Quotes about fortune

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Shropshire Conservative (31 August 1844), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 629.
1840s

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 6 “A Deserter in Time of War” (p. 162)

1850s, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 43.

Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), lines 325-328; (Megara).
Tragedies

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 180.

Of Fortune
Essays (1625)

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)

Book XXX, sec. 42
History of Rome

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 315

Wesleyan Graduation Ceremony, Middletown, Connecticut (25 May 2008) http://www.politico.com/pdf/PPM42_remarks_of_obama.pdf
2008

Le premier qui fut roi fut un soldat heureux:
Qui sert bien son pays n'a pas besoin d'aïeux.
Mérope, act I, scene III (1743). Borrowed from Lefranc de Pompignan's "Didon"
Citas

"Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend" (2008) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQX4FYitEo4&feature=youtu.be&t=206

Letters, 202.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

That would not make a bad programme for a British Ministry. It is one from which Her Majesty's advisers do not shrink.
Source: Speech at the Guildhall, London (9 November 1879), cited in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. 2 (1929), pp. 1366-7.

Source: Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924), p. 98

Source: Introduction to The Closing of the American Mind (1988), p. 18

Book XXIV, sec. 22
History of Rome

Dissenting (footnote #22), Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 192 L. Ed. 2d 609 (2015) ; decided June 26, 2015.
2010s

1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)

<p>Les ondulations de ces montagnes infinies, que leurs couches de neige semblaient rendre écumantes, rappelaient à mon souvenir la surface d'une mer agitée. Si je me retournais vers l'ouest, l'Océan s'y développait dans sa majestueuse étendue, comme une continuation de ces sommets moutonneux. Où finissait la terre, où commençaient les flots, mon oeil le distinguait à peine.</p><p>Je me plongeais ainsi dans cette prestigieuse extase que donnent les hautes cimes, et cette fois, sans vertige, car je m'accoutumais enfin à ces sublimes contemplations. Mes regards éblouis se baignaient dans la transparente irradiation des rayons solaires, j'oubliais qui j'étais, où j'étais, pour vivre de la vie des elfes ou des sylphes, imaginaires habitants de la mythologie scandinave; je m'enivrais de la volupté des hauteurs, sans songer aux abîmes dans lesquels ma destinée allait me plonger avant peu.</p>
Source: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Ch. XVI: Boldly down the crater

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Source: The Little White Bird (1902), Ch. 22

Source: In Praise of Philosophy (1963), p. 4

Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), On the musicians of the Ospedale della Pieta (book VII)

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 82.

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

about the downsides of famehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/12/18/leo_dicaprio_the_aviator_interview.shtml

马云调侃谷歌退出：中国将制定未来游戏规则 http://china.ibtimes.com/articles/20100120/-2014431602.htm

As quoted by Macrobius in Saturnalia, Book VI, Chapter I

Of Dice
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Source: Christie Johnstone (1853), CHAPTER I.

Letter to Anka Stalherm (14 April 1920), quoted in Ralph Georg Reuth, Goebbels (Harvest, 1994), pp. 33-34
1920s

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Colonel Richard Cantwell and Renata in Ch. 38
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Further Records, 1848-1883, vol. 1; entry dated February 12, 1874 (1891).

Die Braut von Messina (The Bride of Messina), Act IV, sc. iv (1803)

Source: The Philosophy of Misery (1846), Chapter I

Rumi Daylight (1990)

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Source: Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1912) The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur L. Humphreys. Retrieved from University of California Libraries Archive.org https://archive.org 13 February 2018 https://archive.org/details/soulofmanunderso00wildiala

Speech to the US Congress (13 October 1949)

Book III, Chapter 13
Florentine Histories (1526)

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)

History of the Thirty YEars War 178
The Thirty Years War

Reported in "The Viking Book of Aphorisms: A Personal Selection" By Wystan Hugh Auden, Louis Kronenberger (1981)

fr. 132
Variant translations:
Blessed is he who has acquired a wealth of divine wisdom, but miserable is he in whom there rests a dim opinion concerning the gods.
tr. Arthur Fairbanks
Purifications
Source: Fairbanks, Arthur. (1898). The First Philosophers of Greece https://archive.org/stream/cu31924029013162. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd. p. 201.

Source: Social structure and anomie (1938), p. 59

Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, New Delhi reprint, 1979, pp. 572-73

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 180.

She Done Him Wrong (1933); this statement has become widely misquoted with the paraphrase: "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

"Combray"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book V

Book XXX, sec. 30
History of Rome

letter to his grandmother, c. 1883; as cited in Pierre Bonnard, by John Rewald; MoMA -distribution, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918, p. 12 (note 1)

Book V, sec. 37
History of Rome

Statement while on St. Helena (3 March 1817)

Epist. i. ad Tim., 12, as cited in Francesco Saverio Nitti, Catholic Socialism (1895), p. 67

Valence of Prince Berthold, in Act IV.
Colombe's Birthday (1844)
Context: p>He gathers earth's whole good into his arms;
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise,
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her.
One great aim, like a guiding-star, above—
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize;
A prize not near — lest overlooking earth
He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote,
So that he rest upon his path content:
But day by day, while shimmering grows shine,
And the faint circlet prophesies the orb,
He sees so much as, just evolving these,
The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength,
To due completion, will suffice this life,
And lead him at his grandest to the grave.
After this star, out of a night he springs;
A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones
He quits; so, mounting, feels each step he mounts,
Nor, as from each to each exultingly
He passes, overleaps one grade of joy.
This, for his own good: — with the world, each gift
Of God and man, — reality, tradition,
Fancy and fact — so well environ him,
That as a mystic panoply they serve —
Of force, untenanted, to awe mankind,
And work his purpose out with half the world,
While he, their master, dexterously slipt
From such encumbrance, is meantime employed
With his own prowess on the other half.
Thus shall he prosper, every day's success
Adding, to what is he, a solid strength —
An aery might to what encircles him,
Till at the last, so life's routine lends help,
That as the Emperor only breathes and moves,
His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk
Become a comfort or a portent, how
He trails his ermine take significance, —
Till even his power shall cease to be most power,
And men shall dread his weakness more, nor dare
Peril their earth its bravest, first and best,
Its typified invincibility.Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends—
The man of men, the spirit of all flesh,
The fiery centre of an earthly world!</p

Book IV, 4.17-[4]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book IV

Discourse Delivered at the Royal Society (30 November 1825), published in Six Discourses delivered before the Royal Society, at their Anniversary Meetings, on the Award of the Royal and Copley Medals, preceded by an Address to the Society on the Progress and Prospects of Science (1827); also in The Edinburgh Review Or Critical Journal (October 1827)
Context: Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer.

Book III, 3.39-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book III

Oration on Lafayette (1834)
Context: There have doubtless been, in all ages, men, whose discoveries or inventions, in the world of matter or of mind, have opened new avenues to the dominion of man over the material creation; have increased his means or his faculties of enjoyment; have raised him in nearer approximation to that higher and happier condition, the object of his hopes and aspirations in his present state of existence.
Lafayette discovered no new principle of politics or of morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal Nobility, under the most absolute Monarchy of Europe, in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities at the moment of attaining manhood, the principle of republican justice and of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if by inspiration from above. He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty. He came to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the most effective champions of our Independence; but, that once achieved, he returned to his own country, and thenceforward took no part in the controversies which have divided us. In the events of our Revolution, and in the forms of policy which we have adopted for the establishment and perpetuation of our freedom, Lafayette found the most perfect form of government. He wished to add nothing to it.

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property as well as human welfare. Normally, and in the long run, the ends are the same; but whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for men and not for property, as you were in the Civil War. I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends; but I rank dividends below human character. Again, I do not have any sympathy with the reformer who says he does not care for dividends. Of course, economic welfare is necessary, for a man must pull his own weight and be able to support his family. I know well that the reformers must not bring upon the people economic ruin, or the reforms themselves will go down in the ruin. But we must be ready to face temporary disaster, whether or not brought on by those who will war against us to the knife. Those who oppose reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Variant: It is not even enough that the fortune should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should only permit it to be gained and kept so long as the gaining and the keeping represent benefit to the community.
Context: We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of the great generals who gained their promotion by leading their army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.

Address to the United Nations (1963)
Context: The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjugation of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.
But these, too, as were the phrases of the Covenant, are only words; their value depends wholly on our will to observe and honour them and give them content and meaning. The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act — and if necessary, to suffer and die — for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied.
These lessons must be learned anew by each succeeding generation, and that generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience. This Organization and each of its members bear a crushing and awesome responsibility: to absorb the wisdom of history and to apply it to the problems of the present, in order that future generations may be born, and live, and die, in peace.

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered — not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective — a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

Book I, 1
Histories (100-110)

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)
Context: The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

Source: The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), I Philosophy, p. 91
Context: He who suffers time to slip away and does not grow in virtue the more one thinks about him the sadder one becomes. No man has a capacity for virtue who sacrifices honour for gain. Fortune is powerless to help one who does not exert himself. That man becomes happy who follows Christ. There is no perfect gift without great suffering. Our triumphs and our pomps pass away; gluttony and sloth and enervating luxury have banished every virtue from the world; so that as it were wandering from its course our nature is subdued by habit. Now and henceforth it is meet that you cure yourself of laziness. The Master has said that sitting on down or lying under the quilts will not bring thee to fame. He who without it has frittered life away leaves no more trace of himself upon the earth than smoke does in the air or the foam on the water.

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of the great generals who gained their promotion by leading their army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.

Gorgias.
Dyskolos
Context: Even if you were a softy, you took the mattock, you dug,
you were willing to work. In this part he most shows himself a man,
whoever tolerates making himself equal to another,
rich to poor. For this man will bear a change of fortune
with self-control. You have given a sufficient proof of your character. 
I wish only that you remain as you are.

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 236
Context: It was no different with my own life, and with Gertrude's and that of many others. Fate was not kind, life was capricious and terrible, and there was no good or reason in nature. But there is good and reason in us, in human beings, with whom fortune plays, and we can be stronger than nature and fate, if only for a few hours. And we can draw close to one another in times of need, understand and love one another, and live to comfort each other. And sometimes, when the black depths are silent, we can do even more. We can then be gods for moments, stretch out a commanding hand and create things which were not there before and which, when they are created, continue to live without us. Out of sounds, words, and other frail and worthless things, we can construct playthings — songs and poems full of meaning, consolation and goodness, more beautiful and enduring than the grim sport of fortune and destiny. We can keep the spirit of God in our hearts and, at times, when we are full of Him, He can appear in our eyes and our words, and also talk to others who do no know or do not wish to know Him. We cannot evade life's course, but we can school ourselves to be superior to fortune and also to look unflinchingly upon the most painful things.

Canto X, stanza 20 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

1900s, Seventh Annual Message (1907)
Context: A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune is in no way such a tax upon thrift or industry as a like would be on a small fortune. No advantage comes either to the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the money by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the enormous fortunes which would be affected by such a tax; and as an incident to its function of revenue raising, such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood. We have not the slightest sympathy with that socialistic idea which would try to put laziness, thriftlessness and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift and efficiency; which would strive to break up not merely private property, but what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our whole civilization stands. Such a theory, if ever adopted, would mean the ruin of the entire country — a ruin which would bear heaviest upon the weakest, upon those least able to shift for themselves. But proposals for legislation such as this herein advocated are directly opposed to this class of socialistic theories. Our aim is to recognize what Lincoln pointed out: The fact that there are some respects in which men are obviously not equal; but also to insist that there should be an equality of self-respect and of mutual respect, an equality of rights before the law, and at least an approximate equality in the conditions under which each man obtains the chance to show the stuff that is in him when compared to his fellows.

The Civil War, Book III, 68; variant translation: "In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes."

Book VII
De Bello Gallico

The Crisis No. XIII
1770s, The American Crisis (1776&ndash;1783)

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Source: Miller, H. (1969). “Creation,” The Henry Miller Reader. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation. p.33.

Variants:
No oaths, no seals, no official mummeries were used; the treaty was ratified on both sides with a yea, yea — the only one, says Voltaire, that the world has known, never sworn to and never broken.
As quoted in William Penn : An Historical Biography (1851) by William Hepworth Dixon
William Penn began by making a league with the Americans, his neighbors. It is the only one between those natives and the Christians which was never sworn to, and the only one that was never broken.
As quoted in American Pioneers (1905), by William Augustus Mowry and Blanche Swett Mowry, p. 80
It was the only treaty made by the settlers with the Indians that was never sworn to, and the only one that was never broken.
As quoted in A History of the American Peace Movement (2008) by Charles F. Howlett, and ‎Robbie Lieberman, p. 33
The History of the Quakers (1762)

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Source: Marcelo H. del Pilar's last words to Mariano Ponce (4 July 1896)

Source: "Interview: Timothée Chalamet on being a young Hollywood actor" in SilverKris https://www.silverkris.com/interview-timothee-chalamet/ (13 December 2019)

Source: "‘Colbert’: Robert Downey Jr. Grateful His “Misbehavior” Years Were Pre-Internet" https://deadline.com/2021/02/robert-downey-jr-stephen-colbert-late-show-avengers-misbehavior-years-were-pre-internet-1234689537/ (8 February 2021)

Source: Just Folks (1917), There Are No Gods, final stanza.

Source: The Castle

Source: The Marriage Plot

Source: War and Peace

Source: Walden

Tagline on the back cover
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)