“Adventurous minds, which wait for and receieve their ideas only from chance.”
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Joseph Joubert 253
French moralist and essayist 1754–1824Related quotes
“Chance favors only the prepared mind.”
poem before 1973; in a exh. cat., ed. Suzanne Delehanty (1973; repr., Philadelphia: The Falcon Press, 1976), p. 40
1970's
“In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind.”
Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.
Lecture, University of Lille (7 December 1854)
Alternate translations of this or similar statements include:
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Fortune favors the prepared mind.
In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.
Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.
“Waiting on another chance to make it right.”
Until When We Are Ghosts (2006), Shattered
Source: Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), p. 127
"Man's Glassy Essence" in The Monist, Vol. III, No. 1 (October 1892)
Context: The consciousness of a general idea has a certain "unity of the ego" in it, which is identical when it passes from one mind to another. It is, therefore, quite analogous to a person, and indeed, a person is only a particular kind of general idea.
Preface
The Power-House (1916)
Context: I once played the chief part in a rather exciting business without ever once budging from London. And the joke of it was that the man who went out to look for adventure only saw a bit of the game, and I who sat in my chambers saw it all and pulled the strings. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' you know.
Source: Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (1984), p. 26