Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Euripedes NULL

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

Change | Fortune | Happy | Wisdom |

Benjamin Franklin

Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us. Its appetite grows keener by indulgence and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires.

Ambition | Appetite | Fortune | Good | Indulgence | Present | Wisdom |

Benjamin Franklin

Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

Day | Fortune | Good | Little | Wisdom |

Gobyrus NULL

It is harder to find a man who can bear good fortune well than one who can bear misfortune well.

Fortune | Good | Man | Misfortune | Wisdom | Misfortune |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Only learn to seize good fortune, for good fortune is always here.

Fortune | Good | Wisdom | Learn |

J. Paul Getty, fully Jean Paul Getty

The man who comes up with a means of doing or producing almost anything better, faster, or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.

Better | Fortune | Future | Man | Means | Wisdom |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Whether a man accepts from fortune her spade and will look downward and dig, or from aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.

Aspiration | Fortune | Heart | Man | Success | Will | Wisdom | Work | Aspiration |

Lorenzo Imperiali

There is no man whom Fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in a the door an flies out at the window.

Fortune | Life | Life | Man | Receive | Wisdom |

Livy, formally Titus Livius, aka Titus Livy NULL

Seldom men are blessed with good fortune and good sense at the same time.

Fortune | Good | Men | Sense | Time | Wisdom | Blessed |

Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

I certainly think that it is better to be impetuous than cautious, for fortune is a woman, and it is necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force.

Better | Force | Fortune | Wisdom | Woman | Think |

George Lyttleton, 1st Baron Lyttleton of Frankley

Even the happiest choice, where favoring heaven has equal love and easy fortune given, think not, the husband gained, that all is done; the prize of happiness must still be won; and, oft, the careless find it to their cost, the lover in the husband may be lost; the graces might, alone, his heart allure; they and the virtues, meeting, must secure.

Choice | Cost | Fortune | Heart | Heaven | Husband | Love | Wisdom | Happiness | Think |

Metastasio, aka Pietro Petastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi NULL

O, how full of error is the judgment of mankind. They wonder at results when they are ignorant of the reasons. They call it fortune when they know not the cause, and thus worship their own ignorance changed into a deity.

Cause | Error | Fortune | Ignorance | Judgment | Mankind | Wisdom | Wonder | Worship |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The only good histories are those that have been written by the very men who were in command in the affairs, or who were participants in the conduct of them or who at least have had the fortune to conduct others of the same sort... What can you expect of a doctor discussing war, or a schoolboy discussing the intentions of princes?

Conduct | Fortune | Good | Men | War | Wisdom |

John Oldham

And all your fortune lies beneath your hat.

Fortune | Wisdom |

Publius Syrus

When Fortune favors a man too much she makes him a fool.

Fortune | Man | Wisdom |

Antoine de Rivarol, also known as Comte de Rivarol

The methods that help a man acquire a fortune are the very ones that keep him from enjoying it.

Fortune | Man | Wisdom |

Publius Syrus

That is a most wretched fortune which is without an enemy.

Enemy | Fortune | Wisdom |

Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

Court the society of a superior, and make much of the opportunity; for in the company of an equal thy good fortune must decline.

Fortune | Good | Opportunity | Society | Wisdom | Society |