“Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned.”

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Emily Dickinson photo
Emily Dickinson 187
American poet 1830–1886

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Virgil photo

“Learn fortitude and toil from me, my son,
Ache of true toil. Good fortune learn from others.”

Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem, Fortunam ex aliis.

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book XII, Lines 435–436 (tr. Robert Fitzgerald)

Torquato Tasso photo

“Chance in uncertain, fortune double-faced,
Smiling at first, she frowneth in the end:
Beware thine honor be not then disgraced,
Take heed thou mar not when thou think'st to mend.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Giunta è tua gloria al sommo e per lo innanzi
Fuggir le dubbie guerre a te conviene,
Ch' ove tu vinca sol di stato avvanzi
Nè tua gloria maggior quindi diviene;
Mal' Imperio acquii'tato e prefo dianzi
El' onor perdi, se 'l contrario avviene.
Canto II, stanza 67 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Erich Maria Remarque photo
Leigh Brackett photo

“With any luck. Stark smiled cynically. Not that he did not believe in luck. Rather, he had found it to be an uncertain ally.”

Leigh Brackett (1915–1978) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: The Ginger Star (1974), Chapter 3 (p. 18)

Richard Bach photo

“Nothing happens by chance, my friend… No such thing as luck.”

Nothing by Chance: A Gypsy Pilot's Adventures in Modern America (1969)
Context: Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and such a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me, we may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long.

Robert Southwell photo

“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.

“Though Fortune now be smiling, it behoves
To look ahead, nor e'er to trust in Fortune.”

Alexis (-372–-270 BC) Athenian poet of Middle Comedy

Fabulae Incertae, Fragment 42.

Pliny the Younger photo

“Such are the vicissitudes of our mortal lot: misfortune is born of prosperity, and good fortune of ill-luck.”
Habet has vices conditio mortalium, ut adversa ex secundis, ex adversis secunda nascantur.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

V.
Panegyricus

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