacon
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
Honore de Balzac
Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry.
Oliver Goldsmith
Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.
James Russell Lowell
Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.
William Shakespeare
The way of fortune is like the milky way in the sky; which is a number of smaller stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together; so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate
Francis Bacon, Sr.
We should manage our fortune as we do our health – enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
No one is satisfied with his fortune, nor dissatisfied with his intellect
Antoinette Deshoulieres
Fortune and misfortune are two buckets in the same well
German Proverb
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence and merit
Jonathan Swift
A great fortune is a great slavery.
Seneca
Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.
Amelia E. Barr
No man’s fortune can be an end worthy of his being.
Francis Bacon
The brave man carves out his fortune and every man is the son of his own works.
Miguel De Cervantes
Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
Arthur Schopenhauer
We always take credit for the good and attribute the bad to fortune.
Charles Kuralt
To attract good fortune, spend a new penny on an old friend, share an old pleasure with a new friend and lift up the heart of a true friend by writing his name on the wings of a dragon.
Proverb
Fortune, the great commandress of the world, Hath diverse ways to advance her followers: To some she gives honor without deserving; To other some, deserving without honor; Some wit, some wealth,
and some, wit without wealth; Some wealth without wit; some nor wit nor wealth.
George Chapman
