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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Luck

Luck cannot change birth.

Horace.

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.

James A. Garfield.

As good luck would have it.

Shakespeare.

Luck, mere luck, may make even madness wisdom.

Douglas Jerrold.

A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.

Juvenal.

A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.

Beecher.

When good luck knocks at the door, let him in and keep him there.

Cervantes.

Good luck lies in odd numbers***they say, there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.

Shakespeare.

Good luck is the willing handmaid of upright, energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.

Lowell.

Wheresoe’er thou move, good luck shall fling her old shoe after.

Tennyson.

  • Good luck befriend thee, Son; for at thy birth
  • The fairy ladies danced upon the hearth.
  • Milton.

    Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half way to meet it.

    Douglas Jerrold.

    The lucky have whole days which still they choose; the unlucky have but hours, and those they lose.

    Dryden.

    Pitch a lucky man into the Nile, says the Arabian proverb, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth!

    Willis.

    Things unhoped for happen oftener than things we desire.

    Plautus.

    Good and bad luck is but a synonyme, in the great majority of instances, for good and bad judgment.

    Chatfield.

    A good character, good habits, and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all the ill-luck that fools ever dreamed of.

    Addison.

    Virtue without success is a fair picture shown by an ill light; but lucky men are favorites of heaven; all own the chief, when fortune owns the cause.

    Dryden.

    There are no chances so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn to their own disadvantage.

    La Rochefoucauld.

    Hope nothing from luck; and the probability is that you will be so prepared, forewarned, and forearmed that all shallow observers will call you lucky.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

  • 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.
  • James T. Fields.

    Luck is ever waiting for something to turn up. Labor, with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy. Labor turns out at six o’clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines. Labor whistles. Luck relies on chance. Labor on character.

    Cobden.

    Never have anything to do with an unlucky place, or an unlucky man. I have seen many clever men, very clever men, who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well, but they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good to me?

    Rothschild.

    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. The man was born to do it, and his father was born to be the father of him and of this deed, and, by looking narrowly, you shall see there was no luck in the matter, but it was all a problem in arithmetic, or an experiment in chemistry.

    Emerson.