Quotes about fortune
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“So my own sister will not promote me? Speaking of which, weren't you supposed to find me a beautiful future wife with a small fortune? Have you had any success on that front?
- Yes - I have warned them all.”

Libba Bray book Rebel Angels

Source: Rebel Angels

Beauty, Sister, Success, Future

“Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“Kathy was a Republican, one of those people who used the unforgivable phrase "meant to be"--usually when describing her own good fortune or the disasters that had befallen other people.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

People

“When bad fortune occurs, the unresourceful, unimaginative man looks about him to attach the blame to someone else; the resolute accepts misfortune and endeavors to survive, mature, and improve because of it.”

Anne McCaffrey Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

Source: Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern 1983

“I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: Death Before Bedtime

“Fortunately, he'd found that most people were easy to locate at five thirty in the morning.”

Patricia Briggs book Cry Wolf

Source: Cry Wolf

People

“A single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

“So live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

The origin of this quote is often misattributed to Cicero; however, it is from Line 135-136 of Book 2, Satire 2 by Horace, "Quocirca vivite fortes, fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus." The English translation that most closely matches the one misrepresented as Cicero's is from a collection of Horace's prose written by E. C. Wickham, "So live, my boys, as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts."
Misattributed

Men, Heart

“If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, 'Aarggh! Screwed up again!' Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Imagination, Learning, Baby

“…she was one of those happily created beings who please without effort, make friends everywhere, and take life so gracefully and easily that less fortunate souls are tempted to believe that such are born under a lucky star.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Life, Soul, Star, Effort

“In the games of queens and kings, we leave our dreams at the door and we make do with what we have. Sometimes if we’re fortunate, we still manage to have a good life.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Quintana of Charyn

Life, Dreams, Game

“The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Source: De Senectute, De Amicitia

“She represents love, beauty, purity, the ideal female and the moon… and she's the mystère of jealousy, vengeance and discord, AND, on the other hand, of love, perpetual help, goodwill, health, beauty and fortune.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

Love, Health, Jealousy, Beauty

“How…” Dalinar said. “You fell into a chasm!”
“I fell face-first, sir,” Kaladin said, “and fortunately, I’m particularly hard-headed.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

“I walked away exhilarated by my success, because there's nothing like making a difference in someone's life, even if that difference is a lifetime of nightmares and a fortune in therapy bills.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Variant: There's nothing like the feeling of knowing that you've made a difference in someone's life, even if that difference is a lifetime of nightmares and a fortune in therapy bills.
Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Life, Success

“I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me.
But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Life, Happiness, Joy

“Fortune favors the brave," I told her. It also kills the stupid, but I decided to keep that fact to myself.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Stupidity

“There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change.”

Euripidés Iphigenia in Tauris

Iphigenia in Tauris (c. 412 BC) l. 721

Happiness, Change, Chance

“… there was no such thing as curses. People make and break their own fortunes -they are the masters of their own fate.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Fate, People

“The mere suggestion of fame and fortune casts a glamour all its own. It is rather alarming how quickly people will turn someone else's fiction into fact in order to support their own fictions of themselves.”

Libba Bray book Rebel Angels

Source: Rebel Angels

People, Support

“To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success--the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history--with a society that provides opportunities for all.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Happiness, World, History, Birth

“If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Context: The Scarecrow listened carefully, and said, "I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas."
"That is because you have no brains" answered the girl. "No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home."
The Scarecrow sighed.
"Of course I cannot understand it," he said. "If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains."

People, Beauty

“Call no day fortunate till it be ended.”
Nulla dies felix

Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939) English writer and publisher

The Fifth Queen Crowned

“Fortunately for Dimitri, I had his back.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Variant: It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Source: Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Truth, Universe, Relationship, For Wife

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Variant: Behind every successful fortune there is a crime.
Source: The Godfather

“Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Source: The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives

Happiness

“Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

“It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born Homo sapiens.”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

Animals, Envy

“It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Source: Sula

“Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. This is as marvelous as being there in the beginning.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

World, Imagination

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Happiness

“How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

World

“People don't have fortunes left them in that style nowadays; men have to work and women to marry for money. It's a dreadfully unjust world.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

Women, Men, Money, People

“When I was twelve, a fortune teller told me that my one true love would die young and leave me all alone.. Everyone said she was a fraud, that she was just making it up.. I’d really like to know why the hell a person would make up a thing like that.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Love, Hell, Fraud, Personality

“If there is one regret that I have had in my life, it is that I never fathered any children. There are times, when I look at what Fergus and Beryl have produced, when I consider myself fortunate, but there are also times when it breaks my heart.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

Life, Children, Time, Heart

“In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.”

Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed

Source: Wild Seed

God, People

“It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: The Bruce-Partington Plans

Communication

“Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a married man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an heir.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Duke and I

Truth, Universe

“That hat looks ridiculous.”
“Fortunately, I can change hats,” Wayne said, “while you, sir, are stuck with that face.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Alloy of Law

Change

“…she rejoiced as only mothers can in the good fortunes of their children.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

Children

“This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before…The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of spirit.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Source: Anthem (1937)

“It’s an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.”

Patricia A. McKillip book The Changeling Sea

Source: The Changeling Sea

Happiness, People

“Fortunately, the sun has a wonderfully glorious habit of rising every morning”

Jean Craighead George book My Side of the Mountain

Source: My Side of the Mountain

Sun

“I’ll never pause again, never stand still, till either death hath closed these eyes of mine, or fortune given me measure of revenge.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Death, Revenge

“Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter XV: "Recapitulation and Conclusion", page 421 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=449&itemID=F391&viewtype=image, in the sixth (1872) edition

History, Science

“The wheel of fortune […] tells us that we all only want victory. We all want to triumph. But we all have to learn to endure what comes. We have to learn to treat misfortune and great fortune with indifference. That is wisdom.”

Philippa Gregory book The Lady of the Rivers

Source: The Lady of the Rivers

Wisdom, Learning, Victory, Indifference

“It's possible this whole "Why do Latinos love Morrisey?" question will haunt us forever. Fortunately, Canadian academics are on the case.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Love, Question

“Fortunate is the one who knows the name of their heart. They are the ones whose hearts are never truly lost. They can always call their heart back home.
Do you remember the name of your heart, Simon Lewis?”
“I think so,” Simon whispered.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Bitter of Tongue

Home, Thinking, Heart

“Beli at thirteen believed in love like a seventy-year-old widow who's been abandoned by family, husband, children and fortune believes in God.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Love, God, Children, Family

“I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Archilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me.”

Thomas Browne (1605–1682) English polymath

“Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

Men, Time, Falseness

“We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

“I was taught never to take advantage of anybody who was less fortunate than myself, whether he be less fortunate in brains, wealth, or social position; it meant anybody…”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Wealth

“She shrugged. "You can be happy for someone else's good fortune, but that doesn't mean you forget your own bad luck.”

Jodi Picoult Plain Truth

Source: Plain Truth

Bad luck, Happiness, Forgetting

“No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

Source: The Chosen

World, Way

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section I, Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part I

Happiness, Pleasure, Nature, Selfishness

“I’ve got a fortune in gold. Ah, was that a flicker in your eye? Do you like me better now that you know I’m rich?” He curled his finger under her chin. “Because I’m all right with that.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Desires After Dusk

“We are always in a hurry to be happy…; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Happiness, Suffering, Time

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1770s, Declaration of Independence (1776)

Support

“At the Feast of Fortune, she'll awaken, and the demigods will be cut down like-- like---"
"Like our low prices at Bargain Mart!" Stheno suggested.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“Fortunate are those who take the first steps.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

“I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Feeling, Time

“Annabeth hit a slippery patch of moss and her foot slipped. Fortunately, she found something else to put it against. Unfortunately, that something was my face.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet's tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: Essays and Aphorisms

Smile, Learning, Heart

“Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not "This is misfortune," but "To bear this worthily is good fortune.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Feeling, Future

“Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Women, Change

“Be grateful you’re not in the forest in France
Where the average young person just hasn’t a chance
To escape from the perilous pants eating plants
But your pants are safe, you’re a fortunate guy
You ought to be shouting how lucky am I”

Dr. Seuss book Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

Source: Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

Guy, Chance, Personality

“The choice of life is not between fame and fortune, nor wealth and poverty, but between good and evil.”

Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015) American Mormon leader

Life, Evil, Wealth

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

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Smile, Chance

“I hold strongly to this: that it is better to be impetuous than circumspect; because fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is necessary to beat and coerce her.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

Source: The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli - Original Version

“Every man has his destiny. But who needs to go to a fortune-teller to find it? Do I go to a chef to find out if I'm hungry?”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

“Let us not ask for miracles, let us not ask for concern with what is good for the country of him who comes as a stranger to make his fortune and leave afterwards.”

José Rizal book Noli Me Tángere

Source: Noli Me Tángere

Country

“We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Life, Way, Light, Time

“Fortunately, we did most of our athletic stuff inside, so we didn't have to jog through Tribeca looking like a bunch of boot-camp hippie children.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Children

“When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Misfortune and Fortune are eerily similar, but Fortune is a better dresser and more fun at parties.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Unfair Godmother

“Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

Happiness, Sea

“I would much prefer their minds to be engaged in the deadly arts than clouded with dreams of marriage and fortune, as your own so clearly is!”

Seth Grahame-Smith book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Source: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Marriage, Dreams, Art

“But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park (1814)

Women, Men, World

“Wealth means nothing at all if you do not know, to the last penny, what your fortune is. You might as well be poor if you do not know what you have.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Queen

Source: The Other Queen

Wealth

“I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“I was always a reluctant actor! I continue to be that. I announce a project, the camera rolls and I'm happy. I'm fortunate to be doing leading parts even now. Except for my mentor K. Balachander, for whom I can do even a walk-on part. When he directed his 100th film, I just walked in to do a small role. I just clowned around on camera.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

Aamir's choice of films makes Kamal Haasan happy

Happiness, Parting

“I had the good fortune of having my first and only heart attack last January … I call it good fortune because it taught me that there's a limited amount of time left and I better concentrate on one thing: How come existence? How come the quantum? Maybe those questions sound too philosophical, but maybe philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers.”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

As quoted by Amanda Gefter (from the symposium in honor of Wheeler's 90th birthday) [Trespassing on Einstein's lawn: a father, a daughter, the meaning of nothing, and the beginning of everything, 2014, https://books.google.com/books?id=NUMkAAAAQBAJ]

Question, Time, Heart

“Badly off as the men… were in your day, they were more fortunate than their mothers and wives.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 11.

Men

“4867. There cannot be a more intolerable Thing than a fortunate Fool.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Fools

“Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of law.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Speech to the Massachusetts State Senate http://friesian.com/ross/ca40/2002.htm#war (7 January 1914). <br class="br">1910s, Speech to the Massachusetts State Senate (1914)

Men, Law

“I have been fortunate enough to lead.... an uneventful life. Only on very rare occasions have I ever left Bologna, my native city, and the surrounding province of Emilia. Only twice, for instance, have I been abroad... Besides, I speak only my native language, as you see, and read only Italian periodicals... When I was in my early twenties, my highest ambition was to go abroad study art in Paris.... the material difficulties involved were too great, and I was obliged to remain in Italy. Later I had too many responsibilities, with my teaching and my family [his sisters he lived with] and never managed to go abroad.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Source: 1945 - 1964, Interview, 1960, p. 106

Life, Family, Art, Sister

“Press on! If Fortune play thee false
To-day, tomorrow she'll be true;
Whom now she sinks she now exalts,
Taking old gifts and granting new,
The wisdom of the present hour
Makes up the follies past and gone;
To weakness, strength succeeds, and power
From frailty springs! Press on, press on!”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

Press On.

Wisdom, Spring, Past, Falseness

“The government of the United States represents, as its army also does, the finances of the United States. But these finances do not represent the North American people; they represent a small group of financiers, the owners of all the big enterprises… who also exploit the North American people. Clearly they do not exploit them in the same manner that they exploit us, the human beings of inferior races… for we have not had the good fortune of being born from blond, Anglo-Saxon parents. But they do exploit and divide them, they too are divided into blacks and whites, and they too are divided into men and women, union and non-union, employed and unemployed.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in Che Guevara Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings (1968), by George Lavan, p. 17

Women, Men, People, Parent

“Death is a release from and an end of all pains: beyond it our sufferings cannot extend: it restores us to the peaceful rest in which we lay before we were born. If anyone pities the dead, he ought also to pity those who have not been born. Death is neither a good nor a bad thing, for that alone which is something can be a good or a bad thing: but that which is nothing, and reduces all things to nothing, does not hand us over to either fortune, because good and bad require some material to work upon. Fortune cannot take ahold of that which Nature has let go, nor can a man be unhappy if he is nothing.”
Mors dolorum omnium exsolutio est et finis ultra quem mala nostra non exeunt, quae nos in illam tranquillitatem in qua antequam nasceremur iacuimus reponit. Si mortuorum aliquis miseretur, et non natorum misereatur. Mors nec bonum nec malum est; id enim potest aut bonum aut malum esse quod aliquid est; quod uero ipsum nihil est et omnia in nihilum redigit, nulli nos fortunae tradit. Mala enim bonaque circa aliquam uersantur materiam: non potest id fortuna tenere quod natura dimisit, nec potest miser esse qui nullus est.

Seneca the Younger book To Marcia

From Ad Marciam De Consolatione (Of Consolation, To Marcia), cap. XIX, line 5
In L. Anneus Seneca: Minor Dialogues (1889), translated by Aubrey Stewart, George Bell and Sons (London), p. 190.
Other works

Death, Pain, Peace, Nature

“First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its particular economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), p. 117

Life, Intelligence, Optimism, Nature

“That discipline which corrects the baseness of worldly passion, fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes it with enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity, than all the provision we can make of the goods of fortune.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 109.

Knowledge, Passion, Heart

“Neoclassical economic theory forms the central discourse and behavioral model of contemporary management education. Drawing on research and insights from game theory and behavioral economics we have argued that many of the core assumptions underlying this model are flawed. While we cannot say that the widespread reliance on the Homo economicus model has caused the highly level of observed managerial malfeasance, it may well have, and it surely does not act as a healthy influence on managerial morality. Students have learned this flawed model and in their capacity as corporate managers, doubtless act daily in conformance with it. This, in turn, may have contributed to the weakening of socially functional values and norms like honesty, integrity, self-restraint, reciprocity and fairness, to the detriment of the health of the enterprise. Simultaneously, this perspective has legitimized, or at least not delegitimized, such behaviors as material greed and optimizing with guile. We noted that this model has become highly institutionalized in business education. Fortunately, we believe that the potential for moving away from this flawed model is significant and thus can end this chapter on a more optimistic note for the future of business education.”

Rakesh Khurana (1967) American business academic

Herbert Gintis and Rakesh Khurana. " What Happened When Homo Economicus Entered Business School https://evonomics.com/what-happens-when-you-introduce-homo-economicus-into-business/," in: evonomics.com, July 14, 2016.

Health, Education, Behavior, Game

“My master ought to have remembered what
A glittering prize can do to bend the will,
Yet at the crucial moment he forgot
And all his fortune changed from good to ill.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Dovea in memoria avere il signor mio,
Che l'oro e 'l premio ogni durezza inchina;
Ma, quando bisognò, l'ebbe in oblio,
Ed ei si procacciò la sua ruina.
Canto XLIII, stanza 70 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Change

“I've never had a grandmother, a great-grandmother, nor a great-great-grandmother. I never even had a mother. I have certainly missed a great deal of love thereby, but fortune has compensated me by not giving me the capacity to hate anyone, neither nations nor individuals. If candlesticks and church bells have been plundered from my ancestors, then I'm only grateful that I'm so ignorant about genealogy.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Ólafur
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

Love, Hate

“I’m sick of hearing how far we’ve come. I’m sick of hearing how in some cases women are superseding men, progressing to positions of middle and upper management. Above all, I’m sick of hearing about the pipeline, about the path to the top supposedly thick with women who will, in the fullness of time, be rewarded for their patience and virtue. The following figures speak for themselves: Three percent of Fortune 500 companies are headed by women; 16.8 percent of members of the U. S. Congress are women; 7 percent of tenured engineering faculty in four-year institutions are women. The fact is that so far as leadership is concerned, women in nearly every realm are hardly any better off than they were a generation ago.”

Barbara Kellerman (1939) American academic

Barbara Kellerman in Harvard Business Review; Cited in " Quote of the week: Barbara Kellerman http://theweek.com/articles/494754/quote-week-barbara-kellerman," at theweek.com, April 30, 2010.

Women, Men, Time, Patience

“Your man with a thin skin, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement is never a happy, and seldom a fortunate politician.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 11

Happiness

Quotes about fortune page 3

Quotes about fortune
page 3