#luck

The fish is my friend too...I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky; he thought ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#killing #luck #man #moon #nature

No one is adequate to comprehending the misery of my lot! Fate obliges me to be constantly in movement: I am not permitted to pass more than a fortnight in the same place. I have no Friend in the world, and from the restlessness of my destiny I never can acquire one. Fain would I lay down my miserable life, for I envy those who enjoy the quiet of the Grave: But Death eludes me, and flies from my embrace. In vain do I throw myself in the way of danger. I plunge into the Ocean; The Waves throw me back with abhorrence upon the shore: I rush into fire; The flames recoil at my approach: I oppose myself to the fury of Banditti; Their swords become blunted, and break against my breast: The hungry Tiger shudders at my approach, and the Alligator flies from a Monster more horrible than itself. God has set his seal upon me, and all his Creatures respect this fatal mark! ↗

— Matthew Gregory Lewis

#fate #frustration #good-fortune #grief #immortality

How can you say that so casually? You're talking about the possible death of hundreds of people, yourself included." He gave a negligent shrug. "Wrong place, wrong time. Life sucks. ↗

— Shannon K. Butcher

#death #life #life-sucks #pessimism #wrong

A little politeness might smooth the way ahead. Knowing it was his turn to be dispatched, the best he could hope for was as swift a death as the one Massetti had so thanklessly received. ↗

— Victoria Lamb

#death #goodluck #the-queen-s-secret #thriller #death

In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes. ↗

— Michael J. Behe

#chance #darwinism #evolution #id #intelligent-design

Patience's design flaw became obvious for the first time in my life: the outcome is decided not during the course of play but when the cards are shuffled, before the game even begins. How pointless is that? ↗

— David Mitchell

#luck #patience #solitaire #design

It is not very often that an opportunity comes knocking. But when it does, you better be bathed and dressed and ready to answer its call. ↗

— Jyoti Arora

#opportunity #preparation #dreams

Blessed with the love of a good man, I felt equal to anything - even the prospect of living out my days in the Antipodes. ↗

— Jennifer Paynter

#jane-austen #jennifer-paynter #love #lucky #mary-bennet

Luck is a word the bitter teach to the ignorant. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#ignorant #life #luck #motivational #success

He talked about luck and fate and numbers coming up, yet he never ventured a nickel at the casinos because he knew the house had all the percentages. And beneath his pessimism, his bleak conviction that all the machinery was rigged against him, at the bottom of his soul was a faith that he was going to outwit it, that by carefully watching the signs he was going to know when to dodge and be spared. It was fatalism with a loophole, and all you had to do to make it work was never miss a sign. Survival by coordination, as it were. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who can see it coming and jump aside. Like a frog evading a shillelagh in a midnight marsh. ↗

— Hunter S. Thompson

#existential #fate #luck #faith