Misery and misfortune is all one; and of misfortune fortune hath only the gift.
Honor and fortune exist for him who always recognizes the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high causes.
We acquire the love of people who, being in our proximity, are presumed to know us; and we receive reputation or celebrity, from such as are not personally acquainted with us. Merit secures to us the regard of our honest neighbors, and good fortune that of the public. Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success.
Where is the reward of virtue? and what recompense has nature provided for such important sacrifices as those of life and fortune, which we must often make to it? O sons of earth! Are ye ignorant of the value of this celestial mistress? And do ye meanly inquire for her portion, when ye observe her genuine beauty?
Cease to ask what the morrow will bring forth, and set down as gain each day that fortune grants.
I have often wondered that learning is not thought a proper ingredient in the education of a woman of quality or fortune. Since they have the same improvable minds as the male part of their species.
You will find the most pronounced hatred of other nations on the lowest cultural levels. There is, though, a level where the hatred disappears completely and where one so to speak stands above the nations and where one experiences fortune or misfortune of a neighboring country as if they had happened to one's own.
How often are we forced to charge fortune with partiality towards the unjust!
The best way to handle good fortune is to do something positive and useful with it. The best way to handle misfortune is exactly the same.
Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.
I've never had good fortune with sequels. Everyone says this time is going to be better. And then I've done them and they've just been not - they weren't better.
A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.
They make their fortune who are stout and wise, Wit rules the heavens, discretion guides the skies. [Lat. , Che sovente addivien che'l saggio e'l forte. Fabro a se stesso e di beata sorte. ]
A good disposition is more valuable than gold, for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.
If we live by subhuman means we might as well never have had the good fortune to be born human.
From my tribe I take nothing, I am the maker of my own fortune.
The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune.
He dances well to whom Fortune pipes.
Fortune is an evil chain to the body, and vice to the soul.
Depend not on fortune, but on conduct.