Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Chance
How slight a chance may raise or sink a soul!
Bailey—Festus. A Country Town.
Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.
Burns—Epistle to a Young Friend.
Le hasard c’est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu, quand il ne veut pas signer.
Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign.
Anatole France—Le Jardin d’Epicure. P. 132. Quoted “Le hasard, en definitive, c’est Dieu.”
I shot an arrow into the air
It fell to earth I knew not where;
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
Longfellow—The Arrow and the Song.
Next him high arbiter
Chance governs all.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. II. L. 909.
Or that power
Which erring men call chance.
Milton—Comus. L. 587.
Chance is blind and is the sole author of creation.
J. X. B. Saintine—Piccola. Ch. III.
Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the fountain,
Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade.
Scott—Hail to the Chief. Lady of the Lake. Canto II. Quoted by Senator Vest in nominating Bland in Chicago.
Chance will not do the work—Chance sends the breeze;
But if the pilot slumber at the helm,
The very wind that wafts us towards the port
May dash us on the shelves.—The steersman’s part is vigilance,
Blow it or rough or smooth.
Scott—Fortunes of Nigel. Ch. XXII.
I shall show the cinders of my spirits
Through the ashes of my chance.
Antony and Cleopatra. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 173.
Against ill chances men are ever merry;
But heaviness foreruns the good event.
Henry IV. Pt. II. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 82.
But as the unthought-on accident is guilty
To what we wildly do, so we profess
Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies
Of every wind that blows.
Winter’s Tale. Act IV. Sc. 4. L. 549.
Quam sæpe forte temere eveniunt, quæ non audeas optare!
How often things occur by mere chance, which we dared not even to hope for.
Terence—Phormio. V. 1. 31.
A lucky chance, that oft decides the fate
Of mighty monarchs.
Thomson—The Seasons. Summer. L. 1,285.
Er spricht Unsinn; für den Vernünftigen
Menschen giebt es gar keinen Zufall.
He talks nonsense; to a sensible man there is no such thing as chance.
Ludwig Tieck—Fortunat.
Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
Voltaire—A Philosophical Dictionary.