“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.
Fabulae Incertae, Fragment 42.
“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.
“Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned.”
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet
“It is when fortune is the most propitious that she is least to be trusted.”
Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian
Book XXX, sec. 30
History of Rome
“Enjoy the present smiling hour,
And put it out of Fortune's power.”
Quod adest memento
componere aequus.
Book III, ode xxix, line 32 (as translated by John Dryden)
Odes (c. 23 BC and 13 BC)
John Fletcher (1579–1625) English Jacobean playwright
Act V, scene 5.
The Tragedy of Bonduca (1611–14; published 1647)
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician
The American Commonwealth: Volume II (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910), pp. 810–811.
1910s
“Nor do I care about the mob or about Fortune.”
Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere
Né del vulgo mi cal, né di Fortuna.
Canzone 114, st. 3
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life
“No one is satisfied with his fortune, nor dissatisfied with his intellect.”
Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières (1638–1694) French writer
Nul n'est content de sa fortune;
Ni mécontent de son esprit.
from Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 690