This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
How often are we forced to charge fortune with partiality towards the unjust!
Fortune | Partiality |
Indeed, in a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.
Fortune | Government | Power | Rights | Government |
Rejoice in the success, promotion and good fortune of the other. In doing so, you attract good fortune to yourself.
Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind.
Envy | Fortune | Good | Repentance | Sorrow |
Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and the movements and changes in the world around him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, 'This I am today; that I will be tomorrow.' The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.
Blame | Fortune | Good | Life | Life | Power | Time | World |
The time of human life is but a point, and the substance is a flux, and its perceptions dull, and the composition of the body corruptible, and the soul a whirl, and fortune inscrutable, and fame a senseless thing…. What then is there which can guide a man? One thing and only one, philosophy.
There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
Believe me, my dear fellow, that so long as people refuse to give up everything for the sake of which they attack and devour each other on earth, that so long as they refuse to think of putting their spiritual fortune in order, there will be no fair distribution of earthly fortunes, either.
Extremes touch: he who wants no favors: from fortune may be said to have obtained the very greatest that she can bestow, in realizing an independence which no changes can diminish.
Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.
It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.
How fortune brings to earth the oversure!
Women are the fulfilled sex. Through our children we are able to produce our own immortality, so we lack that divine restlessness which sends men charging off in pursuit of fortune or fame or an imagined Utopia. That is why we number so few geniuses among us. The wholesome oyster wears no pearl, the healthy whale no ambergris, and as long as we can keep on adding to the race, we harbor a sort of health within ourselves.
Wrapt up in error is the human mind, and human bliss is ever insecure; Know we what fortune yet remains behind? Know we how long the present shall endure?
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.