“Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.”

— Ovid, book Heroides

Book III, line 425
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
Source: Heroides
Context: Chance is always powerful. Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 12, 2026. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish." by Ovid?

Ovid120

Roman poet -43–17 BC

Related quotes

“You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

“If you've dated a woman over five years and she wants a boob job…she ain't getting it for you. She is putting fresh meat on a new hook, that's all it is. She is trolling for idiot "B," because you have not lived up to her financial expectations. So she's gonna cast those double D's out into the dating pool.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Love is Evol (2009)

“Beauty exists where you least expect to find it.”

Gail Tsukiyama The Samurai's Garden

Source: The Samurai's Garden

“If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

“Have you ever noticed that salvation, much like your car keys, is usually found where and when you least expect it? (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

“Cast down your bucket where you are.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

This address was a speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta (1895-09-18)
Source: 1900s, Up From Slavery (1901), Chapter XIV: The Atlanta Exposition Address

“The waters speak of love and the breeze and the branches and the little birds and the fish and the flowers and the grass, all together begging me always to love. But you, born in a happy hour, who call me from Heaven: by the memory of your untimely death you beg me to scorn the world and its sweet hooks.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

Canzone 280, st. 3–4
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Death

“Over the years I learned which hooks to use to catch which fish.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Audiotape recording of Eichmann in Argentina (1957), as quoted in Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer by Bettina Stangneth (2015). ISBN 978-0307950161.

“She heard pa shouting,"Jiminy crickets! It's raining fish-hooks and hammer handles!”

Laura Ingalls Wilder book On the Banks of Plum Creek

Source: On the Banks of Plum Creek

“There is no one at the Communion table who retains against you even the least of your sins, no one, unless you yourself do it. So cast them away from yourself, and the recollection of them, lest in it your retain them; and cast the recollection of your having cast your sins away, lest in it you retain them. P. 170”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

“Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Ovid120

Related quotes

Related topics