Source: War and Peace
“Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.”
Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer
L'innocence, le plus souvent, est un bonheur et non pas une vertu. <br class="br"> Les Dieux Ont Soif http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Dieux_ont_soif_-_Chapitre_XV [The Gods Are Thirsty] (1912), ch. XV
“Common man, no matter how hard life is to him, at least has the fortune of not thinking it.”
Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet
Ibid., p. 181
The Book of Disquiet
Original: O homem vulgar, por mais dura que lhe seja a vida, tem ao menos a felicidade de a não pensar.
“He had never disagreed with anyone in his life, no matter how unfairly they may have treated him.”
Ba Jin (1904–2005) Chinese novelist
On the character Chueh-hsin (Juexin), in Family (1931)
Context: He had never disagreed with anyone in his life, no matter how unfairly they may have treated him. He preferred to swallow his tears, suppress his anger and bitterness; he would bear anything rather than oppose a person directly. Nor did it ever occur to him to wonder whether this forbearance might not be harmful to others.
“How often are we forced to charge fortune with partiality towards the unjust!”
Henry Clay (1777–1852) American politician from Kentucky
Letter (4 December 1801), printed in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (2002)
Virginia Woolf book The Waves
Bernard, section IX
Source: The Waves (1931)
Context: Our friends, how seldom visited, how little known — it is true; and yet, when I meet an unknown person, and try to break off, here at this table, what I call “my life”, it is not one life that I look back upon; I am not one person; I am many people; I do not altogether know who I am — Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda, or Louis; or how to distinguish my life from theirs.
“When Fortune smiles, I smile to think
How quickly she will frown.”
Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit
Source: Content and Rich, Line 63; p. 59.
“Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.”
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist
“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.”
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party
Attributed to Hitler, without source, in a 1992 book of quotations https://books.google.com/books?id=FwICBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT96&dq=%22the+people+they+administer+don%27t+think%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic_p2MxqfLAhUBE2MKHTC-CgQQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22the%20people%20they%20administer%20don't%20think%22&f=false. <br class="br">Disputed
