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
I undertook to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to alter my desires rather than change the order of the world, and to accustom myself to believe that nothing is entirely in our power except our own thoughts.
“A lot of great fortunes in the world have been made by owning a single wonderful business. If you understand the business and you know what you are doing, you don’t need very many of them.”
…and sank into the profound slumber which comes only to such fortunate folk as are troubled neither with mosquitoes nor fleas nor excessive activity of brain.
—Nikolai Gogol
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
I undertook to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to alter my desires rather than change the order of the world, and to accustom myself to believe that nothing is entirely in our power except our own thoughts.
—René Descartes
To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.
—Seneca
What fortune has made yours is not your own.
—Seneca
Remember, no human condition is ever permanent.
Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.
—Socrates
O may my time, my fortune, my understanding, and all my talents be more diligently improved, but may the one thing needful be the grand concern with me, and let not my heart be overcharged with lusts of other things.
—William Wilberforce
The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.
—Cicero
The truth brings no man a fortune.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I’ve been a fortunate man in life, nothing has come easily.
—Sigmund Freud