Extracts
On Luck
Selected from the Summer 2016 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly.
Luck takes the step that no one sees.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC
In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: a man was cast by a tempest onto an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost.
—Blaise Pascal, 1660
Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1610
Hope is apt to supply the place of probability and the imagination to be struck with glittering though precarious prospects.
—Alexander Hamilton, 1793
When the abbot throws the dice, the whole convent will play.
—Martin Luther, c. 1540
There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.
—Mark Twain, 1897
If even with the qualities of a sage one has no luck, we cannot be surprised to find much bad luck and misfortune among ordinary men.
—Wang Chong, c. 85
A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.
—Christina Stead, 1938
Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1938
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895
Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance.
—Calvin Coolidge, 1932
To hold a throne is luck; to bestow it, virtue.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 45
What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side?—from sorrow to sorrow?—to button up one cause of vexation!—and unbutton another!
—Laurence Sterne, 1761
Mr. Stocks: A lottery is a taxation Upon all the fools in creation; And heaven be praised, It is easily raised, Credulity’s always in fashion: For folly’s a fund Will never lose ground, While fools are so rife in the nation. —Henry Fielding, 1732
Luck is believing you’re lucky.
—Tennessee Williams, 1947
A man’s life is like the voyage of a ship, where luck acts the part of the wind and speeds the vessel on its way or drives it far out of its course.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851
Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed.
—Joan Didion, 2005
All human affairs rest upon probabilities, and the same thing is true everywhere. If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down at last as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
—Charles Peirce, 1878
We do not suffer by accident.
—Jane Austen, 1813
Good fortune is light as a feather, but nobody knows how to hold it up. Misfortune is heavy as the earth, but nobody knows how to stay out of its way.
—Zhuangzi, c. 300 BC
Luck is not chance— It’s Toil— Fortune’s expensive smile Is earned— The Father of the Mine Is that old fashioned Coin We spurned— —Emily Dickinson, 1875
All events, even those that on account of their insignificance do not seem to follow the great laws of nature, are a result of it just as necessarily as the revolutions of the sun.
—Pierre-Simon Laplace, 1814
Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal.
—David Hume, 1742
All these occurrences, prosperous as well as adverse, carnal sense will attribute to fortune. But whoever has learned from the mouth of Christ that all the hairs of his head are numbered will look farther for the cause and hold that all events are governed by the secret counsel of God.
—John Calvin, 1536
To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890
It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.
—Charlotte Brontë, 1847
Fortune resists half-hearted prayers.
—Ovid, 8
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LUCK
Summer 2016