Fortune Quotes

“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity.”
― Mahatma Ghandi

“Oh, I am fortune's fool!”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness; and of all things, it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time: a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes: the scene consecrates the object I am going to love. The context is the constellation of elements, harmoniously arranged that encompass the experience of the amorous subject...

Love at first sight is always spoken in the past tense. The scene is perfectly adapted to this temporal phenomenon: distinct, abrupt, framed, it is already a memory (the nature of a photograph is not to represent but to memorialize)... this scene has all the magnificence of an accident: I cannot get over having had this good fortune: to meet what matches my desire.

The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other... In this moment, everything is suspended: time, law, prohibition: nothing is exhausted, nothing is wanted: all desires are abolished, for they seem definitively fulfilled... A moment of affirmation; for a certain time, though a finite one, a deranged interval, something has been successful: I have been fulfilled (all my desires abolished by the plenitude of their satisfaction).”
― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

“Behind every successful fortune there is a crime.”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Would you like to know your future?

If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator.

So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence -- a surprise.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Frank heard a laugh behind him. He glanced back and couldn't believe what he saw. Nico di Angelo was actually smiling.

"That's more like it," Nico said. "Let's turn this tide!”
― Rick Riordan, The House of Hades

“In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

“I regained my soul through literature after those times I'd lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“At the end of the street was a large glass box with a female mannequin inside it, dressed as a gypsy fortune teller.

“Now,” said Wednesday, “at the start of any quest or enterprise it behooves us to consult the Norns.”

He dropped a coin into the slot. With jagged, mechanical motions, the gypsy lifted her arm and lowered it once more. A slip of paper chunked out of the slot.

Wednesday took it, read it, grunted, folded it up and put it in his pocket.

“Aren’t you going to show it to me? I’ll show you mine,” said Shadow.

“A man’s fortune is his own affair,” said Wednesday, stiffly. “I would not ask to see yours.”

Shadow put his own coin into the slot. He took his slip of paper. He read it.

EVERY ENDING IS A NEW BEGINNING.
YOUR LUCKY NUMBER IS NONE.
YOUR LUCKY COLOUR IS DEAD.
Motto:
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON.

Shadow made a face. He folded the fortune up and put it inside his pocket.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Diligence is the mother of good fortune.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“On what slender threads do life and fortune hang… !”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“This is your karma. You do not understand now, but you will understand later. The source of pain is within your own larger expression of being.”
― H Raven Rose, Shadow Selves

“The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but
we have been a long time on the way.”
― Seneca

“How is it that some celebrities, whom the average person would believe to have all the popularity a human being could want, still admit to feeling lonely? It is quite naive to assume that popularity is the remedy for loneliness. Loneliness does not necessarily equal physical solitude, it is the inability to be oneself and rightfully represented as oneself.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Each meeting occurs at the precise moment for which it was meant. Usually, when it will have the greatest impact on our lives.”
― Nadia Scrieva, Fathoms of Forgiveness

“All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.”
― Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

“The visions are fragmented and a dark cloud spreads like spilt ink across the pages of possible futures.”
― Garth Nix , Lirael

“Today is an ephemeral ghost...

A strange amazing day that comes only once every four years. For the rest of the time it does not "exist."

In mundane terms, it marks a "leap" in time, when the calendar is adjusted to make up for extra seconds accumulated over the preceding three years due to the rotation of the earth. A day of temporal tune up!

But this day holds another secret—it contains one of those truly rare moments of delightful transience and light uncertainty that only exist on the razor edge of things, along a buzzing plane of quantum probability...

A day of unlocked potential.

Will you or won't you? Should you or shouldn't you?

Use this day to do something daring, extraordinary and unlike yourself. Take a chance and shape a different pattern in your personal cloud of probability!”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Money isn't the solution to your problems. It only lets you carry your unhappiness around in style.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“[I]t is not by being richer or more powerful that a man becomes better; one is a matter of fortune, the other of virtue. Nor should she deem herself other than venal who weds a rich man rather than a poor, and desires more things in her husband than himself. Assuredly, whomsoever this concupiscence leads into marriage deserves payment rather than affection.”
― Héloïse, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“If I have fully diagnosed the cause and nature of your condition, you are wasting away in pining and longing for your former good fortune. It is the loss of this which, as your imagination works upon you, has so corrupted your mind. I know the many disguises of that monster, Fortune, and the extent to which she seduces with friendship the very people she is striving to cheat, until she overwhelms them with unbearable grief at the suddenness of her desertion”
― Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

“So dry your tears. Fortune has not yet turned her hatred against all your blessings. The storm has not yet broken upon you with too much violence. Your anchors are holding firm and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future.”
― Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

“I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!”
― Roman Payne

“That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“I was taught to be queen by Margaret of Anjou, and perhaps I have taught you how to be queen in turn. This is fortune’s wheel indeed." With my forefinger I draw a circle in the air, the sign of fortune’s wheel. "You can go very high and you can sink very low, but you can rarely turn the wheel at your own bidding.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Kingmaker's Daughter

“If, on the other hand, in the midst of difficulties we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate ourselves from misfortune.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War